Xdreme Hd 1080P Waterproof Gopro Alternative - Review

[Croc]

Dodgey - Oh how I wish! However, I trundle around the built up city areas carefully as I am an "easy money" target for the police plus the quality of driving is so bad here given other cars change lane first and then look to see what bit of me they ran over. Taxis are particularly bad for this as I am hiding below their window level and they 'earned' their license from the back of a corn flake packet.

There are much nicer driving roads north of NYC along the Hudson River or out west around the Delaware River valley that are better suited to our cars.

[Dodgey]

Ahh that makes sense (I've spent a lot of time in America recently) - with overtaking allowed on both sides you almost want to attach a flag pole to your roll bar so you can be seen. Especially from people in Ford F350's and the likes :-)

[AdamR]

Slight bump...

The tascam is in no way waterproof - though I cant see the odd rain drop causing a problem. If it had rained on my track day, I planned to put it in front of the gear stick, under the dash

Great minds! That is pretty much exactly where I have mine... Still picks up the sound well (see / hear below), and no need to move it around if the weather turns (hopefully)

Indeed, I've looked at the Zoom's before now...

In case it's of any use to either yourself or others, here's a vid i put together with the Zoom H1:

The mic is mounted on a steel bracket which has been bent into an L shape, bolted down with one of the tunnel top bolts. I have a cheapo foam wind deflector on that cost £2.50 for a pack of 5, so it probably isn't up to much... There is also some rubber between the mic and mount - something I need for my camera too (hence the 'jellyvision')!

With the car being so noisy it doesn't pick up tyre sounds hugely well, but you can still hear the odd chirp or two (0:51 and 1:22 for example) - I'm sure a full on spin would be louder though haha.

Tempted to drill the housing on the GoPro and run a lead to the mic input so I don't have to sync the sound during editing, but we'll see.

Edit: Forgot I used it in this video too, albeit with the auto sound level on - which was rubbish. If you ran a kerb, it chopped the level right down for a few seconds...

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

Like it.

Forget bothering drilling the shell though, I have, use one of the little AT Lavalier mic's, it's OK, but the Go Pro was intended for recording the odd shout and scream as some extreme sport enthusiast there's them self off something high, not "Motorsport" type audio. It just doesn't have high enough bandwidth for the recording, plus the auto gain circuit compromises it too.

Very impressed with the external recorders though!

Thanks

[Dodgey]

Very nice result - as Gadgetman says, forget trying to use your GoPro sound - once you use your own sound recorder you really won't be happy with the results of using the camera or an aux mic for it. You will miss the stereo for starters! - It is no mystery why so many track day vids on youtube have music instead of the car noise.

Your setup works perfectly. I was worried it might be a bit "boomy" down in the dash but clearly not.

As for syncing the sound - well, I have to edit my videos anyhow (to remove queuing etc - keeps the size down a bit) so adding the audio is a 10 second deal.

Regarding the audio levels - I use a mode called "auto peak" on the Tascam - you set it as max level, then start recording, blip the throttle and the level will automatically drop to below clipping - and stay there - unless you do something louder, in which case it drops more, but never climbs again. So in practice - you so this once on your 1st session and that's it - the level is set for the day, but it will lower itself if you make even more noise somehow.

p.s. can't wait to try Anglesea!