KVR Audio

fandango · Post by **fandango** » Mon May 14, 2012 6:19 pm

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!

michael2 · Post by **michael2** » Mon May 14, 2012 11:58 pm

UltraJv wrote:
fandango wrote:Hmm, I have an iPhone 3GS. The mic on this I imagine is pretty atrocious. There's a facility on the phone for recording memos (it has an input monitor as well) but no idea what format it's recording in or the resultant quality.
The Mic is pretty good. There are loads of apps for recording in every imaginable format. There are even semi DAW based apps :

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=166

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.

Yuroun · Post by **Yuroun** » Tue May 15, 2012 8:54 am

fandango wrote: 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!

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

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Tue May 15, 2012 8:58 am

fandango wrote:I've been reading up on the H2N, is it just the newer version of the H2 or is it missing something the H2 had? It seems to be cheaper than places that still have the H2 and I'm a bit confused. It certainly looks nicer and I've read reviews that say the interface on the H2N is much better (and the battery life).

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

core · Post by **core** » Tue May 15, 2012 9:17 am

The H2 is my friend

http://www.homebrewedmusic.com/2011/08/ ... -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.

himalaya · Post by **himalaya** » Tue May 15, 2012 10:09 am

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

Yuroun · Post by **Yuroun** » Tue May 15, 2012 10:17 am

himalaya wrote:I messed up a lovely recording a rainfall in a beautiful valley

Recording is an art

himalaya · Post by **himalaya** » Tue May 15, 2012 10:29 am

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

).

biomechanoid · Post by **biomechanoid** » Tue May 15, 2012 10:42 am

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.

Yuroun · Post by **Yuroun** » Tue May 15, 2012 10:56 am

himalaya wrote: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 ).

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

Yuroun · Post by **Yuroun** » Tue May 15, 2012 10:59 am

biomechanoid wrote: i recently ordered one of these for my iPhone:

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

Cool

AKJ · Post by **AKJ** » Wed May 16, 2012 5:48 pm

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/

fandango · Post by **fandango** » Thu May 17, 2012 6:48 pm

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.

biomechanoid wrote:i recently ordered one of these for my iPhone:

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

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!).

Yuroun · Post by **Yuroun** » Mon May 21, 2012 10:19 am

fandango wrote: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.

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

SuitcaseOfLizards · Post by **SuitcaseOfLizards** » Tue May 22, 2012 5:40 pm

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..

A reasonably priced solution for sampling "in the wild"?