Zoom H4 Recorder

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Just went onto my Amazon account, one of the unsolicited adds was for the Zoom H4, so out of interest I had a look, then checked the feedback, the following complaint was listed.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R3JBVJGJC1FSAK/ref=cm_cr_pr_viewpnt#R3JBVJGJC1FSAK

Yachtsman1.

[fh1805]

The complainant states that they plugged the external mic into the line-in socket. That would give an immediate mismatch in signal levels. The mic will be delivering a signal of much lower strength than the line-in is expecting. In order to get an "acceptable" recorded level, the signal gain will have to have been increased somewhere (either in the Zoom at time of recording or in the audio editing software in post-production). Either way, it is quite likely that the signal to noise ratio was so small that the noise was amplified way beyond what would normally be expected. The next reviewer commented that they had always found the in-built mics to be good enough - and that's my experience, too. Whether I run my old Zoom H4 on batteries or mains adapter, there is no hum when using the in-built mics.

regards,

Peter

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Hi Peter

You may have recently read on here I used my Olympus LS10 recorder as a mike for the Panasonic FZ150 camera which gave me the benefit of an editable sound track when recording video, other than a set up problem on the mike & camera (zoom setting activated on both, then de-activated which cured the problem) the sound from both is excellent. However, I'm not sure about the Zoom but the Olympus has external mikes as an extra. I've also tried it with a battery powered tie clip mike which gave good results.

Regards Eric

Yachtsman1