Portable recorders

[marc61]

Anyone have experience with portable digital recording devices?

I was looking at the Zoom h4 and the M Audio Microtrak II

[paologregorio]

I bought one about a year and a half back; it's quite handy.

I didn't get anything super fancy; I just bought an Olympus stereo voice recorder, and it usually works great for recording song ideas with the band.

[ozover50]

I have a Zoom H4, Marc. It's a great little gizmo and with the right placement records in stereo extremely well with the inbuily mics. Comes with a camera tripod adaptor and is very easy to operate.

The only downside is that it doesn't have a remote control but I note that there's a new H4n model that has more features than the H4 plus an optional remote.

Mind you, it costs a lot more...... over here the H4 retails at $599 and the H4n is $899 - plus the remote if you want it!

[cassius987]

The Zoom H4 is a VERY powerful device. My jazz band got 4 solid hours of live recording out of one and the quality was awesome. Pretty much "point and click" if you will. The only thing I'd watch out for is distortion from placing the Zoom too close to the source of noise (usually guitar and bass amps cause problems like this more than anything else).

Howard, where did you buy it? On Amazon it's $230, stateside at least.

[kenposurf]

H4 works for us...

[ozover50]

I first saw the H4 being used at your rehearsal, George....... sort of inspired me!

'Street' price on the H4 here is around $500, Joshua. Anything imported into Australia in US dollars or yen is expensive.

[brammy]

Dond know about the other one but the H4 is great.... NOTE: the H2 will NOT yield equal quality recordings.

[rickboy88]

I've got the Tascam DR-1, and have been very impressed. Very easy to use and the built in mics give a good stereo "ears" effect. I've used it to record one of the big bands I play in (on bass trombone).

[wmthor]

I carry a Boss Micro BR with me in the laptop's case whenever I'm traveling. I'm pleased with it.

[firstbassman]

Dond know about the other one but the H4 is great.... NOTE: the H2 will NOT yield equal quality recordings.

The H2 is perfectly fine for my purposes.

You will find a lot of fans on other forums.

[bitzerguy]

Big H2 fan here! It works great in the middle of the practice room using the 4 on-board mics. We get a nights rehearsal on on e 4GB card. We use it in 2 channel mode at gigs.

Sound quality is just fine for our uses. 1/2 the price of the H4, quite a bit smaller, and a lot easier to learn to use.

The H4 can multi-track, the H2 cannot on it's own, but can when used with a computer and Garageband, Sonar, Cubase, etc. The H2 is a very nice USB mic.

Nothin' wrong with them at all.

[rickenbrother]

A friend of mine has last years version of this Edirol pocket recorder. I've heard some of his recordings, they sound pretty good.

http://www.rolandus.com/products/produc ... rentId=114

[loendmaestro]

I like the H2 as well. Quite suitable for our applications....and you can't beat the price!

[qwezirider]

Depends upon what you want to do with it. I have an H2 that I use just to grab unfamiliar music at rehearsals for practice at home. Used it once in a loud country bar hearing a band I was to sub in, relatively next to, not in front of, the p.a. and it picked up all frequencies quite well enough for me to practice at home.

Certainly would not use it for serious recording, or the H4 either. Have a friend who tried rigging the H4 to his computer into Sonar as a mic and interface and the latency was annoying as hell.

[marc61]

This looks to be a pretty good deal, unless I am missing something:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 3DWatching