Zoom H4 Digital Recorder

[David Nathan]

Dear Nick

We have some limited experience with a couple of these:

>>M-Audio Microtrack II (~$300)

Unlike Claire, we don't generally recommend the M-Audio Microtrack as we had a couple of instances of failure and came to regard it as possibly not reliable enough. 

>>Edirol R-09 24-Bit Wave/MP3 Recorder (~$350)

Peter Austin and I just ran a documentation workshop in Tokyo where most of the participants already owned their own Edirol R-09 (in various colours!). So a lot of R-09 recording-hours were represented. A quick poll revealed that nobody had yet had a failure of the seemingly fragile bottom cover (although someone knew someone who had, which was subsequently repaired). One pragmatic problem with these machines is due to the presence of the internal mics, which, although not bad, leads users to forget about using suitably selected and located external mics, which can lead to a huge drop in potential recording quality (see also our review at http://www.hrelp.org/archive/reviews/edirol_r9_review.html)

SONY PCM-D50 (~$450)

I had a brief chance to play with one of these and found: (i) it's easy and nice to use (ii) the internal mics are absurdly sensitive to wind noise, plosion, and even movement, so it's barely usable without a dead cat (/softie/windscreen). 

- David Nathan

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thien at unimelb.edu.au wrote:
Dear RNLD members,
Yet another one of those 'What recording equipment to buy' queries. We are looking to buy field recorders and have the following on the shortlist. Prices are in $US. I am leaning towards the Tascam and the Marantz but would be happy to hear from anyone with experience of any of these, or of other similar machines.
Zoom H2 (~$180)
Marantz PMD620 Digital Recorder (~$360)
M-Audio Microtrack II (~$300)
Edirol R-09 24-Bit Wave/MP3 Recorder (~$350)
TASCAM DR-1 Portable Studio Audio Recorder (~$248 - 300)
SONY PCM-D50 (~$450)
Olympus LS-10 Linear PCM Recorder (~$400)
I'll put a comparison of specifications of these recorders on a public site.
All the best,
Nick
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