I'm off to Paris next week with the wife's choir. (approx 40 singers)
I have been asked to record them.
I want something small and portable to record them with. I was thinking of possibly a Zoom H4 or an Edirol R-09.
Has anyone experience of using either of these to record a choir in a cathedral (Notre Dame & Chartres)?
Any reliability concerns with them? Any alternatives? (must be small, portable, battery powered, reasonable quality, not too expensive)
Recording will eventually be put onto a CD, via computer, for the choir members only, so it doesn't need to be recording studio quality.

I normally do lights, so sound is not my speciality.

Any help and ideas would be appreciated.

Hi,

Afraid can't really comment on recording techniques etc but I've seen Nagras used for location recording at work.

Afraid I have no idea how much they are to buy or hire etc.

Cheers
Fletch

Hiya
I have an R-09 and used it for a similar purpose.
Very easy to use.
Practice with it a bit when using built in mics and adjust the mic gain accordingly.
gives a choice of recording as mp3 or .wav
The latter takes up loads of memory so get a 2gig sd card to replace the supplied 32meg card if recording anything over 30 mins in length
cheers
herb

Bump!

I'm considering these two bits of kit for recording speaking language exams. Anyone any further thoughts 9 months on? Anyone used the Zoom?

Hi Muller,

I bought a Zoom H4 on a trip to the US last year and it's been absolutely suprb. I chose that over the edirol because it had proper XLR mic inputs and 48V, plus I was told the the mics are very good and are the the "correct" 90 degrees.

The results I've had have been amazing and have released two live CDs from pretty raw footage captured on it. If you can get the Zoom into a good position to record the choir, I would say that's the least hassle option. The internal mics are well up to the job and even Church organ recordings I've made have had real depth and authority. It will look a bit ugly though stuck on a stand in front of the Choir. A better bet might be a couple of external mics on a stereo bar. My favourite for this is the Oktava MC012 (from Digital Village etc.).

Download to PC for editing/mastering is very easy but can take 30 minutes with a big file even on USB 2. It appears as an external drive to the PC.

The downside, is that the display is quite small and you need good eyes. The navigation using the jog roller thing at the side is a bit fiddly until you're used to it. There is a four track mode, but it can't simulataneously record all four. You have to do two, then two and can do an internal mixdown. That facilitiy is a waste of time as far as I can see - so fiddly it'd drive you mad.

Conclusion - as an acquisition device it's brilliant. Perfectly portable, uses standard AA batteries (which last for hours) and the quality (at 44.1 or 48kHz) is real hifi.

Recommendations - get the biggest card you can afford (a couple of 2 gig ones would be ideal) and forget the 4 track mode.

If you want to listen to some of my raw stuff off the Zoom, just PM me with an email address.

Trust this helps.

Pete.

Also a big fan of the H4, though I've found the integral mics to be a little bass heavy. I always use external mics for "good" recordings (Se1a's). The sound quality even in mp3 mode is superb, and there is loads of space on a 2gb card (we're talking tens of hours).

Nice piece of kit. Stand mounting is a bit of a pain - velcro straps onto a base plate, which has to be removed to access the card and batteries. It also looks a lot like a tazer when it's sat in your hand luggage!

C

And another happy H4 user. We have two & may need to get more.

Problems so far have been,

operator forgot to switch it on (she thought she had, but had only gone into standby mode)
mic gain was set too high (my fault for not explaining how to check this properly)

Both of these are RTFM things, problems that could occur with any piece of equipment, and need setting against 100s of successful recordings. Most of our staff who use them now know how it works, but I think I may write a very short "quick record" guide.

Also, I shoud point out that the stand mounting is for camera tripod rather than mic stand.

Yes indeed, a minor pain, I'm guessing it's more for the domestic market where a camera tripod is more common than a mic stand.

But........

Easily solved with a nut and bolt of the respective sizes welded together (good glue would do).

Does anybody make a camera tripod to mic clip adapter?

Manfrotto make a ball and socket head which fits onto a mic stand - it'll set you back about 20 quid, but on the plus side you can then press a mic stand into a servicable tripod for a light camera

we have an edirol R-1 (stereo rather than multi track) bought for a similar purpose - originally for a poet / storyteller (non technical) to record oral testimony at a school we were working with. It worked pretty well, except that with the built-in mics the gain has to be pretty much up as far as it will go, and handling noise therefore is a bit of an issue - solution - put the recorder on a table and don't touch it.

things that can go wrong - we gave it to our artistic director to record a meeting a la dictaphone, and he managed to switch on the built in effects, which we were then not able to remove from the recording. so he had to rely on his memory of the meeting after all....but that aside, it did what we wanted.

Yes - Maplin here.

I don't think so. These adapters step down from a large (5/8) bush to a smaller stud so they are designed to mount cameras on mic stands and not the other way round.

I don't think that there is an 8mm (5/16) camera thread - as far as I know the two standards are 1/4 & 3/8 and the normal camera fitting is 1/4 in. However the clearance inside the threads of a 3/8 tripod bush is 8mm so it seems that the Maplin adapters will not even fit a standard camera.

David

Edit: I must be losing my mind! Maplins obviously do step-up and step-down adapters - presumably 3/8"<->5/8". 1/4"->3/8" tripod adapter bushes to complete the adapter should be readily available from photo shops (eg Jessops or Jacobs), if Maplins can't help.

Not the Zoom, but used an R-09.
Got one of these for use in my school to replace an aging minidisk.
Good recording quality.
OK battery life, but get rechargeable.
Get a 2gig card, 32meg will get you nowhere.

Big plus for school environment is the fact that, when you get down to it, it is easier than most alternatives for "basic" recording. Give them the player, they turn it on and then hit the big red button to start and the big red button to stop. They then give it back and in 1-3 days they get a cd with their recording! Jobs a good 'un!

theHippy

EDIT: Stupid brain, forgot to mention which recorder I was talking about!

Realise you will have been back from Paris some 9 months or so, but I've just got a new Zoom H2 and it's worth noting that this would do the job really well. You can record the front 90 degree mics AND the rear 120 degree mics onto 2 stereo pairs, and mix later on a computer. If you put this in the middle of the choir, you would get a great 'surround' sound. Need a 4 meg card though, the 4 track option only uses wav, not mp3.

Tony Reeves

Following on from the above, I just noticed in this month's Audio Media magazine that the H2 is smaller, lighter and cheaper and gets a good review. It might well be suitable for recording language exams if you don't need all the features in the H4 and want to save some money.

Bob

Have had my eye on these recorders for a while, but could never decide on the right cost/performance compromise. After a quick play with a friend's Zoom H2, I decided it would do all I needed, and I managed to pick up an ex-display model for GBP 100 the other week, plus a couple of 2 GB SD cards for a fiver - it's fab.

I know that some of the more upmarket options would perform better, but in the end I don't need this the ultimate quality but really appreciated the cost.

Things I love:

* It's small and the fully enclosed microphones mean it should survive better than all those recorders with exposed capsules. Very pocketable.
* SD cards are so cheap that I think you could even treat them as long term storage media if you wanted to. (though I'd still prefer to archive off elsewhere. Pound for wav hour they're no more expensive than minidisc these days.
* The four channel recording is extremely cool, though I'm not convinced I'll have a need for it.
* The compressor presets seem reasonably well chosen. The concert setting seems to cope fairly well with gig volumes and give a pretty good result.
* Battery life - with a pair of 1,800 mah NiMHs I left it recording to mp3 and it went for about 4 hours. Think the use of the compressor hits battery life, but I'd be happy that I could easily get a full gig on this.
* The size and ease means the odd ad-hoc recording is just so easy: turn it on, press record and leave in a suitable place.
* Love the price/performance/downloadability of SD cards. Note that the larger capacity (4GB+) SDHC cards may not work in older card readers. (this confused me a lot with my mate's one when I originally tested it out).

Minuses:
* Handling noise (which I suspect all these recorders suffer from). This thing really wants to be started and then left. Other than for short recordings where you can be careful how you hold it, it needs to stand by itself. Tried it on the floor at a school concert and it unsurprisingly picked up all the booms from moving feet. Much better on a cushion.
* Noisy pre-amps for quieter recordings, so I wouldn't want to use it to record birdsong, or anything critical other than louder sources. But for the package, it completely exceeds expectations.
* Poorly designed SD cover (mine came broken). But phoned Zoom and they sent me *two* without batting an eyelid, FOC.

One thing to watch (and I think I've written on this in a similar thread) is that not all SD cards are made the same. I wasn't aware they came with not only size variations, but also speed! Using higher bit rate modes, I found my recorders dropping out, and corrupting files. After an upgrade of cards, all is now well.

I'm very tempted by these recorders.

Worth noting that the new H4n (abit more pricey) will record both the internal mics and external mics in 4track mode; which sound's like it would be really useful for ambient/small gig recording.

on paper, +1 for the H4n

I also saw a problem with this; (wasn't my recorder, somebody came to me with it) but SD cards have a Speed Class, usually 2, 4 or 6, which just directly translates into the maximum MB/s transfer rate. The higher the class the better, essentially.

This was with a Marantz PMD-620, which might be worth looking into as a competitor to some of the models mentioned above.