Zen Wired Remote Recordings

These are some recordings that I have made using the wired remote for the Creative Nomad Zen.

Commentary

I am very pleased with the recordings from the wired remote. From the FM radio the quality is excellent. From the built-in condenser microphone it is only adequate for close recordings, such as an audio journal.

The Recordings

These recordings are completely unmodified. I have not even changed the file names. I used Notmad to copy the files from my Nomad to my PC. I don't know if PlayCenter will give the files different names.

The recordings are all stored as uncompressed (PCM) wave (*.wav) files.

Recordings from the FM Radio

FM recordings are recorded at 22050 Hz, stereo, 4 bit = 177 Kbps

Recording Comment
Recording 1 A soul station with good bass. Good reception
Recording 2 A classical station with OK reception
Recording 3 A rock station with great reception

The first two recordings have some static in the first few seconds. This appears to come from the Zen itself! It sounds like the hard drive is inducing a current in some adjacent circuitry which winds up creating static. If my hypothesis is correct then long recordings which periodically dump the RAM buffer to disk may have static at these times. I haven't done a long recording so it's just a guess right now.

Voice recordings using built-in microphone

Voice recordings are recorded at 16 KHz, mono, 4 bit = 64 Kbps

Recording Comment
Recording 1 1', 6', and 10' at +0db
Recording 2 1', 6', and 10' at +12db