I thought about that. But can't you tweak the EQ in post to narrow the field?
He means that the mics pick-up field is very wide, not the frequency range.
If cost wasn't an issue, I could buy whatever I wanted. I'm thinking about something that could be used by filmmakers with very little budget. I already have some very adequate sound equipment, I'm just trying to come up with new ideas...
I agree with finding ideas that work on a micro-budget. But I didn't say that cost was not an issue. I said to disregard the price and focus on the capabilities of the unit you are considering as a purchase. For instance, you can get a PalmTrack for $60 that sports 24/48 uncompressed WAV format or a DR-08for $70 capable of 24/96, etc. and you may be able to get them cheaper on eBay or Amazon.
As far as monitoring, you can monitor it as easily as you could one of the Zooms if it were on the end of a boom.
Actually, you can run a cable from the recorder down the boom-pole to a pair of headphones. That's not an option if you put the recorder in the actors pocket.
I would think you would have to try different settings before you get on set to see which ones will work the best. Then do some quick on set sound tests before you shoot, listening to the play back thru headphones to see where your levels are.
The problem is that, no matter how hard you try, the intensity of the actors is different when they know the camera is rolling. And, BTW, no one is ever going to "waste time" fooling around with sound gear on the set. And it doesn't matter if
you do, it's everyone else we're talking about, right?
According to the specs, recording in mp3 format at 192kbps (stereo) the range is 70 Hz to 19 kHz.
MP3 is still a compressed audio format.
Look, I'm not disagreeing with what you want to accomplish, but, speaking from 35+ years of audio experience, and 10 years in sound-for-picture, trying to get away cheap ends up sounding, well, cheap, unless you have a very solid understanding of how audio really works. This is knowledge that most fledgling filmmakers lack. Most consumer audio products are high impedance. This isn't a big deal with a stereo, or an MP3 player, but it is a very big deal when working on a film set; the odds are quite high that you will run into RF or other interference problems.
As you've probably read from me before, your project will only look as good as it sounds because "Sound is half of the experience." The biggest problem small budget projects have is that, no matter how much the audience and filmmakers protest otherwise, low/no/mini/micro-budget projects are competing with multi-mega-million dollar Hollywood blockbusters. And the first place indie types tend to skimp is on audio, yet audio is one of the hardest aspects of filmmaking to get right, mostly because you can't see it, and filmmakers tend to be very visually oriented.
People never notice audio - unless it's bad or missing.
