The folks at CNet have published a nice, detailed review of the Sony PCM-D50 digital audio recorder, complete with a video, a few decent photos (including the one to the right which shows just how ridiculous the D50 looks with a windscreen and a funny looking tripod), and a video review.
They rave over the PCM-D50's advanced features, relatively low price, and excellent sound quality. But they also have the usual complaints, the recorder doesn't record in the MP3 format, and if you use up the 4GB of internal memory, you need to use a proprietary Sony memory stick for expansion.
Showing posts with label digital audio recorders. Show all posts
Showing posts with label digital audio recorders. Show all posts
Transom's equipment Jeff Towne has posted an excellent review of the Sony PCM-D50 digital audio recorder, complete with a ton of audio clips that should give you a pretty good idea of what the recorder sounds like using internal mics and a variety of external mics.
I think I've already talked up the D50's strong points, so I'll just focus on the flaws Towne found:
- The mic/line input switch is bafflingly located near the headphone jack, not the mic jack
- The mini inputs will not provide phantom power
- If you're using the internal mics, you will hear a click when you hit the track divide button, and no matter what microphone you're using there will be a slight disconnect between the before and after track, but you'd have to listen really closely to notice it.
- It would be nice to have an option to record in mono
Online retailer StartStop has posted some audio samples recorded with an Olympus LS-10. These are the first samples I've heard from the recorders, and StartStop was kind enough to post stereo WAV files instead of MP3 files. So the recordings reflect real world conditions.
Overall, the recordings show that the internal mics are pretty sensitive and are perfect for picking up sound from across the room if you're doing something like recording a lecture. To my ear they're a bit too sensitive for use for a radio interview, as they do seem to pick up a bit more room tone than I'd like. But I don't really hear much extraneous hiss, which would seem to indicate that the preamps are good.
Has anyone who's purchased an LS-10 plugging an external microphone yet? How does it sound with a dynamic mic like the EV RE-50 or Shure SM58?
[via Philip Graitcer]
The folks at Wingfield Audio have posted a few more audio samples recorded with the Marantz PMD620 digital audio recorder. It's not clear whether they were using the internal stereo microphones or a plug-in mic, but what is clear is that this tiny recorder is capable of making some excellent recordings.
These aren't the first PMD620 audio samples to hit the web. As I mentioned in my review roundup, you can find a few more audio clips at Wingfield and Transom.
What I'll never understand is why manufacturers like Tascam, Marantz, Sony, Edirol, and Zoom don't include audio clips on their own product web sites. Sure, you'd have to take them with a grain of salt since the recordings would probably have been made under ideal circumstances (like in a soundproof booth), but it'd give us a general idea of how these recorders sound while we're waiting for 3rd party reviews.
Marantz has put out a video showing off some of the features included in the Marantz PMD620. There's not much here that we didn't already know, and for some unfathomable reason, there are no closeup shots of the recorder in action. But I supposed Marantz is known for making audio gear, not for making high quality videos.
You do get a sense of just how small the PMD620 is when you hold it in your hand though.
[via D&M Professional Education Blog]
I spent the day covering the Greener Gadgets conference for AOL's Green Daily yesterday. As part of our coverage, I conducted a handful of interviews, which I recorded using my Sony PCM-D50 recorder and an EV RE-50 microphone. If you want to hear my gear in action, check out my interview with artist and environmental activist Chris Jordan.
I have a few more interviews which I'll be posting at Green Daily over the next few days. The exhibition space was a little noisy, so these are hardly studio quality interviews. But I think they should give you an idea of how well my mic and recorder combo works for recording interviews.
Oh yeah, and Chris Jordan's work is kind of amazing and thought provoking, so you should definitely check out his work and my interview for that reason too.
With Tascam, Yamaha, and Olympus all coming out with some intriguing new digital audio recorders, I decided to put together a little chart showing how they stack up against one another. During the process I learned two things:
- These recorders are all tiny compared with the current generation
- It takes a long time to put together a chart if you're not used to it.
But as you can see, the Tascam DR-1 is the cheapest of the bunch, and also the only one to sport a 1/4th inch mic input. The Yamaha Pocketrak 2G is the smallest and lightest, but has no memory expansion option. And the Olympus LS-10 includes internal memory, an SD/SDHC expansion slot, and ships with a wind screen which is a nice bonus.
What new recorder are you most looking forward to?
Tascam isn't the only pro audio company coming out with a prosumer level digital audio recorder. Yamaha announced the Pocketrak 2G last week and it packs an awful lot of power into a tiny package.
- WAV/MP3/WMA recording
- 2GB internal memory
- Weighs just 1.7 ounces including battery
- Record 9 hours of WAV audio on a single AAA battery (or 25 hours of MP3)
- Built-in stereo mics
- Mic/Line input (mini jacks)
- Records up to 3 hours of stereo 44.1KHz WAV audio using internal memory
- Auto level control
- Time stampt
- Timer record
While the size and built in USB connector are attractive, I'm a bit skeptical of recorders that have only mini jacks. While the mini inputs on my PCM-D50 sound pretty clean, they are also made of aluminum which gives me some confidence that they aren't going to break. The cheap plastic mini jacks you get with many lower cost recorders are often the first thing to break when you plug and unplug microphones and headphones repeatedly. I can't say for sure, but from the images available it looks like the Yamaha recorder uses plastic jacks. But as always, I'll reserve final judgment until we get some real world reports.
[via Sonic State]
One of the first things I did when I got my Sony PCM-D50 recorder was put it through the paces (quickly) and write up as thorough a review as I could without having spent months with the recorder. Mark Nelson at O'Reilly Digital Media took another route and spent a month with his review unit before writing up his thoughts.
We both reached pretty much the same conclusion: You'll be hard pressed to find another recorder for under $500 that's as versatile as the PCM-D50.
That said, Nelson did discover a thing or two that I had originally missed. First, the reason Sony included a 2GB file size limit is because Sony wanted to use the original Microsoft WAV specifications. While newer devices let you record a single track up to 4GB or larger, some older computers might not recognize those files. And second, the limiter feature is even cooler than I'd originally thought. The PCM-D50 is always recording two tracks, one at your set volume and another 20db lower. When a loud sound comes across as overmodulated, the recorder switches to the lower track, but it will actually boost the volume so that you really shouldn't notice any change at all. I think the reason this didn't come across in my sample recordings is because I tested the limiter by making sounds so loud that there was clipping on both the original track and on the safety track.
Nelson did have some issues with the menu layout and he doesn't seem to have tried plugging in an external microphone. And the truth is, no matter how good your digital audio recorder is, your recordings are always only going to be as good as your mic. With an EV-RE50 mic, I think the PCM-D50 sounds excellent. But Graham Riches left some comments on another BradLinder.net blog post that suggest different results using a Rode NTG2 mic. Personally I think the recorder sounds great with my external mic and I almost never use the built-in mics which are too sensitive to wind and background noise. When using my old Zoom H4 recorder, the opposite was true. I'd only use the built-in mics because the preamps were way too noisy when using external mics.
Anyway, here's what Riches had to say:
Tired of reading about fancy $400+ digital audio recorders? Well Belkin's got one that will only set you back $100. You know, if you already have an iPod. The Belkin Podcast Studio is basically a sleeve for an iPod that lets you record uncompressed WAV audio to your iPod's hard drive.
The Podcast Studio includes XLR and 1/4th inch cables, a recodign meter, gain control, and compressor/limiter feature. It's due out in June and should work with the 5G iPod, iPod Classic, and 3G iPod Nano.
The advantage to this setup is that you get a ton of recording time using your iPod's hard drive. The downside is that you've got two separate electronics devices, which means there are more parts that can possibly break. Still, if you've already got the iPod, this might be one of the cheapest devices you'll find for recording CD-quality WAV files using an XLR microphone. No word on what kind of preamps the Podcast Studio has, so I'll withhold any final judgement on sound quality until someone posts a real world review.
I was out doing a recording session with my Sony PCM-D50 yesterday, and as always I was making sure to keep an eye on the battery meter. I've never had a battery die unexpectedly in this recorder, but I was kind of wondering what would happen to a recording if I suddenly lost power.
So today I decide to run a quick test. I started a recording, and instead of hitting stop to end it, I hit the power switch and watched my unit shut down.
When I powered back up, the WAV file was intact. It stopped at the moment when I turned off the recorder. Now theoretically, if your batteries fall out (unlikely given the sturdy battery casing) or if your batteries suddenly die, this might not work, since the unit could lack the power necessary to close off a recording.
But I'm almost as confident that I won't lose recordings using a PCM-D50 as I would be using a DAT or cassette recorder. Most other low end digital recorders (including minidisc recorders), need to take a few seconds to save a file after you're finished recording. Otherwise the data is not written permanently to the disk and you could lose data if your battery is removed or your unit is abruptly turned off.
Olympus has a long history of making high quality digital voice recorders. But historically these devices have just been fancy dictation devices, letting you record large amounts of low quality audio. But the upcoming Olympus LS-10 is aimed squarely at podcasters, reporters, and other people in the market for high quality audio recorders like the Marantz PMD620, Sony PCM-D50, or Zoom H2.
Unlike its predecessors, the LS-10 can record 24-bit/96kHz WAV audio. Here are a few other goodies:
- 2GB internal memory
- SD/SDHC card slot for memory expansion
- Record in WAV, MP3, or WMA formats
- Built-in stereo mics
- 3.5 mm mic and line inputs for recording from an external source
- 3.5 mm headphone output and built-in speakers for playing back audio
- Runs on 2 AA batteries
- Dimensions: 131.5 mm x 48 mm x 22.4 mm
- Weight: 165 grams (including batteries)
- Includes Cubase LE4 software
The LS-10 should be available sometime this month.
[via Gizmodo]
I recently bought two gadgets that are awesome and doing two very different things. The Sony PCM-D50 is an amazing little digital audio recorder that I've been using for my work as a radio journalist and audio producer. The Asus Eee PC is an amazing little (really little, we're talking seven inch screen and 2.1 pound weight) PC that I've been using for blogging on the go.
While I don't really expect to use my Eee PC for radio production much more than I expect to use my PCM-D50 for blogging, the truth is there is some overlap. Every now and again I record interviews on my digital audio recorders for podcasts, or in some cases as soundtracks to videos I produce for this or other web sites. And the Eee PC is powerful enough to run basic audio editing utilities when I need to make some quick edits on the go.
There's just one problem. While the Eee PC instantly recognized my Zoom H4 recorder when I plugged it in (letting me drag and drop audio files, or even use the Zoom as an external microphone for Skype calls), the Eee PC doesn't recognize my PCM-D50.
If I were running Windows, I could install the driver that Sony includes for stubborn PCs that fail to recognize the PCM-D50. But there's no Linux driver at the moment. So the best solution I've been able to find so far is to scrap the custom Linux distribution that comes with the Eee PC and install Ubuntu. OK, scrap might not be the right word. I'm not quite ready to give up on Xandros. But I've found that when you boot Ubuntu (or eeeXubuntu to be specific) from a flash card, the Eee PC recognizes the PCM-D50 as an external hard drive with no problem.
As an added bonus, it's much easier to install Audacity 1.3.3 on Ubuntu than on Xandros. That's because Audacity 1.3+ is still in beta, even though it's pretty stable. The newer beta versions of Audacity include a whole bunch of features that are missing in the 1.2.6 version that you can download and install on Xandros.
So right now I'm carrying a 4GB SD card around with my Eee PC. It has eeeXubuntu installed, meaning I can boot into either Xandros using the main memory or eeeXubuntu using the flash card. There's only about 1.5 GB of free space on the card, and even less on the main memory, so I have no plans to do any serious audio editing on this setup. But as soon as the eeeXubuntu developer adds a few more features like support for all the Fn keys on the Eee PC, I'll probably install the operating system to the computer's main memory and use the 4GB SD card just for storage, which should provide plenty of space for editing long interviews.
If you ask me, Transom does some of the best digital audio recorder reviews around. You know, not including my own.
While Transom doesn't appear to have gotten their hands on a Sony PCM-D50 yet, they did recently post a review of the much anticipated Marantz PMD620. And while it looks like an excellent recorder in terms of build and sound quality, there are a couple of drawbacks, not the least of which is that there's an annoying latency issue when monitoring recordings with headphones. In other words, you'll hear the recorded sound echo back to you a split second after it's recorded. That means you'll hear each sound twice unless you have amazing headphones that prevent you from hearing any sound from the outside world.
I've updated my PMD620 review roundup to include some information from Transom's review, but I highly recommend checking out the full review.
Transom has also updated their incredibly useful portable digital audio recorder comparison chart to include the PMS620. You can also get an overview of other popular recordings like the Marantz PMD660, Zoom H2, Zoom H4, Edirol R-09, M-Audio MicroTrack, Tascam HD-P2, and Sound Devices 722.
The Sony PCM-D50 digital audio recorder does a great job of bridging the gap between consumer and professional-grade electronics. This $500 recorder sports many of the same features as its sibling, the $1800 Sony PCM-D1 recorder, plus a few new features that its older brother lacks.
While Sony is selling the PCM-D50 for less than a third the price of the PCM-D1, (due to some cheaper parts including lower quality built-in condenser microphones), the recorder still costs twice as much as a Zoom H4, a popular recorder that appears to have a few things the PCM-D50 is missing, like XLR inputs and the ability to act as a PC audio I/O device. So is the Sony recorder worth the money? That depends on what you need in an audio recorder. For me the answer is a whopping yes. For you? Maybe not so much.
Let's take a look at what the PCM-D50 has to offer. First up, I put together a video overview of the unit.
There are a couple of things to consider when reviewing a digital audio recorder. How easy is it to use? How sturdy is it? What kind of support does it have for external hardware like flash memory and input/output devices? But probably the most important feature is sound quality.
Shortly after opening the box, I made a few sample recordings with the PCM-D50 which compared favorably with sound files I recorded using the Zoom H4. Today I ran a few more tests.
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You can make a reasonably decent sounding recording using the built-in stereo condenser microphones. They have a cleaner, more natural tone than the built-in mics on the Zoom H4. But the PCM-D50's microphones are incredible sensitive to wind.
And when I say wind, I mean any a teeny tiny little breeze. If you breathe the wrong way across those mics, you'll get some awful noise. In fact, you can hear in this sample how much noise just walking across a room generates. I would not under any circumstances use the built-in mics outdoors without purchasing the overpriced wind screen.
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When you plug a microphone into the PCM-D50, everything changes. My EV RE-50 dynamic microphone has become useful again. While the Sony recorder lacks the Zoom H4's XLR plugs, it has a much better preamp, which means that external dynamic microphones like the RE-50 sound much much cleaner.
That lack of an XLR input is probably going to turn a lot of people off from this recorder. The line, mic, and headphone jacks are all 1/8th inch mini inputs. But while the line in and out jacks are the same type of cheap plastic jobs that wind up breaking all the time on low-end recorders and music players, the mic input and headphone jack both seem to be metal. You get a nice satisfying click when inserting a plug into either jack, and I think you'd have to try pretty hard to break them.
One of the features that I was most looking forward to trying out was the limiter. Normally I don't play around with the effects on recorders, since I want things to sound as natural as possible. But the Sony rep I spoke with at AES pointed out that this limiter works in an interesting fashion.
Essentially the unit is always making two recordings, even though only one is being saved to the disc. The second recording is about 20db lower then the first. So if there's a sudden volume spike, the recorder will switch to the quieter signal and then shift back to the louder signal. You can vary the time it takes to return to normal to 150 milliseconds, 1 second, or 1 minute.
But the first time I tested the limiter, I noticed that the shift from the quiet channel to the louder one was pretty jarring. After a few tries, I realized that this was because I was only recording room tone and then a very loud sound. So what you hear afterwards is nothing but the room tone being brought back up. If you're recording voice, music, or something a bit louder than... well, nothing, then the limiter should work pretty well. Still, I'm not sure I'd recommend using it unless you really need it.
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Things I like about the PCM-D50
- High quality recordings with little background hiss
- Solid build quality
- Automatically detects when you plug in a microphone and if you're in the middle of recording when you plug in the mic, the PCM-D50 will switch inputs from the internal mics to the external microphone
- Large easy to use buttons
- Large, easy to read display (with a dedicated button for turning the backlight on and off)
- Although Sony sells a $70 tripod for the PCM-D50, you can easily screw in any standard camera tripod.
- A real honest to goodness volume control knob (which is missing on many minidisc and low-end flash audio recorders)
- Long battery life (You get an estimated 14 hours record time using 4 AA batteries)
- 4GB internal memory (enough to record 6.5 hours of 44.1KHz/16 bit stereo audio)
- Expandable using Sony Memory Stick Pro Duo or Memory Stick Pro-HG Duo cards
- 5 second pre-record buffer lets you monitor while in record/pause mode and start a recording 5 seconds before you hit the record button
- Divide track button lets you create create a new WAV file without stopping a recording (something you cannot do with the Zoom H4)
- There's some handling noise when using the built-in mics. This means you won't want to adjust many settings or hit the track divide button while recording with the internal microphones.
- Seriously? $50 for a Don King-style wind screen?
- If you don't touch your recorder for 10 minutes, it will enter low power consumption mode automatically, which is great. But since the screen is off, it would be easy to forget that your unit is still running and you could run your battery down before remembering to turn the unit all the way off.
- The PCM-D50 uses an odd system for storing audio files. There are 9 folders on your unit. You can record up to 99 WAV files in any folder. That means if you're in folder 7, you'll start recording in folder 7, whether the previous 6 folders are full or not. So when you plug the unit into your computer to transfer files, you'll have to remember which folder your audio is in or search through all the folders until you find what you're looking for.
- If the batteries are removed while you're recording, you'll lose data. Not much surprise there. But a recording will also stop (and you'll lose data) if you plug in a USB cable, because the USB connection takes precedence. That just doesn't make any sense. Why not have a pop up menu ask if you'd like to stop the recording?
- The user manual mentions a carrying case with a belt clip, but it's only available in Japan.
- There's a slight delay between the time you hit the record button an the start of a recording.
- When you hit record, you're in record/pause mode. You have to hit pause in order to start a recording.
- While it's great that you can use external memory, Sony has a habit of using proprietary formats like Memory Stick instead of standard formats like SD cards or Compact Flash cards. They've one-upped themselves this time by only supporting two very specific types of Memory Stick cards, the Pro Duo and Pro-HG Duo. I get the feeling a lot of people who don't read the manual very carefully will be buying the wrong kind of memory.
- There's no option for recording in mono. If you plug in a mono microphone, you'll record a dual mono track (ie: the same signal will go to the left and right channels). If you could record in mono, the 4GB of internal memory would be enough space for 13 hours of 44.1KHz/16 bit recordings.
- The Memory Stick door is a bit flimsy, especially when compared with the rest of the unit.
- While the PCM-D50 will play back MP3 files, there's no option to record using MP3 or any other compressed format. This isn't a biggie, since you'll probably get a higher quality MP3 file by transferring a WAV to your desktop for conversion anyway.
- Act as an audio I/O device for a computer
- Act as a 4-track recorder (even though you can only record to one channel at a time)
- Record in mono
- Accept XLR inputs
- Runs on 2 AA batteries instead of 4
I'm sure I've left out a few things, so leave me questions in the comments and I'll do my best to answer them.
Oh, and to give you a sense of size and how the PCM-D50 compares to other recorders here are a few shots of the unit next to the Zoom H4, a Sony MZ-R50 minidisc recorder, and an EV RE-50 microphone.
Links:
- Sony PCM-D50 technical specs (PDF)
- Sony PCM-D50 brochure (PDF)
- Sony PCM-D50 manual (PDF)
- XLR-1 Spec PDF sheet ($400 mini to XLR adapter)
The Marantz PMD620 has begun shipping, and the reviews are starting to roll in. As more people write up their thoughts, I'll update this post.
Nature Recordists
Oryoki at the Yahoo! Nature Recordists group has written up a detailed review of the PMD620. In a nutshell, the recorder is tiny, almost the size of an iPod Classic and fitting easily into your pocket. It weighs just six ounces.
The unit takes just about 3 seconds to start up, has an easy to read LED screen, gets about 4.5 hours of battery life, and can record files over 2GB in size (a limitation many earlier recorders struggled with). Oryoki reports that the built-in mics are decent if properly directed, but that you'll get some handling noise unless you use an external mic with the 1/8th inch mic input. You'll probably want that external mic anyway, because you'll get less hiss (depending on the mic, I would assume) than if you use the internal mics.
If you're interested in more details, I would highly recommend checking out Oryoki's complete writeup, and make sure to check out the comments.
Wingfield Audio
The folks at Wingfield Audio have posted a review as well. They say the PMD620 is about the same size as an Edirol R-09 recorder. It may have a small display, but the fonts are crips and easy to read. The buttons are big and responsive.
As expected, the built in speaker doesn't sound very good. But if you want to have a chance to double check your recording without using headphones, it's a nice option to have. Tracks can be split on the fly while you're recording by pressing the record button again. I prefer devices that have a separate "track mark" or "divide" button, but this is better than nothing.
One thing I learned from this review is that you need to be in record/pause mode to set your record volume. I've gotten so used to the hardware volume knob on my PCM-D50 that I'd kind of forgotten that many low end recorders are stuck with this limitation.
Transom (pre-review)
Jeff Towne over at Transom is in the process of testing a PMD620. A complete review should be coming soon, but in the meantime, he's posted a few thoughts in the comments of his Zoom H2 post.
In a nutshell, Towne agrees that the PMD620 has great preamps. In fact, he says it sounds better with an external mic than any other low-cost recorder he's tried (meaning the Zoom H2, Edirol R-09, M-Audio MicroTrack, Zoom H-4, and possibly the Marantz PMD660).
Bu there are some problems, not the least of which is a latency issue with the headphones. In other words, you'll hear what you're recording slightly after it's recorded. I've experienced a similar issue with the Samson C01U USB microphone, or when using the Ardour digital audio workstation to record audio on a PC running Linux. And let me just say, it can be annoying as all get out.
Stay tuned for Towne's complete review, which will almost certainly feature sample audio recordings.
Update: Transom has published a thorough review of the Marantz PMD620. Here are the highlights, but you should definitely check out the original review for audio samples.
- Small, easy to use device with big buttons and an easy to read display.
- Recordings sound good with external dynamic mics or condensers with batteries (there is no phantom power available.
- Even though the PMD620 has a 1/8th inch microphone jack, it sounds better with external mics (meaning there's a lower noise floor/hiss level) than many other low cost recorders with 1/8th inch, 1/4th inch, or even XLR inputs, including the Marantz PMD660.
- You can make track marks automatically at regular intervals or by pushing the record button to start a new file.
- You can save 3 presets, so if you like to have separate profiles for stereo, mono, and MP3 recordings, you can save those attributes.
- The headphone jack is placed inconveniently between the two internal mics, so you can get a lot of noise if you're monitoring your recording with those mics.
- You can hear yourself pressing buttons if you're using the internal mics, particularly because the volume control is a rocker switch instead of a dial.
- That latency problem is probably the biggest drawback. (audio link). Revie Jeff Towne concludes that Marantz just doesn't figure people will be using headphones to monitor their recordings, which seems a bit silly.
- You can't see both the record time remaining and the level meters on the display at the same time.
So I went ahead and pre-ordered a Sony PCM-D50 flash audio recorder from Sweetwater a week or two back when I saw that the company planned to ship them out the same day they receive their stock. And that was supposed to be November 2nd.
Well, that was last week and I haven't heard a peep about my order. So I head over to the oft-updated sales page, only to see that the new estimated ship date is November 18th.
As far as I can tell, the problem is Sony's, not Sweetwater's, because I don't think anybody else has any of the digital audio recorders in stock yet. But I was kind of hoping to have another new toy this week. On the bright side, Sweetwater won't charge my credit card until the PCM-D50 ships, so I might wind up not having to pay for my new audio recorder and my new laptop in the same month.
Sound Devices has released a firmware upgrade for its high-end digital audio recorders. Version 2.34 works with all recorders in the 7-series, including the 702, 722, and 744.
The update adds support for MP2 and MP3 compression, as well as the FLAC lossless codec. All three formats allow you to cram a bit more audio on your hard drive or storage card. MP2 and MP3 are lossy codecs, meaning you sacrifice some sound quality in the process, but FLAC recordings should sound identical to WAV audio recordings even though they take up about half the space.
Sound Devices has also released Wave Agent, a Windows-only utility for converting FLAC recordings to Broadcast Wave files.
[via RadioCamp]
There's a new firmware update for the Zoom H4 Handy Recorder, and boy is it a doozy. In fact, Zoom seems to have addressed almost every single complaint anyone's ever had with the Zoom software. Version 2.0 includes:
- Larger fonts making the tiny display easier to read
- Battery meter shows how much juice you've got left when recording in stereo mode
- Specify whether you're using alkaline or Ni-MH batteries for a more accurate battery reading
- There's a remaining time meter in stereo mode
- Mono mix recording in stereo mode (In other words, you'll still be recording on two tracks, but the output will be dual mono instead of true stereo. This doesn't save you any space on your memory card, but it does make voice recordings more accurate).
- Low cut filter with 10 presets for reducing background sound
- Auto recording mode starts up a recording when there's sound above a certain threshold and pauses when it gets quiet
- Support for SDHC cards up to 4GB (Previously you could only use SD cards up to 2GB)
- Convert WAV files to MP3 directly on the unit to save space
- Divide large files
- Normalize files to bring up the volume on the recorder (Depending on the card you're using, this could reportedly take almost as long as recording a new track, so you might be better off waiting until you get to a PC to do this).
- You can now turn off the input signal when using the USB interface mode. In other words, you don't have to hear the mic or line input sound all the time
You can download the supplemental Zoom H4 manual (PDF link) and see in-depth descriptions of all the new features if you want to read up a bit before messing with your recorder's firmware.
The software update does nothing to solve the electric pulsing noise problem when you're running on battery power, so the best solution is still to build your own battery pack. And of course, the Zoom H4 still has a few hardware issues like noisy preamps when using external mics and loud handling noise when using the internal mics.
But this update is still pretty sweet. It certainly makes up for the last disappointing firmware upgrade.
Update: A couple of people have contacted me to let me know they were having problems installing the firmware. So here are three things to make sure you're doing:
- Make sure you check to see what version of the Zoom firmware you're currently using and download the corresponding update file.
- When Zoom says put the update file in the root directory of your SD card, this does not mean the Sys folder. Instead, the file should not go in any folder at all.
- Make sure your Zoom is plugged in when performing the update.
I own FR2le, Zoom H4 and Sony pcm d50. I barrowed marantz 620 from a friend. Did both internal and external mic test (Rode NTG2)
Internal mic:
1.Sony pcm d50 - absolutley solid performance very little background hiss.
2. Marantz 620 - is also a stunning performer with abit less detail than Sony and slightly more back ground hiss.
3. Zoom H4 - is a fine performer with its built in mic but generates pulse noise when using batteries and abit more handling noise than the last 2.
FR2le - with built in mic very poor performance and too much back ground noise.
External MIC:
1.FR2le - Outstanding quality, even if u boost the recording the hiss is not apparent.
2. Maratnz 620 - This was abit of a suprise the quality was nearly as good as the FR2 le again very little hiss and detail too.
3. Sony pcm d50 - had greater hiss than last 2 recorders, this may be down to poor mic pre-amp but on the whole it was acceptable.
4.Zoom H4 - Although this unit has pro XLR inputs but the unit has a lousy mic pre-amps and the recording can be unpredictable - certainly not recommended for external mics.
Results:
Recorder Internal External
Fostex FR2le 3.5/10 10/10
Marantz 620 8/10 8.5/10
Sony pcm d50 8.5/10 4.5/10
H4 Zoom 7.5/10 4/10
Conclusion.
Fostex FR2 le - for professional high grade recordings; using external mics only. Tamiya battery pack (7.2v 4300) can also be used for longer recording times.
Sony pcm d50 - provides longer recording times and for use with internal mics only.
Marantz 620 - A true all-rounder for both internal and external mics.
Zoom H4 - mainly for gadget lovers. internal mics only.
Final verdict:
The Marantz 620 is a truly outstanding recorder to provide a balanced performance whether your using internal or external mics. It's portable, solidly built and sexy too. Display is bright and clear and it's very easy to operate. A fantastic piece of kit!!
Test(Mics)Results:
Fostex FR2le - internal 3.5/10 and external 10/10
Marantz 620 - internal 8/10 and external 8.5/10
Sony pcm d50 - internal 8.5/10 and external 4.5/10
H4 Zoom - internal 7.5/10 and external 4/10.