Sony PCM - A10 VS Olympus LS - P4 by Douglas Langley published on 2020-06-13T09:08:14Z This test is comparing the self-noise of the Sony PCM-A10 and the Olympus LS-P4 at various gain settings using external microphones (Clippy EM172). Both recorders allow gain settings from 1-30. I recorded the same sound source (quiet ticking clock) at levels 1, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 and then 30 simultaneously on both recorders and then normalised the levels in Reaper. I then had to do quite a bit of manual correction of the levels because there were some low frequency sounds that were louder than the ticking clock and which were messing with the normalisation process. Recordings were made at 24/48 WAV. In this recording you first hear the Sony at gain level 1, followed by the Olympus at gain level 1 and so on up to level 30. As shown in an earlier test the Olympus exhibits much higher levels of self noise at lower gain settings, with a noticeable improvement coming at level 20. This means that when recording quiet scenes, it is worth taking the risk of setting the gain high to minimise the recorder self noise. The Sony behaves quite differently. At gain level 1 the noise is quite terrible but at level 5 there is a sudden improvement and in fact there is almost no difference between the noise at level 5 and level 30. This seems to suggest that you can be much more conservative with setting the gain on the Sony to avoid clipping, and increase the levels later in post with no apparent self-noise penalty.