Daily Archives: January 1, 2007

Recently, SeguinSound acquired a Zoom H4 Recorder. I had been looking at various portable recorders for quite some time that were capable of performing the following functions:

1. Be battery powered so that I might take the recorder into the field to record sound effects without lugging a laptop and audio interface with me.
2. Include built-in microphones to be used (even if they weren’t of incredibly good quality) for making things like recording my student’s lessons very easy (I teach guitar, piano and voice) so that I could post the recording on my website for them to review later.
3. Provide sampling rates of 24-bit/96khz for high-definition recording.
4. Provide XLR, phantom powered inputs for powering my shotgun microphone in doing said field work back at point #1.
5. Standard stuff like not look impossible to use and get decent reviews by others, etc.
6. Not be incredibly costly.

There were a few contendors on the table that ALMOST met these specifications, including the M-Audio, Edirol and Marantz. Fortunately, before I was able to pick up one of these, Zoom introduced the H4 at the low-ball price of $299. Amazing!

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