Buffalo Live! Music Podcast - 2 Songs From Buffalo

I’m sitting here listening to some of the first field recordings I’ve made with a new recorder, the Zoom H2, and I’m really impressed. I’ve got it plugged into my KRK Studio monitors and it’s sounding awesome.

I ordered this thinking it would make a great little interview recorder instead of the Marantz PMD-660 I currently use. It’s small enough to fit into my camera bag and save carrying one more thing into a podcast session.

It arrived today after a several week wait. I ordered mine from BSW, who in all fairness, advised me that there would be a delay. It actually came earlier than I was expecting and caught me by surprise.

By coincidence, I had a podcast recording session scheduled for that evening, so I quickly played around and learned how to use it. It really wasn’t hard. I had the basics down before I even cracked the manual, it’s that easy.

So I took it along and decided I’d use it for the interview. But just to see how it would work, I set it up and recorded the show as well. Now, I was also recording the show on my Fostex MR-HD-8, I wasn’t afraid of screwing up. I expect the comparison between the two will be interesting.

But I’m listening to the recordings on the H2 now, and they are really amazing. Way better than I expected. I set the little recorder on a small shelf at the side of the room the band played in and let it go. It was in stereo 180-deg. mode with a limiter set, rather than ALC. It’s nice that they give you more choices than just ALC On/Off. You can have several ALC settings, Compression or Limiting in several varieties. The bad was a Celtic/Folk style band (The Dustmen) and not excessively loud, so I had it in the middle mic sensitivity setting and it worked out just fine.

One thing I discovered that I didn’t remember seeing mentioned in the manual is that the little red light below the mic grill that lets you know which side it is recording on, will flicker if you are driving the inputs too hard. Just back the level down until it goes solid and you’re set. Of course, the VU meters in the LCD display help too.

I haven’t listened to the band interview yet. I set it in the mode where it records 2-channels off both the front and the back and set it in the middle of the table we sat at. I don’t expect any surprises based on the quality of the music recording. The test here will be whether it responds to the quieter-spoken portions of the interview.

Later, I took it along with me to another club where another bad was playing. I wasn’t set for a podcast, but just for the sake of seeing what this recorder would do, I set it out in a couple places and recorded their last set of the night. The results were amazing. While it won’t be mistaken for a recording with a direct feed off the sound system or several individual mics strategically placed, it sounds way better than I expected. For a pocket sized recorder, this gets an A+. It captures exactly the sound I want for my podcast - that is a live show experience. The quality is good, plus the ambiance of the crowd is there at just the right amount. I could easily do some podcasts just with the H2.

If you’re thinking of recording live music, this may be a very useful tool.

Some more cool things about the H2:

It records on a SD Card. You can either plug the H2 into your USB port and transfer the recordings to your computer, or just plug the flash card into a card reader. I’ve tried it both ways.

It has both mic inputs and line inputs. They are stereo mini plugs and if you plug into either, they disable the internal mics automatically. Power is supplied for little electret mics.

It offers a wide choice of recording quality options from WAV in either 96k 48k 44.1k in 16 or 24 bit, or MP3 in flavors from VBR to 320k on down to less than 64k. Imagine how long you could record voice in that mode.

It has a built-in metronome, and chromatic tuner.

If the little stand that comes with it isn’t enough, they include a post that simulates a mic body and fits into a standard mic clip on a microphone stand. Or the thread is the same as a camera, so you can use a camera tripod.

They give you a foam windscreen too. It doesn’t seem like a big deal, but trust me, you will need it eventually.

It runs off 2 AA batteries, either Alkaline or rechargeables. A spare set is as close as the nearest store. An AC adapter come with as well and for transfers, it powers up off the USB port.

It works as a USB Sound card. Plug it in and the mic in, line in and headphone out function as a sound card.

The SD and SDHC cards it takes are getting cheap and big. I got a 2GB for it. It gives me 13 hours recording time at 320k MP3.

There’s a great, in-depth review of the H2 at O’Reilly.com

I’m sure I’m forgetting some other detail, but I honestly can’t find a bad thing to say about it, except that it’s so darned cheap and handy, everyone is going to get one and have their own podcasts!

Click the player to hear The Dustmen play Whiskey In The Jar. live. It was recorded with the H2 as a WAV file, converted to 320k MP3 with LAME then normalized in Cool Edit. No other editing was done, although I could. Just a sample of what the recorder might do. It was sitting on a ledge about 10 feet in front of the band.

 

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