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The Purr Sessions — Session Engineer's Field Manual

Nothing on this page (or the website) records or uploads anything — it's just the manual.

Welcome to the label. This manual covers everything needed to record Heidi on the Tascam DR-05. The recorder captures raw audio to its memory card; all cleanup, looping, and publishing happens later on a computer.

The big idea behind every rule here: a purr is a very low, very quiet sound (roughly 25–150 Hz — lower than almost any human voice), and most recording gear is designed to remove sounds like that. Our job is to stop the machine from helping.

The rig

Pre-flight check — 30 seconds, before every session

The settings should stay put between sessions, but verify. From the home screen:

  1. Press MENU → highlight REC SETTING with +/− → press ▶ to enter
  2. Find LOW CUT → press ▶ → make sure it says OFF → ▶ to confirm - Why: the low-cut filter deletes low frequencies to fight air-conditioner hum and wind. Heidi's purr lives at exactly those frequencies — with low cut on, the recorder politely filters out the entire point of the session.
  3. Glance at FORMAT while you're there — it should say WAV (16 or 24 bit, either is fine). Not MP3. - Why: WAV is the raw, uncompressed signal. The cleanup software needs everything, including parts you can't consciously hear.
  4. Press HOME/■ to back all the way out
  5. On the standby screen, confirm the remaining-time number is comfortably large

Ignore everything else in the menus — especially the AUTO REC / MODE / LEVEL section, which is a sound-activated trigger we don't use. If something looks weird, leave it and tell the label.

Set the room

Step 1 — Room tone (every session, before the cat)

  1. Press RECORD once — the light blinks: this is standby, not recording
  2. Press RECORD again — light goes solid: rolling
  3. Record 10–15 seconds of the silent room. No cat, no talking, no moving
  4. Press ■ to stop - Why: this is the reference measurement. The software compares "empty room" against "room plus Heidi" and subtracts one from the other — so the quality of the silence matters as much as the quality of the purr.

Step 2 — Levels

  1. Get Heidi settled and purring near the recorder, then press RECORD once (blinking standby — meters appear on screen)
  2. The + and − buttons now set the recording level (a number from 0–90). Watch the meter: there's a small ▶ mark at −12 — adjust until the purr makes the bars bounce around that mark
  3. Never let the bars slam to the far right / hit the red - Why: too quiet is completely fixable in software. Too loud ("clipping") permanently destroys the audio — it's the one unfixable mistake.
  4. If +/− doesn't change anything, press QUICK, set the level option to OFF (manual), and try again

Step 3 — The take

  1. Press RECORD again — solid light, rolling
  2. Let it run 5–15 minutes. Longer is better: the software hunts for the cleanest continuous stretch, and you can't know which stretch that is yet
  3. Pet her on the side away from the recorder; small rustles are fine — don't stop the recording for them
  4. Press ■ when she's done. Repeat as often as she allows — every take helps

Wrap-up

Troubleshooting