no reviews on the zoom r16?
- Thread starter 60ndown
- Start date
ranjam
New member
I have the predecessor; the HD16CD, and I like it. My friend has the R16, and it works fine. Anything we've recorded together on either of our Zoom recorders sounds similar and sounds more than good enough for demo work or a promo pack. However, having said that, depending on your own preferences, I like the HD16CD just a little 'better'. The R16 works off of SD cards, and depending on how many tracks you use, the 1GB card Zoom 'generously' gives you in the package is woefully inadequate. The HD16CD uses an internal hard drive, and 80GB is more than any SD card I have ever seen.
Both have drum samples and pads for making your own drum 'tracks', and they sound usable. Both have phantom power and Hi-Z inputs for direct bass or whatever. What I don't like about the R16 is no track is automatically 'saved', where the HD16CD saves up to 10 virtual takes on each track (you don't 'erase' over a previous take).
The bottom line is if it suits you, it'll work fine, and you be making music. The little screen is not my favorite for editing, so always use the Cubase program bundled. If there's Mac drivers, you'll be OK.
Both have drum samples and pads for making your own drum 'tracks', and they sound usable. Both have phantom power and Hi-Z inputs for direct bass or whatever. What I don't like about the R16 is no track is automatically 'saved', where the HD16CD saves up to 10 virtual takes on each track (you don't 'erase' over a previous take).
The bottom line is if it suits you, it'll work fine, and you be making music. The little screen is not my favorite for editing, so always use the Cubase program bundled. If there's Mac drivers, you'll be OK.
ranjam
New member
My bad; the R24 has the drums. I guess I should look closer before I say something, but we've recorded on it maybe a dozen times. Everything else I stand by; it sounds fine, and not that different (if at all) from my HD16CD. But we did fill SD cards very easy. We tried recording a live show off of the board into a stereo track, and only got three songs recorded! I'm sure if you set the sampling and bit rate you can do better, but no auto-save still scares me.
They're about $400 in Canada, so it's not a huge gamble. The R24 is $100 more, so that might be worth it just for the drum machine. You're 'stuck' with 24 bit/96KHz, where the R16 can do 16/24 bit, but uses 44.1KHz for a sampling rate. Maybe that's why it uses less SD memory.
They're about $400 in Canada, so it's not a huge gamble. The R24 is $100 more, so that might be worth it just for the drum machine. You're 'stuck' with 24 bit/96KHz, where the R16 can do 16/24 bit, but uses 44.1KHz for a sampling rate. Maybe that's why it uses less SD memory.
My sons play bluegrass music and so we bought the Zoom R16 and the Rode Nt4 microphone. This was an effort to record them live, and get decent sound. I found that when I went through the sound board to get the sound, it was hit or miss. Sometimes the sound engineer made adjustments that just made the recording bad when we reviewed it the next day. We never knew how it was going to turn out, and we could not control the situation during the event. We used the Zoom for the recording for the first time a few weeks ago. I originally posted a video review of the NT 4 mic on Amazon. I was so pleased with the sound that I posted here on this board under microphones. I suppose the video review could also be a review of the Zoom R16 although I don't talk about any of the features because we only used it as a recorder. We did the two inputs from the NT4 and the Zoom supplied the phantom power, but we had the Zoom plugged into ac power and not off the batteries, and we had the standing bass fed from the pickup into the Hiz input. The zoom worked perfect and we now had three tracks to mix down that were just pure tracks with no adjustments from a sound engineer. I felt that for the money (400) it was a better deal then just buying an HN4 and sticking that up there on the stage. We placed the Nt4 right up behind the regular condenser mic and left the zoom on the front of the stage.
A couple of other things I would like to try is; can I use the Nt4 to feed the zoom and also the main sound board? I wonder what unit would supply the Phantom power and would the main board burn out the zoom? And I would also like to place individual pickups with wireless units on each instrument. But because of the cost that will have to come later.
You can hear what we got as far as sound from the zoom by going to Amazon and looking up Rode NT4 mic, there are only 5 reviews there so it would not be hard to find. I am new here and can not post links yet. Doug
A couple of other things I would like to try is; can I use the Nt4 to feed the zoom and also the main sound board? I wonder what unit would supply the Phantom power and would the main board burn out the zoom? And I would also like to place individual pickups with wireless units on each instrument. But because of the cost that will have to come later.
You can hear what we got as far as sound from the zoom by going to Amazon and looking up Rode NT4 mic, there are only 5 reviews there so it would not be hard to find. I am new here and can not post links yet. Doug
Wish
Never Sarcastic....Honest
Doug,
When you record your son's band, in addition to the nt4, you also might want to record 2 tracks with the Zoom's internal mics as room mics, to give you even more flexibility with 5 tracks for mixing. The internal mics aren't that bad....they are usable.
Just a thought.
When you record your son's band, in addition to the nt4, you also might want to record 2 tracks with the Zoom's internal mics as room mics, to give you even more flexibility with 5 tracks for mixing. The internal mics aren't that bad....they are usable.
Just a thought.
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Wish14, Okay, actually I never thought about that but you are right, there are two more mics that would be essentially free to use. Free meaning setup time would be nil. I hate being at the front of the stage as everyone waits on me and for some reason some piece of gear doesn't want to start. Doug
60ndown; Over the years of recording my kids I wish I could go back and get a refund on some of the money I wasted on buying gear that was purchased simply on price! If you add all that up it would be over $500. I was always skimping and looking for a cheap way out. I actually bought a couple of cheap mp3 players that had line inputs so I could get the sound off the sound boards. Naturally they recorded the music in mp3 format and I had to convert it to wav to edit it into the videos. It was better then the camera mic but not great. Then I tried a $150 dollar mic on the camera and that was better but still not good enough.
Fortunately in this case my son bought the zoom and I bought the mic. So there is $1000 dollars of gear to just make a live recording but we have a useful zoom that my son can doodle with in composing, and a mic that works well. We are going to bring it to the recording studio next week. No idea if it will be used, but it is just another mic that could be tested and listened to.
My younger son, (the fiddle player) and I have both learned this hard lesson about trying to get by. We are much more cautious now about getting something and looking at whether it really will meet our needs. If not we should really learn to hold off till we can afford to buy what is going to meet the need. And then we usually have something that has resale value, where if you go cheap you end up with something that cannot easily be resold.
If you look up KPearlyedition on youtube you can see that the first videos were done with mp3 players off the sound board and that is better then probably 80% of what you find on youtube, but the last 5 or 6 we made are using the Zoom and the Rode NT4 and they are getting close to perfect for a live recording. You can see the Rode if you full screen the video, it is on it's own stand right behind the sound board condenser mic.
Doug
Fortunately in this case my son bought the zoom and I bought the mic. So there is $1000 dollars of gear to just make a live recording but we have a useful zoom that my son can doodle with in composing, and a mic that works well. We are going to bring it to the recording studio next week. No idea if it will be used, but it is just another mic that could be tested and listened to.
My younger son, (the fiddle player) and I have both learned this hard lesson about trying to get by. We are much more cautious now about getting something and looking at whether it really will meet our needs. If not we should really learn to hold off till we can afford to buy what is going to meet the need. And then we usually have something that has resale value, where if you go cheap you end up with something that cannot easily be resold.
If you look up KPearlyedition on youtube you can see that the first videos were done with mp3 players off the sound board and that is better then probably 80% of what you find on youtube, but the last 5 or 6 we made are using the Zoom and the Rode NT4 and they are getting close to perfect for a live recording. You can see the Rode if you full screen the video, it is on it's own stand right behind the sound board condenser mic.
Doug
chuckduffy
Well-known member
It is $500 dollars for a stereo pair of SDC mounted in a single package X/Y config and ready to go for stereo live recording. The NT4 is a great piece. This, a boom stand and a hand-held recorder with required adapters and a few minutes sweeping the boom to get the right placement will get you some very good live stereo recordings.