Hi all,
since posing my question a while ago about digital recorders, I bought the Zoom H2 Handy Recorder for £150.
First impressions: This is a smallish, electric-shaver styled mainly plastic unit which is very light, but seems as though it will last just fine if taken care of. Build quality (considering it's plastic, mind) seems good. The buttons are responsive and well placed.
The unit is very easy to use and intuitive, to boot. The spec list is vast, and in particular, here are the major plus points:
4 microphones enabling 2 x stereo track recording in front and behind the unit simultaneously
Decent quality condenser mics - for the money, the quality is awesome!
Package contents: this unit comes complete with 1GB SD card (in mine at least...), an AC adapter, USB cable, windshield, VERY detailed and legible manual (hats off to Zoom for this), table-top stand, handle/microphone stand adapter, earphones (haven't used these yet) and a pair of AA batteries. I don't think I've missed anything, but it's possible (I write this at work at the moment ;)).
Wide range of recording options, (90 degree, 120 degree, 'surround sound', 44.1/48/96KHz+16/24bit options, MP3 encoding, mono downmixing, and much more)
Sound card functionality via USB interface.
Key down points:
USB 1.1 only (NOT USB2! Big shame!)
Loud band volumes not tolerated as well as I'd hoped on low gain mic setting
It takes about 16 minutes to transfer about 700MB from the unit via its USB1.1 interface. Best to buy a separate card reader (which I'm about to do) that's USB2 compatible. I haven't tried the sound card functionality yet, but can see that this would be very handy for things like spoken recordings, or if you want top quality voice comms for your shoot-em-ups... ahem...
The main downside for me is that the volume we play at (LOUD) is probably too much for this unit in the room we use. This is because the drummer is a beast and he has very, very loud drums. There are ways around this, and I hope you'll take a listen to our recordings on myspace:
www.myspace.com/13gaugeto see what it can do in this band context at first - these are my first couple of attempts at recording the band, so it's a bit rough, which is more a reflection on me than the unit, but I'm very happy with the sound from these initial recordings, at least.
So the upshot is this: 150 quid very well spent. I also picked up an 8GB SDHC card which works a treat, and I run the unit off AA batteries, which have so far lasted for 4 hours of recording/playback/mucking about and are still going.
There are ways and means of getting around the downsides I pointed out above, so with this in mind, I'd say it's a must-have purchase for the musician looking to write new material and record half-decent live performances for promo purposes.
Cheers all for your suggestions when I was looking at these units!
Roo
