Thanks everyone for your help. I spent the rest of the day browsing through articles, forums about the Zoom, Sony, Tascam and Olympus (the last two of which, whilst great quality, look disturbingly like TASERS! ).

A company I've dealt with before, Music Gear (on both Amazon and eBay), have an ex-display H2N in perfect condition with box and bits and most importantly with the full manufacturer's warranty that's about £30 cheaper that'll suit me just fine.

There's tons of building and roadworks going on around my work at the moment, can't wait to give this baby a test-drive.

Thanks again!

i use my iphone 4 for this all the time. sounds fine the majority of the time (unless there's a lot of background noise or wind). you could always plug a mic into it as well. actually, it has revolutionized my life. seriously.

If you test out the Zoom H2 put it on a standard with the windshield on and record in surround. You would be amazed

Its the new improved H2; dont think they dropped anything on it.

The H2 is my friend

http://www.homebrewedmusic.com/2011/08/31/first-look-at-the- zoom-h2n/
The H2N seems to have better battery life, more legible screen, and somewhat lower noise level. It's doesn't come with accessories though.

I use a Sony PCM-10, which I find to be very good.


Get a proper wind shield too. Your recording life depends on it.

Also depending on what weather conditions you want to record/sample or be stuck in, you need to think of a way to minimise the sound of rain bouncing off your person. I messed up a lovely recording of a rainfall in a beautiful valley (yes you can capture the sound of a 'beautiful valley' ) by not accounting for the fact that each rain drop would be picked up by the mic like the sound of somebody hitting you on the head with a stick.

edit:typo
Last edited by himalaya on Tue May 15, 2012 2:29 am; edited 1 time in total

Recording is an art

Sure! In my case 'artfully' done on the second try with the help of a huge bath towel (kills that pesky sound of rain bouncing off a gortex jacket ).

we use a zoom h4n, which is great, other than the ridiculous startup times, and slightly cumbersome menu system.

i recently ordered one of these for my iPhone:

http://tascam.com/product/im2/

it fits in my wallet and should therefore be great for spontaneous / opportunistic recordings when i dont have the zoom.

My biggest mistake was that I put my Zoom H2 in the highest sensitivity level while playing fantasic on my didge... too close

Cool

I would take the Roland R 05 or R 09 portable recoder. Both have great mics. The R 09 is a bit better, but I decided myself for the R 05 (I had used both before). Both feature an analog limiter and can be operated with ordinary or recharable AA batteries (or a power supply which, as far as I remember, is only included with the R 09 but can be ordered separately for the R 05):

http://www.roland.com/products/en/R-05/

I got the H2N today, and I'm completely in love. The sound recordings are deliciously clear, no noise (at least, not from the device!). The user interface is really ergonomic as well, and takes next to no time to start up (~2 seconds).

It's also so light! (from the pictures, I assumed it was some heavy metallic thing the weight of a tin of soup)

Set it to 4CH, put it on the table in the middle of the room while the TV was on and had a conversation with my flatmate. Just listening to the MS/XY recordings, the quality is astonishing. I'm still not 100% sure what settings I need for in-the-wild recordings but I imagine just XY and convert to mono later to use in music. The advantage of the side recordings is that there's plenty of ambient sounds to record as well. There's a noisy air conditioning vent at work which makes a wierd noise (similar to one of the background sounds in Quake) and I had ideas about using that in a track or two.



Now that's interesting! (and a genius concept) If I hadn't gone for the H2N, that would've solved my worries about the mic quality on the iPhone (and the need for an extra pocket). Gonna add that to my Amazon wishlist and hope one of my relatives is feeling generous (hehe, no chance!).

Don't use the inbuild filters, just make raw recordings. Afterwards you can apply filters and stuff. Use the higest resolution possible. On mine it is the 96Khz/24 settings.

I love my Zoom H2.



Photo: Yuroun

My H2N arrived yesterday, w00t! I haven't had a chance to play with it much, but yes it's amazingly light and will become a constant companion (moreso when I get a windscreen and a carry bag).

I imagine the neighbors are going to wonder what I'm doing, running around and recording everything..