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Electronics : Zoom H2 Handy Recorder
1 2
Rating: 
- great little box for the money and its a proper UK model with free delivery!
I completely agree with "robin Hood's" review. Its a fantastic piece of kit for the money.
I also got mine from Absolute Music Solutions and it came with a UK power adapter as well as usb cables etc. Mine also even came with some small in-ear headphones. Free delivery was extremely fast. I ordered on bank holiday monday and it arrived on wednesday morning. The company sent me numerous emails letting me know when the H2 was dispatched and keeping me updated as to its E.T.A. I would definitely buy from them again. I also bought a Transcend 8Gb SDHC card which works perfectly. If you check Zoom's japanese website there is a list of compatable cards including Transcend's 16Gb card.
Rating:
- Some big downsides let it down
Well, actually I'd give it more than one star, but I though 1 star would attract attention. Anyway, it adds a bit of balance to the 5star reviews.
I've used the H2 in a number of contexts, and found it very useful, but there's a few problems with the design, enough to make someone think seriously about not buying it.
I've been in correspondance with Zoom about these faults, and they apologised for "not meeting expectations" and asked for any user feedback that I cared to provide.
Anyway, here's how I got on
1) As a sketchbook recorder.
I recorded myself improvising quite sparsely on a ukelele...easy to do and sounded good. The on-board mics are very good, rumored to be the same capsules as used on the H4. A bit noisier than a studio recording, but not enough to worry about.
2) Ambient recordings with quiet birdsong worked well too. Again there's probably a bit more noise there than you'd want if you were going to do this professionally, but still listenable. The 4 channel mode for recording is good for this too, would be a quick way to grab some surround sound ambiance.
2b) using the rear facing mics to record produces "hole in the middle" stereo...totally pointless.
3) Recording direct from the mixing desk....disaster. The so called line in input is specified at -10dB, and there's no headroom whatsoever, in fact I've sent it a full scale signal at -10dB and it just pushes it into distortion. While you'd expect the on-board volume control to deal with this, it does nothing of the sort. The volume control, and also the on-board limiter/compressor work only in the digital domain. Result is that while the meters are showing you a clean and safe signal level your recording can still be a mush of fuzz.
I'm going to work around this by soldering some resistors into a lead (to make a 20dB pad) and by never using the "record volume" below 100.
If you have a mixer with a volume control on the 2 track send all you have to do is set the Zoom input volume to 100 and leave it there.
4) Setting up your band around the H2 and recording in 4 channel mode. Tried this in a small room, and the separation isn't enough to make it worth the effort. This would work a lot better if the rear mics were 90 degrees apart rather than 120 degrees. As there's now only 75 degrees between front and rear mics on either side it means that instruments directly to either side of the H2 get an extra boost.
If your band is very loud then it's possible you won't be able to get an undistorted recording.
5) USB mic, works fine.
6) Duplex audio interface. On pc, you can download "Asio4All" which makes the H2 into a low latency interface.
Zoom now have a firmware upgrade and asio drivers available for download.
7) Tuner.. yep that works.
8) Works with 8GB sd card (recommended cards on zoom site).
9) Metronome. Works. time sigs 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 & 6/8.
Has a range of sounds...the cowbell's quite nice.
10) On-board limiter, or auto vol control doesn't work to prevent distortion (see 3). Zoom admit that this is the case, so don't be fooled by what it says in the manual.
11) Recording a band with the stereo mics in rehearsal and at gigs works very well. However, if your band is really loud then the sound will distort badly (the only workaround being to put the H2 further away from your band).
Works with 2 ordinary AA batteries, which is a big plus.
(easy to change).
Comes with a little stand (which just lets in stand upright on a flat surface without adjustment) and also a kind of handle thing which can be used to mount it on a mic clip or shock mount.
Won't fix straight onto a mic stand, but would be worth getting one of those little camera stands which will fit straight onto the recorder.
The camera style mounting thread at the bottom of the unit looks like it's plastic (hence worries by other reviewers) but the "tongue test" says it's made of metal and thus suitably robust(full points to Zoom for this).
It's "USB2 compatible"....which apparently means USB 1.
So file transfer is not that fast unless you just have/buy a card reader. It's much faster than transferring from MD tho' :-)
It's bigger than the Edirol R-09
Plastic construction, feels sturdy enough.
The door for the SD card could break quite easily while open (but H2 wouldn't then stop working).
I found it very easy to use, but for the menu-phobic it might be frustrating.
It's disappointing that 4-ch recording is only possible with the on-board mics, it would have been useful for gigs to record both feed from the desk and a bit of live sound from the on-board mic for atmosphere.
Rear facing mic would be more useful with 90 degree spacing rather than 120. Would still be handy to record with rear facing mics while viewing the levels. For 4-ch recording it would be much better to have 4 equally spaced mics ( I may hack the H2 to make change the angles).
So, the major downside is that there's no analog volume control before the A/D converters in line mode, and only a 3 position level switch for the mic. If the volume is set below 100 (which Zoom confirm is unity gain) then the level meters won't show if your sound is distorting. It's possible that the A/Ds are working at 24bit all the time, in which case, using the upper range of volume control from 100 to 127 is useful if you're recording at 16 bit.
With a 24bit recording there's no point at all in using the digital volume control ever.
After a fair amount of use I always leave the H2's volume control at 100, and record at 16bits. The 3 positions for mic sensitivity are well chosen, so at the moment I'm a happy user.
At the price, no other downsides.
andy butler
Rating: - Well worth it!.
Simple to use and very versatile.Admittedly i haven't tried the competition but this is as good as minidisc at the very least!.Using a plug-in mic,as one reviewer noted,is not very good.But one reason i bought it is because i got fed up with carrying external mic's and leads around all the time.With this beauty it's a case of pressing the record button twice and off you go.At £60 cheaper than its nearest rival it's a steal.
Rating: - Simple device with great results
It's a great recorder with good quality, doesn't need any tricky software, since it can be used as a card reader.
Very sensitive to handling noise - so find a good place for recording.
Good value for money
Rating: - Excellent recorder
Mine arrived from absolute music solutions and came with all the extras (UK)power addapter usb cable etc.
All you need is two AA batteries and you're up and running.
I did have an excellent Olympus voice recorder, but for live music this is streets ahead, because you can set the record volumes on the H2 but everything is fixed on a voice recoder and music is distorted at high and low pitch.
This unit is fairly straightforward to use once you get used to the duel function buttons.
The transfer to computer is slow by USB, I think it is only standard USB, but a card reader is the easy answer to that.
Also a small built in speaker would be nice for playback checking.Easy answer is a pair of small portable speakers or phones.
I gave 5 stars because the above two points are only personal niggles, the recorder performance is very good and I think you would have to pay serious money for any improvement you could notice.
- great little box for the money and its a proper UK model with free delivery!I completely agree with "robin Hood's" review. Its a fantastic piece of kit for the money.
I also got mine from Absolute Music Solutions and it came with a UK power adapter as well as usb cables etc. Mine also even came with some small in-ear headphones. Free delivery was extremely fast. I ordered on bank holiday monday and it arrived on wednesday morning. The company sent me numerous emails letting me know when the H2 was dispatched and keeping me updated as to its E.T.A. I would definitely buy from them again. I also bought a Transcend 8Gb SDHC card which works perfectly. If you check Zoom's japanese website there is a list of compatable cards including Transcend's 16Gb card.
Rating:
- Some big downsides let it downWell, actually I'd give it more than one star, but I though 1 star would attract attention. Anyway, it adds a bit of balance to the 5star reviews.
I've used the H2 in a number of contexts, and found it very useful, but there's a few problems with the design, enough to make someone think seriously about not buying it.
I've been in correspondance with Zoom about these faults, and they apologised for "not meeting expectations" and asked for any user feedback that I cared to provide.
Anyway, here's how I got on
1) As a sketchbook recorder.
I recorded myself improvising quite sparsely on a ukelele...easy to do and sounded good. The on-board mics are very good, rumored to be the same capsules as used on the H4. A bit noisier than a studio recording, but not enough to worry about.
2) Ambient recordings with quiet birdsong worked well too. Again there's probably a bit more noise there than you'd want if you were going to do this professionally, but still listenable. The 4 channel mode for recording is good for this too, would be a quick way to grab some surround sound ambiance.
2b) using the rear facing mics to record produces "hole in the middle" stereo...totally pointless.
3) Recording direct from the mixing desk....disaster. The so called line in input is specified at -10dB, and there's no headroom whatsoever, in fact I've sent it a full scale signal at -10dB and it just pushes it into distortion. While you'd expect the on-board volume control to deal with this, it does nothing of the sort. The volume control, and also the on-board limiter/compressor work only in the digital domain. Result is that while the meters are showing you a clean and safe signal level your recording can still be a mush of fuzz.
I'm going to work around this by soldering some resistors into a lead (to make a 20dB pad) and by never using the "record volume" below 100.
If you have a mixer with a volume control on the 2 track send all you have to do is set the Zoom input volume to 100 and leave it there.
4) Setting up your band around the H2 and recording in 4 channel mode. Tried this in a small room, and the separation isn't enough to make it worth the effort. This would work a lot better if the rear mics were 90 degrees apart rather than 120 degrees. As there's now only 75 degrees between front and rear mics on either side it means that instruments directly to either side of the H2 get an extra boost.
If your band is very loud then it's possible you won't be able to get an undistorted recording.
5) USB mic, works fine.
6) Duplex audio interface. On pc, you can download "Asio4All" which makes the H2 into a low latency interface.
Zoom now have a firmware upgrade and asio drivers available for download.
7) Tuner.. yep that works.
8) Works with 8GB sd card (recommended cards on zoom site).
9) Metronome. Works. time sigs 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 & 6/8.
Has a range of sounds...the cowbell's quite nice.
10) On-board limiter, or auto vol control doesn't work to prevent distortion (see 3). Zoom admit that this is the case, so don't be fooled by what it says in the manual.
11) Recording a band with the stereo mics in rehearsal and at gigs works very well. However, if your band is really loud then the sound will distort badly (the only workaround being to put the H2 further away from your band).
Works with 2 ordinary AA batteries, which is a big plus.
(easy to change).
Comes with a little stand (which just lets in stand upright on a flat surface without adjustment) and also a kind of handle thing which can be used to mount it on a mic clip or shock mount.
Won't fix straight onto a mic stand, but would be worth getting one of those little camera stands which will fit straight onto the recorder.
The camera style mounting thread at the bottom of the unit looks like it's plastic (hence worries by other reviewers) but the "tongue test" says it's made of metal and thus suitably robust(full points to Zoom for this).
It's "USB2 compatible"....which apparently means USB 1.
So file transfer is not that fast unless you just have/buy a card reader. It's much faster than transferring from MD tho' :-)
It's bigger than the Edirol R-09
Plastic construction, feels sturdy enough.
The door for the SD card could break quite easily while open (but H2 wouldn't then stop working).
I found it very easy to use, but for the menu-phobic it might be frustrating.
It's disappointing that 4-ch recording is only possible with the on-board mics, it would have been useful for gigs to record both feed from the desk and a bit of live sound from the on-board mic for atmosphere.
Rear facing mic would be more useful with 90 degree spacing rather than 120. Would still be handy to record with rear facing mics while viewing the levels. For 4-ch recording it would be much better to have 4 equally spaced mics ( I may hack the H2 to make change the angles).
So, the major downside is that there's no analog volume control before the A/D converters in line mode, and only a 3 position level switch for the mic. If the volume is set below 100 (which Zoom confirm is unity gain) then the level meters won't show if your sound is distorting. It's possible that the A/Ds are working at 24bit all the time, in which case, using the upper range of volume control from 100 to 127 is useful if you're recording at 16 bit.
With a 24bit recording there's no point at all in using the digital volume control ever.
After a fair amount of use I always leave the H2's volume control at 100, and record at 16bits. The 3 positions for mic sensitivity are well chosen, so at the moment I'm a happy user.
At the price, no other downsides.
andy butler
Rating:
- Well worth it!.Simple to use and very versatile.Admittedly i haven't tried the competition but this is as good as minidisc at the very least!.Using a plug-in mic,as one reviewer noted,is not very good.But one reason i bought it is because i got fed up with carrying external mic's and leads around all the time.With this beauty it's a case of pressing the record button twice and off you go.At £60 cheaper than its nearest rival it's a steal.
Rating:
- Simple device with great resultsIt's a great recorder with good quality, doesn't need any tricky software, since it can be used as a card reader.
Very sensitive to handling noise - so find a good place for recording.
Good value for money
Rating:
- Excellent recorderMine arrived from absolute music solutions and came with all the extras (UK)power addapter usb cable etc.
All you need is two AA batteries and you're up and running.
I did have an excellent Olympus voice recorder, but for live music this is streets ahead, because you can set the record volumes on the H2 but everything is fixed on a voice recoder and music is distorted at high and low pitch.
This unit is fairly straightforward to use once you get used to the duel function buttons.
The transfer to computer is slow by USB, I think it is only standard USB, but a card reader is the easy answer to that.
Also a small built in speaker would be nice for playback checking.Easy answer is a pair of small portable speakers or phones.
I gave 5 stars because the above two points are only personal niggles, the recorder performance is very good and I think you would have to pay serious money for any improvement you could notice.