A Versatile Recordist

Goa, India (December 20, 2024)—Rico Casazza has been creating electronic music for more than 15 years, recording sound—mainly dialogue—on film sets and capturing ambient sound for various projects, all using Tascam’s Portacapture X8 portable audio field recorder.

“For songwriting, I use the Portacapture X8 to record percussion sounds to build my drums in electronic music projects,” says Casazza, who has released music under his own name and other aliases in both vinyl and digital formats. “Sometimes, I also capture sounds with interesting textures, which I then load into Ableton Live, my preferred DAW for music composition. In Ableton, I can transform and modify these sounds to create something entirely new, similar to musique concrète.”

Casazza, who teaches sound design at the Czech Republic’s Prague Film School and has worked on numerous independent films, also uses his Portacapture X8 for various types of sound design work. “As a location sound mixer, recording sound is an important part of my daily routine. I capture dialogue, foleys, and ambiances for film sound design. I also have a page on freesound.org where I upload various sounds that I’ve collected worldwide for free download, as I believe in giving back to the community I’m part of.”

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As for the device’s features, he says, “The Portacapture’s 32-bit float recording mode is a game-changer, especially for recording loud percussive sounds. Sometimes, striking an object hard risks distortion, but with the recorder’s 32-bit float capability, I don’t have to worry about that. I can lower the gain in post-production and retrieve the sound quality, ensuring clean recordings even in intense sessions.”

He continues, “The ability to switch between the Portacapture’s specific field recording presets, like nature, birds, vehicles, and city, has been incredibly useful. Each preset tailors settings like mic sensitivity, EQ, and dynamic range, which optimizes the recorder’s audio for different environments. This feature is especially helpful when I need to capture the unique characteristics of each soundscape accurately. The Portacapture’s field recording mode is fantastic.