@ludicrouSpeed let us know how you get on with it - I've hear the H1 can get a bit of movement/body noise? I imagine that would be with any hand-held recorder to a certain degree tho..
Also, don't buy into the 96kHz thing unless you are doing scientific testing - the science tells us thus nobody can hear the difference :)
Haha, yeah I know that we can’t hear up to it those frequencies, but it can’t hurt, right? I mean, what am I saying, it probably could hurt in some way, lol.
I’m sure the movement thing is probably real. It’s one of the cheapest portable recorders you can buy, but I did hear a warmer sound in the H1 compared to the dr-05, particularly on voice recording… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lAMoN17mLk
The battery drains when switched off? I think that has put me off
Well, after some more testing, it seems like the battery it came with drained much faster than the other batteries I have tried. But have only tried really cheap batteries so far…
I talked to the seller, and they said I could bring it back for a trade… So that’s great.
Since then, I’ve been pretty happy with it tho… Don’t know if I’ll bother trading it in.
I’m gonna try it with some Duracell or other high quality battery. In fact, I have a bunch of high quality rechargeables around somewhere, and a super-dooper battery charger, so I might just start using those again if their not completely dead.
The battery life so far has been a bit inconsistent
Do tell us. I read that the battery issue has been fixed in the later production runs. I also read somewhere that it can be fixed by reversing the polarity of a component in the board inside.
that would work i suppose, until you want to switch in on quickly, by the time it’s come out of your pocket, in order to record something sudden and before it’s all over
I already posted something similar in another thread about recording here that dropped like a brick:
Love my Tascam DR-05. It’s one of those slick devices that have a clearly defined area of use and do all the relevant things extremely well. The ergonomics is great. The UI is very simple to use. The microphone quality is good. It also has many useful features that make sense in a sound recorder, like file markers, low-pass filter, 1.5 playback, ability to split files and several modes to control input levels in different situations.
But the coolest thing, in my opinion, is that Tascam still releases firmware updates for it. They added clearer fonts and overdubbing, for example. Overdubbing makes this a great master recorder. Not sure why people would complain about line in quality. I recently recorded a track off OP-1 and Big Sky. It was crystal-clear and had the correct volume. Didn’t need any tweaking on computer at all.
One note on sampling, though. It has a great stereo image, which is good if you’re using it as a camera mic, but that also means it’s not highly directional. For sampling in a noisy environment you would probably want an external microphone. I am guessing you could get highly directional sound with default mics if you average both channels during post-processing, but I haven’t found any free software that does that yet. Think I can get this effect in Audacity in multiple steps using inversion and stereo-to-mono conversion, but haven’t tried yet.
Zoom H1 looks very similar, except it uses X/Y mike placement. Not sure how much it matters. However, there is a meaningful difference in features. H1 works as a USB mic, so it would be simpler to use for YouTube videos. But AFAIK it does not have overdubbing, so it’s less suitable as a master recorder. It also can’t provide Phantom power, so it’s not compatible with condenser microphones.
Yeah, when I tried using H1 as USB mic it was all crackly and useless, so I wouldn’t count on that function. It also gets a lot of wind noise W/out a quality filter thingey.
But it’s tiny, and the stereo image is great. The autolevel works great. And it’s really simple. So I’m really enjoying it. Also real handy for sampling from my record player headphone output which isn’t near my DAW.
All that being said, it’s my first field recorder, so I rly have no point of reference.