Zoom R20 recording limitations

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Hi I bought the Zoom R20 for the band in our studio.

We normally just jam and put the recording device on record and play for 3 hours.

But the zoom R20 stops the recording after 45 min on 120 bpm I have found some info on a old forum post that if you set the bpm of the project too 40 you can extend the recording for a project to 2 hours and 15 minutes. Still to short for recording of our jam session.

Does anybody knows of a work around on this issue so that we can extend the recording time to lets say 4 hours? (maybe by editing the firmware bin file)

This is from this forum but a different post.

Maximum Recording Time (min:sec)


Time Signature40 BPM120 BPM250 BPM
3/4101:1533:4516:12
4/4135:0045:0021:36
6/8101:1533:4516:12
 
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Unless you're using a click track, i.e., the time signature and bpm actually mean something, set the BPM as low as you can and time signature to 4/4. The manual (RTFM) says "A project can have a maximum of 1350 bars." with the 40bpm, 4/4 signature, yields the 135 min, so unless you can lower the BPM even more, that's probably the max. Why not just close the project and open another? NOBODY wants to listen to 4 hours of anything, so smaller projects will allow you to scan through them quickly, and clip out anything worth spending time on, would be my suggestion. Set an alarm on someone's phone, take a 5 minute break for a beer or smoke or both halfway, and close the project, open a new one.
 
That, to me, is one of the failings of the R20 vs the R24. When I first stuck a 16GB SD card into the R24, set 8 track to record and hit the button, I would check to see if it was still recording. To my surprise, it lasted 6 hours which was the entire event.. Each of the 8 tracks at 44.1K/16bit was 2GB in size, which filled the card. Now I'm using 32GB cards and running 24 bit.

I don't know why Zoom chose the layout they did, but it might have something to do with the editing capabilities.
 
keith.rogers said:
Unless you're using a click track, i.e., the time signature and bpm actually mean something, set the BPM as low as you can and time signature to 4/4. The manual (RTFM) says "A project can have a maximum of 1350 bars." with the 40bpm, 4/4 signature, yields the 135 min, so unless you can lower the BPM even more, that's probably the max. Why not just close the project and open another? NOBODY wants to listen to 4 hours of anything, so smaller projects will allow you to scan through them quickly, and clip out anything worth spending time on, would be my suggestion. Set an alarm on someone's phone, take a 5 minute break for a beer or smoke or both halfway, and close the project, open a new one.
Click to expand...
What you are suggesting is the plan for our next jam indeed
 
TalismanRich said:
That, to me, is one of the failings of the R20 vs the R24. When I first stuck a 16GB SD card into the R24, set 8 track to record and hit the button, I would check to see if it was still recording. To my surprise, it lasted 6 hours which was the entire event.. Each of the 8 tracks at 44.1K/16bit was 2GB in size, which filled the card. Now I'm using 32GB cards and running 24 bit.

I don't know why Zoom chose the layout they did, but it might have something to do with the editing capabilities.
Click to expand...
Good to know I will take a look at the Zoom R24 then too

From the tech specs on the Zoom website

Maximum recording time 200 minutes/1 GB (44.1 kHz 16-bit, mono tracks)
 
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