Zoom H4N reduced pricing for those interested

[Greg Dickson]

I bought a H2 about a year ago and really like it and have encouraged  
others to get them.  Although I haven't used the H4, things I like  
about the H2 include:

- price (one advantage over the H4)
- it's an easy to use, all-in-one unit - you can make good recordings  
without accessories (though headphones are always good!)
- actually... *really* easy to use (Is the H4 so straightforward?) -  
this is a real advantage when training community members to get  
involved in language documentation and have them start to make  
recordings themselves.  Or even if they're not making recordings  
themselves, you can at least de-mystify this aspect of language  
documentation really easily with a H2.

My relatively young ears think the quality is great.  Okay, so I'm  
not doing any spectrographic analysis, but neither are community  
members I work who are more concerned with having their endangered  
languages and stories documented, rather than detailed phonological  
analysis.  It records in an archiving-appropriate WAV format and  
sounds clear so that's good enough for me.

Unfortunately the SD card flap did break on mine but I didn't lose  
the cover so am still protecting it from muck.

I'm surprised that anyone wouldn't recommend it.  I think it's a  
great machine.

The only drawbacks I see are that it doesn't have an inbuilt speaker  
for immediate playback and you can't scroll through recordings while  
playing them back easily.  This sucks for fieldworkers trying to  
transcribe texts in the field without a laptop/good electricity, but  
if you can upload recordings straight onto your laptop in the field  
and work on them that way then it's not really a problem.

Ngulajuku,

Greg.

On 25/05/2010, at 6:58 PM, David Nathan wrote:

> Some of my colleagues have spoken quite highly of the Zoom H2,
> especially in regard to its audio quality to price ratio (which might
> be relevant if, eg you need to buy many recorders), and if you can
> manage with its lack of XLR inputs. In fact we are currently
> finalising a short review of the H2 and it will appear on the HRELP
> website around the end of this week.
>
> - David
>
> -- 
> -------------
> David Nathan
> Endangered Languages Archive
> SOAS
> -------------