Dave Courvoisier's Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Zoom H4’

‘Love love love this unit!  See HERE for the specs and capabilities.  If you look in the archives, you’ll see I’ve often blogged about the Zoom H4.

For the price and features, it’s among the top buys in the field.

I may be making a huge mistake…but I’ve got my eye on other possibilities for a portable recording unit (see future blogs — don’t want to let the cat out of the bag), and I’d LOVE to see this recorder go to a voice actor who could really use it, and will take care of it.

For my part, I promise to agree to a fair price, to pack it well, and to ship it promptly.  Let’s talk!  Oh, and I’ll throw in a 2-Gig SD card.

CourVO
702.610.6288

The Zoom H4 is my favorite hand-held recorder. 

Many's the time I've had to pull out the trusty portable to pull me out of a jam on the road. 

Now, the Zoom is being offered at an obscenely low price.  The flyer's below, and HERE is the website.

CourVO

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OK, I know this is pathetic (the picture anyway), but can I share with you a veeeery cool gizmo?

It’s the Eye-Fi Wireless SD card.

It looks like a regular 2GB memory card like you’d put in your camera…but it automatically connects to your computer, or Photobucket, or TypePad, FaceBook, SnapFish or about 20 other online photo services through your home wi-fi network. 

I mean, you take the picture, and alla sudden the pic appears on your computer and/or your online photo service.

Now, I realize this is the ultimate in lazy…but just think — no more card readers, no more messing with handling fragile memory cards, or USB cables, no more downloading pics through Windows Explorer…take the picture, and instantaneously, it’s available on your hard drive.  Cool!

I took this pic around 2am, immediately found it on my photobucket site, chose to "share" it to TypePad (my blogging service), and bingo…there it is (‘told you it was pathetic).

The Eye-Fi SD card is widely available on the net.  Mostly it’s quoted for $99….but CostCo Online has it for $89…and a friend told me he saw it on WOOT for that price yesterday.

‘Not sure how this applies to voice-acting YET….but I’ll find a way. 

Next up…seeing if the Eye-Fi card will similarly do an automatic upload of my sound files from the Zoom H4, portable professional voice recorder, which uses a 2GB SD card.

Now, THAT would be cool….veeeery cool!

CourVO

‘Seems like just about every equipment manufacturer is coming out with similar versions of some sort of professional hand-held recorder.

This is an ad I got from BSW today, and hilites a unit I hadn’t seen before, although Olympus holds the corner on the market of low-priced hand-held consumer-level digital recorders..

I’ve blogged before about the unit I purchased last year, the Zoom H4.  Now, there’s a Zoom H2 as well. See HERE for more information in a previous blog.

In addition, Sony, Edirol, Marantz, M-Audio, Tascam, Denon, and even BSW (which has it’s own offering in this now-crowded field) all are marketing units with similar features, and competitive pricing.

All have their commendable features, but if I may, a suggestion or two about what the Voice-Actor really needs from a recorder like this:

1)  An easy-to-read digital display
2)  SD and/or SDHC-card compatible (up to 4 Gigs if possible)
3)  rechargeable battery
3)  capability of recording in .wav, .mp3, and .wma as a minimum
4)  capability of recording at two or more sampling frequencies (44.1 kHz, 48 kHz, and 96 kHz preferable)
5)  easy linking, uploading/downloading to computer via USB
6)  built-in compression, limiting, and/or mic emulation software (if you want)
7)  a dedicated "pause" button
8)  input and output level and gain controls
9)  capable of recording directly to your computer as a USB audio interface

There’s more of course, and most of these units are feature-rich, but make sure you read the fine print to get the gizmo that’s right for you. 

I did a lot of looking into this, and bought the Zoom H4 for a portable studio set-up.  It works great, but I must admit it’s actually more than I need, as it is probably more appropriate for someone hoping to record garage-band stuff.  It has 4-track mixing capability, and accepts XLR plugs from mics and guitars.

CourVO