Today I’m reviewing the Samson C03U Recording Pak. This almost-all-in-one (more on that in a bit) solution looks well-suited for eLearning narrators who want high-quality recording on a modest budget.

The C03U is a USB microphone that gives you excellent recording quality while offering the convenience of a plug-and-play USB connection. The Recording Pak is a Samson bundle that includes the microphone, desktop stand, shock mount and USB cable, neatly packed into a nice molded-foam-lined aluminum case for easy storage or transport.

The microphone itself has a solid heft, and its excellent build quality is evident. Unlike my Blue Snowball mic, there’s no plastic to be seen on this baby. A 3-way pattern switch lets you select between omni, supercardioid, and figure-8 pickup patterns, which give you some flexibility in sound control based on your recording environment and situation. The figure-8 pattern, for example, is designed for recording, say, a group of people sitting around a table (if you ever run into such a need in your eLearning audio work).

The stand is short, heavy, and padded with foam underneath. There will be no inadvertent toppling of the microphone with this setup!

Being the type who jumps into a new product without first reading the instructions, I was befuddled by the microphone mount for a minute before I realized you have to remove the Euro adapter before mounting the mic (or the shockmount) to the stand.

This fact is mentioned in the owner’s manual, to my chagrin. A few quick turns with a nickel and the adapter came free, allowing me to mount the shockmount to the stand (and the mic to the shockmount). I did find it odd for Samson to ship the kit with the Euro adapter installed when the Euro adapter does not fit the stand provided in the kit.

Samson missed a golden opportunity by not including some type of pop filter with this kit. Those of us who are amateurs at voice recording have not mastered the art of plosive control, and a pop filter is absolutely essential. Samson could easily have crafted a custom-fitted pop filter for this kit for very little cost. Instead, one must rely on a third-party pop filter, which, as you can see in this photo, may not be (and likely won’t be) an ideal fit. I’m using an MXL metal pop filter, which comes affixed to a fairly large arm mount and a long flexible gooseneck. Too long to be easily maneuvered into the ideal location on the stubby Samson stand. The pop filter tries mightily to rise up and away from the microphone, as the gooseneck is not entirely pliant while it struggles for space to accommodate its excessive length. Fighting with the thing alternates between comical and frustrating, but ultimately ends up just being frustrating.

Not only is the pop filter difficult to situate, but it also poses the issue of where to store it, as there is no place to put it in the molded case. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a pop filter designed for this very kit, with its own storage slot in the case? Why, yes it would! Alas, this is one those head-smacking moments where a manufacturer stopped just short of providing the ideal solution. Samson, please consider designing a custom clip-on pop filter for future kits like this. You are so close to greatness…

The kit also comes with Cakewalk Sonar LE recording software for Windows, which I will ignore for this review as I use GarageBand on my Mac for my narration recording.

Sound quality is very good – close to my current mic of choice, the MXL USB.009, which I reviewed a few months ago. Perhaps a bit less full and a bit more harsh to my admittedly non-expert ears. I’ll let you decide for yourself, via my admittedly non-expert sample recordings below.

Samson C03U

MXL USB.009

In addition to the difficulty of attaching a pop filter, my other niggle with the Samson kit is the height of the mic stand – or perhaps better stated the height of the mic when mounted to the stand. Even with my chair adjusted to its lowest point, I had to hunch over slightly to get good mouth-to-mic placement. The much taller MXL USB.009 mic poses no such problem for me.

Overall, the Samson C03U Recording Pak is an excellent, high quality package for eLearning developers who need a good recording solution without breaking the bank. Had Samson only included a pop filter in the kit, I would have deemed this mic a home run for budget narration recording. Without it, I’ll call it a solid triple. You can pick up the kit for just under the $200 mark from various online retailers.

Might I suggest Amazon?

You don’t plan to keep recording your eLearning narration with that cheap-o headset mic, right? Right???

To start, let me say that eQuixotic is not a hardware/gadget review blog. That said, hardware is used in the creation of eLearning and presentations. Thus, people creating eLearning and presentations purchase hardware, and are often faced with hardware buying decisions. Me, I love to research every product I purchase. Unfortunately, most online reviews are found on retailer sites and consist of precious little substance, ranging from (5 stars) “I LOVE THIS, IT’S THE BEST EVAH!!!” to (1 star) “THIS IS JUNK AND IT SUCKS AND I HATE IT!!!” Sadly, reviews cannot be sorted or filtered by reviewer intelligence (or lack thereof). Thus I often rely on blogger reviews to help guide my purchasing decisions, as bloggers tend to throw some real meat into their reviews.

Unfortunately, I could not find any detailed reviews for the LaCie 2big Quadra external RAID hard drive, so I was forced to purchase on blind faith. To my peril. To spare others my fate, I thought I’d post my assessment.

Now having essentially given away the “ending” of my story, let’s back up and fill in the details, shall we?

The LaCie 2big Quadra is a two-disk external RAID hard drive enclosure. For those of you unfamiliar with RAID, it essentially gives you the option of mirroring your data on two (or more) drives, protecting you from data loss if one of those drives should fail. I like this idea, as I don’t have to rely on two separate external hard drive enclosures (and two FireWire cables, and two power cords) to accomplish the same task. I purchased this drive in the 2 TB configuration (two hard drives, each 1 TB in size) from Dell’s website.

The “Quadra” designation refers to the connectivity options, offering all four standard connections in a single box: eSATA, USB 2.0, FireWire 400 and FireWire 800. Choice is good, particularly when choice includes the fastest options available (eSATA and FireWire 800) as well as the reassurance of universality (USB 2.0 and FireWire 400). When I received the drive and began to unbox it, I realized, to my dismay, that I didn’t own a FireWire 800 cable and would have to rely on FireWire 400. But to my delight, LaCie included all four cable types in the box (USB, FireWire 400 and 800, and eSATA). Bravo, LaCie, Bravo! I was soon in business. Which is when the trouble began. But before I get to that, let’s lay this review out all official like.

When evaluating an item like this, I have three criteria to judge (aside from price, of course):

1. Functionality / Usability

3. Design

I’ll assess the 2big Quadra based on these three criteria. Ready? Let’s go!

1. Functionality / Usability

Um…err….let’s come back to this one.

2. Quality

To say this thing is built like a tank would be an understatement. It is substantially larger than most external hard drives, obviously, as it houses two drives. The body is solid aluminum and heavy. Not only would this thing likely survive a fall from the desk to the floor without a scratch, but it would probably do some serious damage to your floor in the process. I love stuff that feels indestructible, and the 2big Quadra delivers. My old external hard drives look (and feel) like cheap toys next to this thing.

5 stars for build quality. No question.

3. Design

In our modern world of space-sucking digital media, where many gigabytes of audio and video quickly fill our hard drives to capacity, external storage is no longer a luxury, but a necessity. So why is so little attention paid to the design of these devices that clutter our desks? I had four external hard drives on my desk, of varying sizes and design – and they all looked like cheesy afterthoughts. It was a silly looking mess. I spent extra money for a beautiful computer – I really wanted a beautiful external hard drive to compliment it. The 2big Quadra was the only drive I found that fit that criteria. Designed by Neil Poulton, the 2big has an industrial elegance and simplicity that compliments my aluminum iMac. If Apple were to design and build an external hard drive, it would probably look and feel a lot like this one. And that’s high praise indeed. This is a peripheral I am not ashamed to have on my desk. The ribbed aluminum not only looks great, but provides more surface area for heat dissipation, which should reduce the frequency of fan noise. Unfortunately, this is not the case with the 2big Quadra. More on that in a minute.

As beautiful as this drive is, I’m disappointed by Mr. Poulton’s decision to include the Great Blue Glowing Orb (see photo of drive at the top of this review). Sure, it looks cool. Until you turn it on. What is it about electronics designers/manufacturers that makes them think that we consumers like to be bathed in the cold blue light of our gadgets? The light on this thing, which glows whenever the drive is active, illuminates nearly my entire home office at night. Between my microphone, my printer’s illuminated control buttons, and my external hard drive, I don’t need any other office lighting. And that’s not good – particularly when you’re trying to scare yourself silly with a little late night gaming in Left 4 Dead. After awhile, I wanted to take a hammer and smash this cycloptic eye to smithereens. When it comes to superfluous lighting, Mr. Poulton, less is more. In the case of the 2big Quadra, much less. Please. At least give me an off switch for the light (or a convenient cable to cut).

4 stars for the beautiful design, knocked down from 5 stars only for the huge glowing orb.

Now for the really bad news.

1. Functionality / Usability

One would think an external hard drive’s functionality and usability would be a no-brainer. Plug it in, turn it on, and let Time Machine (on a Mac) or the bundled software that comes with the drive (on a Windows machine) do all your backup work for you automatically. Cake, right? Unfortunately, LaCie has seen fit to make this simple task as infuriatingly annoying to the user as possible with a power management and cooling system that seems designed by Satan himself. For an enclosure that is essentially one gigantic aluminum heat sink, you’d think cooling fans would be rarely needed. And you would be wrong. LaCie’s claim on its product page:

The sturdy, aluminum heat sink design—with 60% more surface area for heat dissipation—keeps it quiet and safe.

sounds scientifically rational, but LaCie and I clearly have differing opinions on the definition of the word quiet. The fans on this drive fire up the moment you flip the power switch and continue, vacillating in volume level, almost indefinitely. The power switch is a three-way affair: Off, On, and Auto. The implication of Auto is that the drive sleeps when you don’t need it and spools itself up automatically when you do. Which is how my other external hard drives have always worked. Unfortunately, the 2big Quadra assumes you need it about every, oh, two minutes or so. I have my Time Machine settings configured to back up my data every hour. So I should only be hearing this beast huff and puff every 60 minutes, giving me 59 minutes of peaceful tranquility. Not so. The drive “goes to sleep” (I use the phrase loosely) with a couple of loud clicks, and you think all is well. Two minutes later (not an exaggeration), the drive spools up again and the fans kick into action. Why? I don’t know. The computer isn’t feeding it any data – it has no reason to awake. Sometimes the drive (with noisy fans) spools itself up even if the computer is asleep. Since my office is next to the master bedroom, I have to turn this drive off before I go to bed. I’ve never had to do that with any external hard drive I’ve owned. So why is cooling fan action needed when 1) the surrounding air is a cool 70 degrees, and 2) the drives aren’t actively reading and writing data? I have no idea. They certainly aren’t heat activated, as the air that blows out of the unit is not noticeably warm. If only I were able to change the settings for the fan activation.

How loud is it? If you’ve heard an iMac under full load (say, in the aforementioned Left 4 Dead gaming event), it sounds a lot like that. Why should an inactive hard drive enclosure make as much noise as a 24″ all-in-one computer that has to cool a dual-core processor, LCD display, video card, and hard drive, crammed into the slimmest of spaces, all being pushed to their limits in a graphically-intensive 3D shooter? An explanation escapes me. At least when I’m gaming I have the sounds of shotgun blasts and screaming zombies to drown out the fan noise. But when I’m not gaming, this external hard drive is a noisy little companion that just won’t shut up. The iMac (under normal load) is the faintest whisper – the 2big Quadra is a stiff summer wind.

My good faith assumption would be that I simply have a defective unit. But LaCie’s failure to respond to my question (submitted via their website) about the power and fan cycling, while a previous question about RAID modes was answered promptly, leads me to fear the worst: this is just a bad design. And not just bad design, but unbearably bad design. If you are, like me, someone who needs computing silence (or near-silence), this little beast will drive you quite mad.

Forget narrating an eLearning course while this thing is powered on. I never had to power down my other external hard drives while I recorded narration. They quietly minded their own business. The 2big Quadra, on the other hand, just can’t bear not being the center of my attention.

To design and build such a beautiful peripheral and then destroy it with bad internals is like spiking the ball and doing a touchdown celebration dance on the 1 yard line. You were so close to greatness, LaCie, so close indeed. But the only applause I can offer is the sound of my hand smacking my forehead in utter disbelief.

1 star for Functionality / Usability. Yes, it backs up your data, and it does so quickly. But it makes so much noise while doing so (and while not doing so) that you’ll prefer to just turn the thing off entirely. This drive is going back to Dell post haste. And if they charge me a restocking fee, I’m going to be really upset.

If you detest gratuitous noise (and light) from your computing peripherals, my suggestion is to stay far, far away from the LaCie 2big Quadra. I’m disappointed to have to add this product to my eQuixotic Hall of Shame. If anyone has any suggestions for external hard drives that may meet my criteria, please let me know in the comments section. I doubt I’ll find anything as nice looking and solid as the 2big Quadra, but I certainly hope to find something quieter (and less, um, illuminating).

If the opinions in this review seem a little, er, extreme, realize that it’s due to my absolute loathing of noisy electronics and my frustration with great design that turns out to be only skin deep. I admit, I demand a lot from my stuff. If noisy electronics (and room-illuminating blue lights) don’t bother you, than the 2big Quadra may be a perfect storage solution for you.

Personally, I cannot recommend it.

NOTE: If anyone at LaCie is reading this, thinks I may have had a defective unit, and would like to loan me a review unit for a reevaluation, I would be happy to oblige.

UPDATE 7/6/09: Still no response from LaCie regarding the behavior of the drive, nor a response from Dell regarding my return request. I am preparing for a return nonetheless by doing a 7-pass wipe (secure erase) of this drive to remove my data from it. Which Apple’s Disk Utility estimates will take…2 days 5 hours. With fans (and light) in FULL INTENSITY mode.

Two days of this and I may end up quite mad. Farewell, sanity. I hardly even knew ye.

UPDATE 7/9/09: The noisy beast has been wiped, silenced, boxed, and is on a UPS truck on its way back to Dell (who provided stellar customer service on the matter – thanks Dell!). I should have tossed a pair of earplugs into the box just for grins.

UPDATE 7/12/09: I can’t go without data backup (not even for a week), so I promptly found (and ordered) my replacement drive…the LaCie d2 Quadra. Yeah, I know, I know – once bitten, twice shy. But I loved the look and build quality of the 2big Quadra. Other drives on the market typically have cheap plastic bodies, most offer USB 2.0 but no Firewire, and some have their own special quirks (the tendency of the WD My Book models to unmount themselves spontaneously on the Mac, for example).

The LaCie d2 shares the same industrial design (also by Neil Poulton) as the 2big, but in a smaller size. I probably would not have considered this drive until I saw this word in the product description: fanless. Ode to joy! The d2 still sports the Great Blue Glowing Orb, albeit a more petite version than that of the 2big Quadra. I assume the room illumination should be reduced, and with no fan to drive me crazy, this might be the drive for me. User reviews on retailer sites praise the lack of fan noise, though some have gripes about the drive noise. We’ll see if this one will actually sleep when it should. I wish there were quality bare enclosures available on the market that would let me select my own hard drive. The Western Digital Caviar Green drives (lower power consumption, reduced noise) look intriguing. LaCie should consider selling bare enclosures for those who would like such an option – think of all the hassles they could avoid with returned units from failed hard drives!

Stay tuned for a review of the LaCie d2 Quadra…