I have a Zoom H1, and there are things I like and dislike about it. First, though it has a tiny speaker and allows you to play anything you've recorded with the device, there are no beeps for power on, activating things, etc. Next, if you record, then listen to something, even if you pause the playback, the first tap of record doesn't start recording, it just puts you back in record mode. If you have headphones plugged in, you'll hear the monitoring start again. There is no way to know if recording is occurring or if its stopped. You wouldn't think it would be possible, but I've lost recordings I wanted to capture because I got essentially the inverse of what I wanted You can put it on auto level, but then you have to listen to it up and down and up and down, or you can adjust the gain yourself, but it goes very slowly, even if the button is held. changing this in the recording, by the time you reached the lower setting, the thing you wanted to avoid clipping has since clipped. It's best to record at a mid to low gain and normalize in post. The system has a very insane noise pattern to it, you will want a sample of this noise recorded at a higher gain setting to use as a template for noise reduction. If you attempt to use compression, and then make up gain with recordings produced on this device, you will be squashing the dynamic range of the audio, and allowing the noise to creep in, same as if you normalize.
All these things being said, the H1 can produce some really good sounding recordings if you do it right. It's a sub-hundred dollar recorder, and its a stereo one at that, using an X-Y mic configuration. It has the ability to transfer from the recorder to the computer, saving you the trouble of removing the SD card and sneaker netting it over to your machine. It can also work as a sound card, its another mode of operation that you can access when you plug it in. SO, you have transfer mode, and sound card mode, not official names, because I can't read the screen, so I don't know what it says. In sound card mode, you can use its mics as input in your DAW or sound editor, and output to its speaker. You can plug the recorder into a set of computer speakers, or a stereo system if you have a breakaway cable, etc. The only downside to this mode is that it almost could be a mini interface, but plugging something into the mic port disallows the mics from working, makes sense honestly, but if it had a line in capability, or the mic port could serve dual duty, you could almost do a podcast with it, having something like your phone plugged into the line in, if you wanted to demonstrate a particular app.
I'll provide a button layout. I'll start by saying I don't remember the three switches on the back of the unit, but I know what they do, just not in which order. I think I know though, and I will tell you what I think I remember, but I'm just saying now, this could be incorrect, so maybe you would want to double check. If you turn the unit over, holding the recorder in your hand so that the big round button with the ring of ridges faces away from you, and you feel a hold in the center of the device which should face towards you, this is the back. Now, rotate the device such that the mics face to your right. So, if you have it facing correctly, the ringed big button should face away from you, the mics should be to your right, and to your left, you will feel 4 little bumps, and a set of slits on the end of the device. Those are actually for the speaker. Now, In this orientation, left is off, and right is on. From top to bottom, the first one I think is low cut, its supposed to help with wind noise. The second is recording format, left is wave, right is MP3, and finally, auto level, left is off, right is on. OK, now we pass the section of what I speculate, / half remember, what I tell you now, I know for certain. SO we're all on the same page, just sort of rotate the device, keeping the same orientation, just making the mic face left and the speaker grill right. On the surface, the front if you're holding it the way I indicated, there is only one button, this is the record button, and its got a ring of ridges around it. The small screen is directly left of that button. Moving to the bottom, from left to right you have the headphone / speaker jack, volume up, volume down, and a plastic door, which when uncovered, is where you insert the micro SD card. Same thing on the top surface, start from the left, where the mics are. The first thing is the input jack. Plugging something in here disrupts the internals and uses that instead. Next are gain up and down. Now there are three buttons sort of related to one another. In the middle of this group is a button with a raised dot on it. This is the play pause button, to the left of that is the left arrow, or rewind or previous track button, and to the right of that is right arrow, next track, etc. The final button is the delete key. When you get onto a file you don't want, you press that, then confirm by pressing record. To the right of this is the power switch. If you press it in one direction, it is spring loaded, this is power. You press it and hold it for a second or so, and the recorder comes on. The other direction, it will lock in place, this is hold, and stops you from inadvertently stopping your recording or so forth, it basically locks all buttons until you put the switch in the center position. And finally, to the right of that is the USB mini port for transferring, powering, and sound card mode.
Facts with Tom MacDonald, Adam Calhoun, and Dax
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