Zoom H2/H4 recorders

[mishima]

Greetings:

I am interested in feedback/advice/experience with handheld field recorders specifically but not limited to the Zoom H2/H4.

Thanks

Mike

[Douglas McMullin]

I tried a bunch out last winter (borrowed from friends), did some reading, and looked at every user and professional review that I could find, and from that I ended up with a Edirol R-09HR. I think I would have been happy with either of the Zooms or the Tascam units I tried, but the Edirol had a few more features that I liked and the pro reviews gave it the best marks for recording quality.

[MadisonBRG]

I've had am H2 for two years and love it. I've plunked it down in so many environements (live shows, jams, band practice, bars, living rooms, etc) and the "Auto" settings pull in a very good capture of the music.

fits in a mandolin case too...

[Douglas McMullin]

After writing my comment above I took a look at the Edrirol (Roland) site looking for a software update for my recorder. I was very happy to find that the new 2.0 update includes are surprisingly good tuner, a basic metronome, and some other features. Nice to have all of that built into one unit.

[Richard Moore]

I have a Zoom H2 and have found it ideal for recording at home and capturing sessions and jams. The sound quality is good and the unit is versatile and small making it handy to keep with you.

[jim_n_virginia]

After writing my comment above I took a look at the Edrirol (Roland) site looking for a software update for my recorder. I was very happy to find that the new 2.0 update includes are surprisingly good tuner, a basic metronome, and some other features. Nice to have all of that built into one unit.

The Zoom H2 has the tuner and Metronome and while I used them a few times mostly I just record with it.

What I like about the H2 is you can focus the area you want to record and block out what is behind you or most of it anyways. Like if you are at a concert you want to record what is in front of you and not the couple behind you talking.

And when you are in like a jam you set it to record on all four mics you can record the room around you evenly and not just what is in front or closest to the mic like many other recorders.

The last recorder I had (small digital voice recorder) and I wanted to record a jam I would turn it on and set it somewhere within arm's reach and and when I listened to it later all I could here was my chopping because I was closest. What I found myself doing was playing a lot softer to get a better recording but then I was contributing to the jam.

I am pretty satisfied with the H2 but if I could make one suggestion to Zoom to make it better it would be to make a small remote control that with start/stop/record so you don't have to manually touch the device if you want to start and stop it.

[f#54]

Hey Jim, It has a "clap on" feature. Page 39 in the manual

The auto record function makes it possible to have the H2 start and stop recording automatically, according to the input signal level.
When the level exceeds a certain threshold,recording starts, and when it remains below the threshold for a given length of time, recording
stops.

[Rob Gerety]

If you have an iPod you can get an inexpensive aftermarket attachment from Belkin I believe that converts your iPod into a very nice recorder. I have an 80 gig iPod (older Classic model) and I really like the fact that I can go to a lesson or a jam etc. and just turn the thing on and it will record seemingly forever with no battery problems or disc space problems. If you already have an iPod this solution seems like a no brainer to me.

I had a Zoom H4 once but sold it mostly because it just seemed to darn expensive and feature filled for my use. If I got another one someday (doubtful given my good luck with my iPod) I would get the H2 because it is cheaper and does everything I need.

[mishima]

Thanks for the input, which is greatly appreciated, I'll am off to purchase an
H2


Mike

[Jill McAuley]

I've had an H2 for a few years now and love it - I'm always pleased with the quality of the recordings, including when I've recorded band practices for a very loud post-punk/math rock band I play drums in - I've never had a device before that can record that noisy a situation and still be able to hear all the instruments, so the clarity of the H2 recordings has been a pleasant surprise!

Cheers,
Jill

[Farmjazz]

This may be too late, but I would highly recommend the BOSS MICRO BR over any of the ZOOM units. It has:

32 virtual tracks
Built-in mic (picks up fantastic sound), line in, and 1/4 inch inputs
Tuner (one of the best I've ever used)
Hundreds of drum patterns, including metronome
Amazing programmable multi effects
Professional mastering capability (also programmable)
Converts songs to Mp3 and/or .Wav files
mini-USB out for computer interface
AC or DC powered
Small size
Musician-friendly price
Great on-line support

I've had one for a couple of years now, and I wonder how I ever got along without this little wonder. I believe the price is comparable to the H2. A band member got an H2 after I got my MICRO BR and, as far as I can tell, the MICRO BR outclasses the H2 hands down. The only thing the H2 has over the MICRO BR is its mic stand mount thingy.

Hope that helps.

[Douglas McMullin]

The Zoom H2 has the tuner and Metronome and while I used them a few times mostly I just record with it.

Understood. Just wanted to let folks know that Edirol added those features to this unit.

[foldedpath]

My S.O. and I have shared an H2 for about a year and a half. When it first came out, it was a very popular recorder for its bang-for-buck price and features, compared to anything else available at the time. I'm sure there are competitive and probably better recorders available for the same price now, but I'm impressed with the way the H2 has held up under fairly heavy use. The case looks cheap, the switches look and feel flimsy, but the little guy keeps on ticking.

As a scratch pad recorder, we'll keep using it until it breaks. It fits that role well, and I haven't been tempted by any of the newer models. Any time I think about wanting a better recording, it means setting up separate microphones. If I'm going to do that, then I'll use the full laptop recording rig, the rack stuffed with preamps, the whole nine yards... (of cables). No matter how deep you get into recording, I think everyone should have one of these little pocket recorders; the H2 or whatever else you like. They're super-useful.

[Coffeecup]

More positive feedback for H2 here. I use it mainly for recording tune learning sessions and community choir.
If you plan to record something important I would suggest giving it some trial runs first. The results can vary greatly depending upon the settings. The inbuilt AGC usually produces good levels but using manual settings I've ended up with very low levels. That would be my fault, not the unit's. I've been able to amplify the low level ones with Audacity and the quality has still been surprisingly good.

[jfbrown42]

I've had an H2 for several years now and am quite happy with it. It's small enough to keep with you; inexpensive, easy to use and most importantly, makes great recordings.

I like the fact that it has several auto-gain control setting and limiters built in; takes SD cards (I can get several hours out of an 8Gb micro-SD) and most importantly it has great sound.

I like the different polar patterns of the four built-in mics. You can also turn them all on at once at a jam or something and with the right software can then turn it into a 5.1 surround-sound mix.

From what I've heard, the H4 piles on a lot more features, but I like the H2. It's perfect for what I use it for: recording jams, classes, acoustic music, etc.

[James P]

As a field recorder the H2 is fine, but I wouldn't want one as my only audio interface. In fact, I'd be happier with it it had about half the features it does have.

[acruzn]

i got the Roland Edirol R-09HR and i am very pleased w/ its useability and sound quality. very easy to use.

[Tracy Fleck]

I've been using the Olympus LS-10 and really love the sound quality. I mostly just record live gigs, and open stages, plus musical ideas at home.

I also use a Sunpak VersiPod as a tripod. It's really unobtrusive, lightweight and has a magnetic mount that sets up really quick. Its my walking stick/monopod when I'm out taking pictures.

[steve V. johnson]

I have an H2 and an Edirol R-09 (the original one) and I use them both quite a bit.

I prefer the R-09 for two reasons: 1) My main reason, I like the omni mics better than the cardioid mics in the H2. I record Irish sessions, performances, some rehearsals, and other ad hoc gatherings mainly, and the omni mics don't have any off-axis mic coloration. The H2's cardioids do have some effect at the edges or off the axes of the cardioid patterns. If you point the thing carefully, this is minimized or goes away, but for just putting the recorder in a room full of music, I feel that the R-09 sounds better. 2) The controls of the H2 are less fun to use. Sometimes the menus reset to defaults without telling me, so every time I use it I have to check the menus and make sure it's where I want. It's a good deal more complex in it's control menus than the Edirol, even the new HR version of the Edirol.

Points for the H2... the 'handle' for mic stands is great, the little three-footed stand is great.

Most of these recorders have a lot of what I call 'songwriter' features that I don't need. I understand that they're there, but I like devices w/o 'em, and that attracted me first to the Edirol.

This is just the dawn of these things, they'll get smarter, cheaper, better and smaller. Great devices.

stv

[thesubliminalman]

I am very happy with my H2. Cheap and easy to use. I use it almost every day. It should come with a copy of Audacity. And a few batteries. On another note, my fancy guitar effects pedal has a bunch of hum from the ac adapter that came with it (wall wart) or to make it quiet I use a $400 dc converter but on batteries it uses 6 AA batteries every 2 hours, but the cheapy ac adapter supplied with this H2 thingie is silent. I still use batteries and it uses 2 AA every 4 hours. That matches the record time on my 2G card. Best practice tool ever! For what it's worth.

[Mark Normand]

Does anyone use the 4track multitrack features of the H4 much?

I'm about to embark on some long distance colaboration with a friend over email. I'm on the fence to trade out for a Tascan DP-02CF for simple visual sliders/knobs/ease of use, and get away from those tiny nested menus, jogdial, etc. But I hate to give up the nice convenient onboard mics of the H4.

[GRW3]

Not to hijack but to take advantage the general area...

Anybody have experience with the Zoom Q3 video/audio recorder?

[mandohack]

I have had my H4n for a few months now and use the four track mode exclusively so far. It works good for multitracking and the onboard mics sound good to my ears. One drawback I found is that you can't use the combo of onboard mics and external mic simultaneously in 4 track mode. The nested menus are kind of a pain but I have gotten used to speeding thru them and just accept it as part of the design for such a small unit. Nested menus vs. mics, mic stands, cords, USB interface, etc. To each their own. I am looking forward to using it in field recording situations in the future, so for me it is a nice all purpose little gadget.

[RobBob]

I have an H4 for years (since they came out) and it has been great for recording jams and we did a Christmas CD for friends with it. The buttons on that old one are small. The H2 and new H4 are much nicer and easier to use. They are reasonably priced as well.

[Perry]

Nothing against the Zoom; used to have one but for multi-tracking purposes
I much prefer the Tascam DP-004. Some of the Tascam's controls are analog...yippee...it's much easier to "arm" a track with the Tascam as well.

DP-004 has two internal mics which are at least as good as the Zoom's......also has 2 1/4
inputs.

I agree the "nested" Zoom menus are (were) a bit of a pain

[Jim Hilburn]

I just bought an Olympus LS-10. Everyone I know who has an H2 have been very pleased with them, but I just decided for the extra $70 it might be worth it. But I'm sure I would have been happy with the Zoom.
I got it for rehearsal recordings and used it for the first time earlier this week. Sounds great, but may need to play around with placement in the circle of players to get an even balance.
But I basically started one track and paused between songs leaving me with one long rehearsal track. Does anyone know if there's a good program to edit this with track marks? I'm pretty inept with manuals and menus.
The recorder came with Cubase LE4 which looks pretty daunting to me.

[jim_n_virginia]

Does anyone know if there's a good program to edit this with track marks?

Everybody I know (including me) uses Audacity. Pretty straight forward and fairly easy to use and more importantly ... it's FREE! LOL! :grin:

[Jim Hilburn]

Thanks, Jim.
I've heard about Audacity a million times but never had a need for it till now.
I had it downloaded and the recording loaded into it in about 2 minutes, but I need to get back to work. I'll explore editing with it tonight.

[foldedpath]

Jim, I recommend Audacity too as a good (and free) entry-level audio editor, but it does lack some features that make it easier to deal with editing long recordings.

One feature it doesn't have (at least, last time I checked) is "markers"... the ability to insert multiple timestamp markers with a key press or mouse click, as you're listening to a long recording. Then you can go back and use those markers to identify the transitions between tunes, cut segments at the transition points, and then break them out into individual sound clips. It's a great time saver when dealing with long single recordings, compared to the "one edit at a time" design of Audacity. I do like Audacity as a quick-'n-dirty editor for basic operations, but it's editing features like this that make the more advaned programs worth the learning curve, if you do a lot of this sort of thing.

I'm not sure if Cubase LE4 includes some type of on-the-fly markers and segments feature, but since you already have the program, you might want to see if it does. I know the full version of the program can do this.

[Coffeecup]

Audacity can create a label track which looks as if it might serve that purpose.

[MandoNorth]

I'm considering buying a ZOOM H2. Does anyone know if it is compatible with Vista 64 bit OS?

[foldedpath]

I'm considering buying a ZOOM H2. Does anyone know if it is compatible with Vista 64 bit OS?

I'm not running that OS, but keep in mind that there are two aspects of compatibility, when connecting the H2 to a computer with a USB cable:

1) You can mount the the H2 as a simple external drive to transfer files for later editing with something like Audacity, basically just treating it like a USB memory stick.

2) You can enable the H2 as a direct digital interface for recording to the computer, using the built-in mics or external mics via the line input. The A/D conversion quality is okay for the price but you can get much better. It doesn't support more advanced modes like ASIO for low latency recording. Also, it locks in this mode to 16 bits/44.1 kHz, instead of the higher 24 bit resolution available for standalone recording. Direct recording as a computer interface is more of a marketing bullet than a useful feature (IMO). It's really just a neat little standalone pocket recorder, not a full-featured recording interface.

When you connect a USB cable, the H2 will ask you which of those two modes you want. I hope a Vista 64 user chimes in here with a definitive answer, but I'd be very surprised if it couldn't mount as an external USB drive for the basic file transfer function.

[Spruce]

I have had my H4n for a few months now and use the four track mode exclusively so far. It works good for multitracking and the onboard mics sound good to my ears. One drawback I found is that you can't use the combo of onboard mics and external mic simultaneously in 4 track mode.

So, is it possible to use the stereo onboard mics and a single (or stereo) line-in at the same time when recording with the H4??

In other words, are you limited to two-track recording initially, or will it record 3-4 tracks at the same time??

An ideal simple live-recording setup would be the stereo air mics, combined with a stereo or mono board feed for definition...
Mix to taste....

I do this all the time with my Tascam DA38, but thought that an H4 (or something similar) might be a little handier to carry around, upload to computer, etc...

Thoughts?

[foldedpath]

An ideal simple live-recording setup would be the stereo air mics, combined with a stereo or mono board feed for definition...
Mix to taste....

I do this all the time with my Tascam DA38, but thought that an H4 (or something similar) might be a little handier to carry around, upload to computer, etc...
Thoughts?

Dunno about simultaneous 4-track with the H4, but here's a wild and crazy idea: Why not try hooking up a Zoom H2 to the output of the board for the board mix, and stick another H2 up on a mic stand for ambient stereo? It would be a much simpler setup (no cables between mixer and ambient mic), and then you could sync up the tracks later in your DAW. I don't know if the clocks are accurate enough for that, but it's basically like the techniques used in film/video with flying in audio from separate sources.

That would be a super-compact rig, and you could save the DA38 for times when you want to record separate tracks from insert patching (pre-fader, pre-EQ) on the board, for later mixdown.

[steve V. johnson]

I haven't explored this but the H2 -will- record to four tracks using all of it's 'fore-and-aft' capsules.

This sort of suggests that as an interface it may be able or willing to spew four down to a computer/hard drive... Likewise, it might be able to use two of its mics and another two channels from a line input to print to its own internal storage chip. I don't know how far
the operating systems have come in the Zooms, if it will do that.

It would bear some experimentation. I hope some of you try it! Let us know if it works, too.

I've used an H2 to record a line input from a FOH mixer and put my Edirol on a mic stand above the FOH position (and vice versa, the R-09 getting the board feed and the H2 recording the room) and put both stereo files into ProTools for combination. Because of the time and phase differences a bit of surgery is needed to get 'em to all work together, but when I did it song by song it worked out pretty well, with some time adjustments. The whole files would not match up, tho.

If there are ugly bits to be taken out of one or the other and not -both- the editing can get a bit
intense, but just combining the two was fine, given some time corrections.

I didn't think it's the clocks so much as the ambient differences. Maybe the really nice Sony handheld recorder that costs over a grand can accept a sync signal (SMPTE/blackburst), so the two could be sync'd during recording, but I don't know that it's really necessary... There are simpler ways to get the ambient signal combined with the FOH mixer direct out, like in DAW post production, for most uses.

stv

[mando.player]

The h4 only does 2 tracks at a time. The h4n will do 4 at a time.

[JeffD]

I have the Tascam DR-1, and it does everything I want, and a bunch of stuff I never knew I wanted.

[Spruce]

The h4 only does 2 tracks at a time. The h4n will do 4 at a time.

Thanks for that....

So where does the final mixing take place...?

Onboard the H4n, or later on the computer?

Sorry for all the lame questions. I'm not really a computer-recording kind of guy... ;)

[steve V. johnson]

Here's the Zoom H2 product page:

http://www.samsontech.com/products/productpage.cfm?prodid=1916

I was wrong about the "four track" recording, it's "four channel" recording. Very different.
Sorry, it's not something I use. Maybe one could combine the two sources (line inputs and open mic inputs) in the H4...

Sorry for the misstatement.

stv

[belerecords]

I have, and use regularly, an H4. It is really good both using the built in mics or from the stereo out on a big live mix. If you're at the stage of needing reading glasses the display is too small to read without glasses and slows down that instant recording if you haven't set it up beforehand. In terms of quality its great!

[mando.player]

There are provisions on the H4 to do a simple mix down (levels and pan). You're looking for something more, you can open up those tracks on your computer and go from there. So the answer is both :)

[Glennly]

I'm interested in a recorder that I can just record backup and loop it to practice impovisation over. Can the H2 do that? Is it a question of software?

Thanks, all.

[BPV]

Glennly, The H4n will play back repeats(you can specify A &B parts too) and slow or speed up the track....It has trainer capabilities, tuner, metronome, tons of stuff.....not sure about the h2 or h4, but the h4n will.

[Coffeecup]

Glennly, the H2 can play repeats between user-specified A-B markers. Keep in mind that it doesn't have inbuilt speakers so will require phones (bud type included) or external speakers, for example iPod type, if you want to playback while portable. Personally I prefer to download the file and play back on the laptop.