For a street value of about $AU430.00, you get HEAPS!
I’d read in a couple of places that the Zoom H4 Handy Recorder was not
so handy when it came to learning to navigate it’s menus. After spending
about an hour with the unit that I picked up this afternoon, I am wondering
how anyone could have trouble with it! The user interface is certainly
one of it’s strong points, in my opinion.
Firsts, let’s hear some examples! The below recordings were captured at
44.1KHz and 24bit mode, using the built in mics. The filenames describe
the subject matter:
http://www.guitaraustralia.com/reviews/ ... ouseItems/
http://www.guitaraustralia.com/reviews/ ... ticGuitar/
I’ll describe the process I undertook to achieve these samples latter in
the review.
It’s simple, elegant and there’s virtually no learning curve, apart from
learning the functions of two buttons…!
I thought that was an important point to make at the beginning of my short
review, because unless you agree with those who found navigation to be
a pain, or non intuitive, I reckon you’re on a winner here.
For a street value of about $AU430.00, you get HEAPS!
Now that ‘heaps’ is including some things that you may never use. For instance,
the H4 has what it calls, ‘mic modeling’, and from what I can hear, it’s
just a creative use of equalisation. You cannot expect this device to
offer the audio characteristics of an AKG C414 (a renowned and very pricey
studio mic)! But the mic modeling has a very good use. Signal processing
is not available on the unit itself, unless it’s applied as the signal
is being recorded. So if your location is not providing the stellar audio
qualities that you demand, you can try dialling in some mic modeling as
a form of onsite equalisation. Very handy. Below are some examples:
http://www.guitaraustralia.com/reviews/ ... ls/u87.mp3 35Kb
http://www.guitaraustralia.com/reviews/ ... s/sm57.mp3
31Kb
http://www.guitaraustralia.com/reviews/ ... /md421.mp3
31Kb
http://www.guitaraustralia.com/reviews/ ... s/c414.mp3
35Kb
http://www.guitaraustralia.com/reviews/ ... deling.mp3
36Kb
What do you get?
Everything you need! As you can see from in the following images, straight
out of the box, you get all the items necessary to begin recording. Well,
you don’t get batteries, but there’s a wall-wart. You get the wind-shield
(essential for outdoor work), a nice draw string bag, a USB cable, a 512Mb
SD card and a rack to strap the H4 into for mounting onto a standard camera/camcorder
stand. For a street value of about $AU430.00, you get HEAPS!
Here’s some piccies of what’s in the box:
The XY 90 Degree Pair of condenser mics atop the H4
External Inputs
Mounting Jigger
Left side, showing headphones jack, line out, USB and on/off switch
Scale shot
SD card and battery bay
SD card and battery bay
Right side, showing gain selector switches and the JOG DIAL widget
Mounted on a regular camera tripod, once in the holder
With the wind shield affixed
Paces, and getting put through them…
I lied about there being only two buttons to learn, but the other four
are so obvious and have their dual functions clearly labelled, so I can’t
see any confusion there. So let’s get down to how the unit is actually
used.
First of all, there are two main modes. Stereo and Four Track. Stereo is
for producing stereo files from either the top mounted 90 degrees opposed
condenser mics , or by plugging an external source into one or both of
the bottom mounted, dual function jacks. The jacks can accept standard
XLR mic plugs, or quarter inch phono plugs. Making your first recording
is as simple as pressing REC to arm the device and check levels, then
pressing REC once more to begin the recording. Pressing the central MENU
button on its top side (Pause/Play) or the REC button (Oops… That’s another
button!) once more will end the recording. Your file will be automatically
saved to the supplied SD card with an auto-generated name. Subsequent
recordings are named with an ascending number appended.
Recording and settings:
Looking at the front of the H4, I could clearly see that the buttons numbered
one to four could be used for quick selection of the desired recording
format. Button four is for MP3, button three selects 44.1KHz, pressing
button two will place you in 48KHz mode and button one is for the pristine
realm of 96KHz recording. Selecting the bit depth for your recording involves
some menu drilling. But not much, because as I mentioned, setting settings
is a breeze on the H4. All of the settings are controlled by the central
MENU button and the right hand side mounted JOG-DIAL. I wanted to change
the bit depth to 24 from the default 16bit. It was simply a matter of
pressing the central MENU button, then scrolling with the JOG DIAL until
I was over RECORDING FORMAT. Pressing the JOG DIAL placed me at the selection
screen for RECORDING FORMAT. All three available selections can be accessed
from this menu. I.E FORMAT, SAMPLE and BIT. As with any menu level, you
can back out by pressing the central MENU button. Having set the RECORDING
FORMAT, you may wish to delve a little deeper into the input settings.
On a side note, each available input method has three basic input gain
settings, switch-able from the right side of the H4. There is one switch
for the onboard stereo mics and one each for the external input jacks.
The settings are simply, Low/Med/High.
To get more control over the signals you are trying to capture, you can
enter the INPUT MENU by pressing the lower quadrant of the MENU button.
It’s then a matter of scrolling with the JOG DIAL to the desired setting.
Pressing the JOG DIAL control on the setting pointed to by the little
arrow, allows you to access any variables for that setting. As always,
the MENU button backs out of each menu level.
There is quite an array of input settings!
SOURCE - Selects either external input, both or the built in XY condenser
mics.
LEVEL - Gives you fine control over the input gain.
PHANTOM - Not the ghost who walks… It’s for switching the 48volt supply
on or off to the external inputs. This is a really handy feature.
MONITOR - On/off. Arming recording turns monitoring on automatically, but
setting this to ON will keep monitoring on constantly. Monitoring is done
through headphones or by running powered speakers from the LINE OUT jack.
AUTO
GAIN: With this turned on, the H4 tries to keep the gain setting at an
optimum setting during recording. Arming recording with the sound source
present gives the H4 a chance to ‘get ready’ with an appropriate initial
gain setting.
MIC MODEL: Described above. The various mic models apply equalisation to
the signal being picked up by the top mounted XY stereo pair mics.
COMP/LIMIT: Inserts a compressor or limiter into the signal chain before
it is recorded.
LO CUT: Is a high pass filter that stops any very low signals getting onto
the SD card. I haven’t used it yet.
MONO MIX: I haven’t used this mode, but I imagine it combines the stereo
signal from the XY mics into a mono signal. Here are some samples, with
explanations:
Four examples of recording an acoustic guitar in the lounge room:
http://www.guitaraustralia.com/reviews/ ... /AGEX1.mp3
79Kb
http://www.guitaraustralia.com/reviews/ ... /AGEX2.mp3
436Kb
http://www.guitaraustralia.com/reviews/ ... /AGEX3.mp3
178Kb
http://www.guitaraustralia.com/reviews/ ... /AGEX4.mp3
250Kb
Some house hold items:
http://www.guitaraustralia.com/reviews/ ... /water.mp3
107Kb
http://www.guitaraustralia.com/reviews/ ... /shake.mp3
57Kb
http://www.guitaraustralia.com/reviews/ ... perHat.mp3
115Kb
http://www.guitaraustralia.com/reviews/ ... s/foil.mp3
76Kb
http://www.guitaraustralia.com/reviews/ ... closet.mp3
85Kb
http://www.guitaraustralia.com/reviews/ ... anBags.mp3
122Kb
http://www.guitaraustralia.com/reviews/ ... throom.mp3
34Kb
Bear in mind, all of the above is for STEREO MODE. The Zoom H4 Handy Recorder
has another main mode. FOUR TRACK MODE.
Yep, that’s right. You can record, mix, pan and bounce four individual
tracks. There’s a slight catch. Recording format must be at 44.1KHz and
16bits. Not a show stopper, as nobody would want to use the H4 for a release
quality session! But let me take you through my pretend song writing session
and you’ll see what a great little device this can be when it comes to
fleshing out ideas.
First step, enter FOUR TRACK mode. This is done by pressing the MENU button,
then scrolling appropriately until you are able to click on FOUR TRACK
mode with the JOG DIAL thingy. Once in four track mode, you need to consider
what you’ll be recording, with a fair amount of care. Obviously, four
tracks is not enough!
I decided to build up my song with a basic rhythm section. But I had no
real plan, other than to have fun and learn as I went along. So, I grabbed
an electric guitar and plugged it directly into INPUT 1 on the base of
the H4. I then needed to change the INPUT SETTINGS as described above,
to allow only input one as the signal source. And the guitar sounded pretty
flat an bland, so I had a scan through the EFFECTS patches. I won’t list
the 50 built in presets, because they are all described in the online
manual at ZOOM’s website. All effects patches are editable and storable,
with ten locations for your own creations.
I settled on ‘Natural Chorus’ for the rhythm guitar part. Pressing the
MENU button took me back to the main FOUR TRACK screen where I needed
to select the track where the guitar would be recorded. I pressed button
number one a few times until it turned red. This confirmed to me that
the track was armed. Before I recorded, I set the metronome to 4/4 and
120 beats per minute with the default ‘bell’ sound to denote the passing
of each bar. I gave myself four beats (can be any number required) count
in and returned to the main screen. Here’s a snippet of my recording:
http://www.guitaraustralia.com/reviews/ ... ingEX1.mp3
149Kb
Not too bad! Next, I recorded a funky auto-wah lead part. I don’t know
why, it just seemed like it needed it. Anyway… To do prepare for recording
the next track, I pressed button one until it turned green. This meant
that it was no longer armed and would simply play back. An unlit track
light means that the track is mutated. Hang on, no.. Muted, that’s it!
I wanted the lead part to go on track number two, so I pressed button
number two until it turned red. I also went into the INPUT MENU and dialled
up the funky auto-wah effect patch. I edited the effect (turned the gain
WAY down) and saved the patch over the preset.
Here’s a portion of the lead guitar track:
http://www.guitaraustralia.com/reviews/ ... oloEX1.mp3
238Kb
This pattern was the same for the acoustic guitar part and the bass part,
except for the bass, I used one of the bass effect preset patches, SVT
(Ampeg bass amp sim!). I dialled in a little bit of drive, because how
I [darn] well like my bass!
This filled the four tracks. Oh no! Would I have to finish the song without
vocals or drums? No. I could ‘bounce’ what I had recorded to a stereo
file and keep going. From the main screen, I simply thumbed the JOG DIAL
doover until it’s little arrow cursor rested next to BOUNCE at the bottom
of the display. Pressing the JOG DIAL allowed me to name my new stereo
bounce file and execute the bounce. But not so fast! A bounce freezes
your mix! JOG DIALing over to the MIX icon and thumbing it, allows you
to set levels and panning before you make the bounce. I was clever, and
did this.
I recorded and bounced my way to a complete production, with drums and
two vocal parts. Here are some samples of the individual parts. Note the
lead vocal has one of the vocal effect preset patches applied.
http://www.guitaraustralia.com/reviews/ ... calEX1.mp3
236Kb
http://www.guitaraustralia.com/reviews/ ... assEX1.mp3 234Kb
Bouncing
is easy, but it’s not so easy to get your stereo track back onto some
tracks. Obviously, you want to replace two of the tracks that you just
bounced with the newly bounced stereo mix. In order to bring your stereo
bounce back into two of the tracks, you need to go to REC MODE SELECT
and choose ALWAYS NEW as opposed to the only other option, OVER WRITE.
Then you will need to set two tracks as LINKED TRACKS. This is another
sub menu accessed by pressing the central MENU button. Once you’ve set
either tracks one and two or three and four as a linked pair head back
to the main FOUR TRACK screen. JOG DIAL your way to the file name on the
lowest track number of your pair and you will see, by JOG DIALLING, that
your stereo bounce file appears as one of the files selectable. Awesome!
And here, for your extreme delight, is my masterpiece:
http://www.guitaraustralia.com/reviews/ ... g/Baby.mp3 1.78Mb
That
song was completely made using nothing but the Zoom H4 Handy Recorder,
with a guitar lead, a bass and a guitar. I made the fade out in Audacity.
But is it all wine and roses? No. There are some things that I and probably
others will not like about the H4.
The overall build quality is very good, but the main MENU button is quite
loose. As long as it keeps working, it will not bother me, but a firmer
feel would be nice. And those things are all I could fault the unit on.
Really. For the price… You know the rest…
If you want an affordable, rapid fire field recorder with great versatility
and the added bonus of multi tracking capabilities, you need look no further
than the Zoom H4 Handy Recorder. I found it very easy to use and after
ten minutes and a few peeks in the manual, I was able to do all the tasks
you’d ever ask of the H4. Even without USB capability with my OS of choice,
I simply removed the SD card and slotted it into the card reader on the
lappy. All my recordings were there in .wav format, ready for use. No
proprietary formats here.
The one task I didn’t perform with the H4 was connecting an external mic
and applying the 48volt phantom power. I have seen triumphant examples
of this elsewhere, so I trust that I will have the same success if I ever
need to use the unit with a studio mic. I can’t foresee this need any
time soon though.
What are you doing? GET ONE!
