Zoom your environment.

H4 - has nothing to do with aliens. The mobile recording studio by ZOOM comes up with some interesting benefits and seems to fit for many kind of needs. Recording a podcast or vocal performance seems to become very easy.

As anyone who record vocals knows, just buying a microphone and soundcard don't helps for all needs. More tools are required to get a good sounding result, such as a compressors and limiter or effects like reverb and flanger.

So the H4 becomes more interesting, because it already comes up with "studio quality" built in effects. It also includes some effects for guitar and bass recording - but as with most digital amp and microphone simulations, the result might not fit to your interests.



How it's working? The ZOOM H4 primaly records anything with two integrated microphones. This allows the H4 to record anything in stereo - with a left and a right channel.

To ensure your recording finds it place in the handheld, the recording would get stored on Secure Digital (SD) Media cards. ZOOM choosed a 24bit, 96kHz recording possibility. According on that, it's possible to store the recording in WAV or MP3 file format directly on the SD-Card.

Taking a new technology SD card with 2GB storage, it's possible to record up to 34 hours as 128kbps MP3. Seems that this is enough for a vocal take for a few song ideas.

Once your recording is finished, you could use the built in studio and start using the effects on your recording. This part is funny, but as well - as it's not possible to mix the recording up, for e.g. with an instrumental mix, it just make sence to correct the recording, e.g. when it's too silent or noisy.

For bands it's also possible to plugin an external microphone, using XLR. Than it's possible to record two sources at once - which get stored as seperate tracks on the SD-Card.

Once you're finished with your recording, you could "download" the files directly from the SD-Card using a reader located in your computer, or you plugin the H4 via USB.

From my point of view: The ZOOM H4 is a great tool to store vocal ideas or record anything anywhere. Using the vocal recording directly in a song should also be possible with good quality.

The ZOOM H4 is about USD 250 to USD 300 - so it could become a good and affortable solution instead of buying a soundcard, preamp and microphone - which could end up at USD 500 very fast - without being flexible as the H4 could be.