Re: [Harp-L] Re: Portable digital recorders

[Richard Hunter <turtlehill@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Bill Houle wrote:
<  I was just listening to last night's rehearsal on my Zoom H4 when I read your
<email. Can't comment on the compare thing, but I'm in love with this little
<gadget. The onboard mics work really well by the way.  It is really easy to use 
<and the stuff sounds great.  Seems as rugged as any other gadget these days but 
<dropping it on a hard floor could be an issue.

I've used my H4 to record myself at home playing solo, and a band rehearsal as well.  I generally agree with Bill.  It's easy to operate and sounds very good--the solo harmonica tracks I recorded sound very good indeed, and the band tracks sound as good as you can expect for a recording made in a small room with amped guitar and bass and live drums.   It runs for 4 hours on a pair of AA batteries, and with the built-in limiter it's as close to a set-it-and-forget-it device as any recorder can be.   I bought a 1 GB Secure Digital card for less than $30, and that's enough for about 190 minutes of stereo MP3 recording at 320 kbps.  It will do 24-bit WAV files in stereo mode at up to 96 kHz, so it can certainly record high quality audio if that's what you need to do.  Exchanging files between the H4 and the computer is as simple as plugging in a USB cable.

This device is very good value for money. The new micro Boss unit is alo interesting; from reading the spec, I'd say the Boss may be a better buy if you want to do a lot of multi-track recording, i.e. overlaying instrument tracks with drums, bass, etc., etc.; the Zoom H4 is probably a better buy if you want to do a lot of live recording.  Live recording is what I want from the Zoom, and I'm very satisfied with it.

Regards, Richard Hunter
hunterharp.com