hand-held recorders

Kalimba · Post by **Kalimba** » Fri Apr 20, 2007 7:21 pm

Zoom, Edirol and Sony are all making hand-held digital recorders now, with built-in stereo condensor mics, I believe. Has anyone had enough experience with these three units to have an opinion on which is "best"? I'd imagine they all have their unique features and respective applications...

lyle76 · Post by **lyle76** » Tue Apr 24, 2007 10:44 am

i just bought the Zoom H4 for the radio station i work for... now I'm returning it. The H4 is super easy to use, has great features but it forces you to use the Cubase LE software to interface. Brutal... gonna try the Edirol and M-Audio Microtrack.

bed eternity · Post by **bed eternity** » Tue Apr 24, 2007 11:12 am

i have a zoom h4 too. i love being able to just carry it anywhere, fire it up and get a pretty good recording. i hadnt tried using it as an interface yet and wasnt aware that it forced you to use the cubase le software. thats a bummer. however, i dont really need to use it as an interface so im keeping it.

madtho · Post by **madtho** » Tue Apr 24, 2007 11:21 am

This doesn't speak directly to your question, but that title looks like it will become an information clearinghouse, so...

I've got a Griffin iTalk pro hooked up to my iPod nano. It has an 1/8" jack for an external mic, I'm using a nice Sony stereo Lavelier. I still haven't done a lot of critical listening, but it sounds better than the Sony Pro cassette field recorder I used to have, and it's tiny.

Cons: you can't set levels, and you can't name tracks until you dump it into iTunes.
16 bit, 44.1 kHz

-mad

wardshorsehead · Post by **wardshorsehead** » Tue Apr 24, 2007 1:16 pm

lyle76 wrote:i just bought the Zoom H4 for the radio station i work for... now I'm returning it. The H4 is super easy to use, has great features but it forces you to use the Cubase LE software to interface. Brutal... gonna try the Edirol and M-Audio Microtrack.

nope. you can use any software that doesn't require its own hardware (i.e protools).

lyle76 · Post by **lyle76** » Tue Apr 24, 2007 1:42 pm

hm. well, i tried it on multiple computers today and none of them would even recognize the usb. maybe it was me - but the interface has to be intuitive.

RefD · Post by **RefD** » Tue Apr 24, 2007 3:18 pm

with PCs, the H4 only works on XP.

bickle · Post by **bickle** » Thu Apr 26, 2007 11:59 am

So you guys seem to have experience using these as interfaces...how is it? Latency ok? Can you monitor through them while recording? I feel like I read somewhere that you can't...

dsw · Post by **dsw** » Thu Apr 26, 2007 4:22 pm

Here's a comparison of the models for you.
Edirol= very easy to use. No XLR input, but for most people that buy it, it's point and shoot style and they don't need a fancy mic. Very reliable. Great sound for what its intended for and way better than the noisy bulky and hard to run Marantz PMD 660.
Sony= very well built great interface but for $2k where's the XLR's? Too much money for what you get.
Zoom = Good sound, hard to run. Yes to XLR, yay. Cheap. $300. The menu's are confusing and there's a lot of button pushing.

As far as being forced to use Cubase, that's simply not true. When you hook it up to a computer the computer should see it just like when you hook up a hard drive or a camera and allow you to simply grab the files and drag them to whatever file you want to keep them in. I've sold at least a dozen of these and none of my customers has had any trouble.

I think the Zoom was intended to be used primarily as a portlable recorder and the interface feature is sort of a "freebie" that is not the main strength of the unit. Kind of cool, but there's lots better interfaces out there.

I'm anxoius to get my hands on the Fostex FR2 LE. $600 with XLR ins and a very professional looking set of features and user interface. Ease of use? Unkown, sound quality unkown, but if its as good as i'm hoping, I think they will be a great middle ground between the big $1000 machines and the little $300-$400 machines.

Oh yeah, and there's the M Audio Microtracker. Squirell-y little bugger doesn't use AA batteries so if it goes dead you have to either plug it in to the wall, or wait for it to charge back up. But it does have a digital IN, which is cool. I quit carrying it, because so many of them were bad out of the box and it had operating system issues.

Hope this helps.

dw

beadgc23 · Post by **beadgc23** » Thu Apr 26, 2007 5:12 pm

I have a Zoom H4. Thumbnail review....

Good Things:

Sound quality surprisingly good with built-in mics
Does 24 bit 96kHz recording, as well as 16 bit 44.1/48 kHz and mp3 at various rates
XLR/TS inputs, 48V, monitoring during record.
Super light and drop resistant

Runs on 2 AA batteries
Acts as a card reader and audio interface with Win & Mac computers (USB 1.1)
Built in compressor/limiter, auto gain and even mic modelling don't suck as much as you'd think. Even has a tuner and various Zoomy FX.
Does 4 track recording, apparently. Never bothered.
No drivers required for OSX

Bad Things:

Noisier on batteries than power adapter
Strangely noisy when used as an audio interface
Needs pokey external mics, limited gain range & noisy preamps.
Menus take a little getting used to, but can get into record quickly once set up.
USB 1.1!!! Good Grief. External card reader essential.
Max 2GB card storage
Phantom power KILLS batteries - no surprise there.

So as a handy portable recorder it's a steal, as an audio interface its a flop. I've done DVD commentary voice recordings with it and they're more than useable, not that the standard is very high in this area.

But it DOES work with Mac & PC, though no substitute for a comparable M-Audio interface, at the same price.

bickle · Post by **bickle** » Thu Apr 26, 2007 9:06 pm

Thanks for that, bead. I'm interested in getting a portable recorder and a setup for my laptop, so the H4 looks good - just wondering if I should try maybe the H2 when it comes out, and hold off on a laptop interface (which I don't need, really, but would like to get set up with). I want something easier to carry around than an interface, mics, etc (see my recent lo-fi laptop thread), but also want the versatility of an interface. I want it all!
Would love to hear more from people on the H4 interface deal...

zoetrope · Post by **zoetrope** » Sun Jun 03, 2007 7:29 am

Just writing to confirm that you can use the H4 with pretty much any multi-track software. I've used it with Sony Acid. I had some initial problems due to a USB conflict, called Samsontech support, and they helped me figure out the problem and fix it.

Also, feel free to post any Zoom H4 questions at the Zoom H4 & H2 forum, part of the Zoom Gear Forum. Lot's of helpful Zoom users there, and lots of Tape Op readers too.

Finally, if you're thinking of getting the H4, it's really good for the price. (How's that for a short review. My longer review can be found in Tape Op).

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