Did You Hear That?
Two portable products from Zoom make life easier for DIY recording musicians of all stripes.  BY STEVEN VASQUEZ

By this time I’m assuming anybody reading this has done everything short of selling themselves on the street to acquire a Morpheus Droptune as a result of reading the last installment of Headroom. right? Right. Well, this time around, we're focusing on a couple of products from Zoom. Each will put you out a few hundred bucks, but the Zoom R16 and Zoom H4n are among the top DIY recording hardware guaranteed make your life as a musician easier.


First up is the portable mixer/recorder/interface, the Zoom R16 (above, left). This is pretty much everything you could want for capturing live sound in a convenient package, about the size of your keyboard. So let’s get some basics out of the way:

It features 8-track recording with available playback on 16 tracks, all phantom power capable too. That means if you take your time, you could record an entire album on this.

It has a Mackie control emulation board to manually set tracking levels to let you mix whatever you’re putting out with your own personal finesse.

But wait, you say you want to also master your songs? Great, because as well as being a mixer it’s also an audio interface that comes bundled with Cubase Le, so there’s really no excuse now, is there?

This superior ability in music production can all be yours for $399.97 give or take a cent. The R16 also saves to your computer, SD cards, or standard thumb drives.





Another product from Zoom is the H4n Handy Recorder(above, right)—which, if you haven’t figured out by now, Zoom is God when it comes to recording anything. (They also make cameras but that’s another article.) This gadget is something I use more often than oxygen. I have actually owned an H4n for about a year and it’s the most revolutionary purchase I’ve made since my first iPod. It’s a portable 4-track recorder. Not portable like the R16 mind you, but portable like a Walkman.  I keep mine in my backpack and listen to the song I’m working on while I go to work.

Mics. The H4n has two condenser microphones placed in an x/y pattern (a Zoom signature) that can be adjusted to capture an individual sound or a broad field.

Two inputs that serve 1/4 inch and XLR lines allow direct recording into the unit at a 96 kHz bit rate. I have personally used this feature in the 4 track recording mode to track drums, bass, and guitar, and have had nothing but amazing results. Much like the bulkier yet more professional R16, it also supplies phantom power.

Something really great is the automatic recording feature. Translated from geekanese, that means you can set a certain volume level to set the recorder to start and once the signal falls below the level it cuts out again. No running back and forth between songs, riffs, set, rudiments, whatever you do with yourself. It’s smart enough to know the good from the bad at the intelligent price of $299.54.

If all that isn’t enough for you, it’s also loaded with preamps, tuners, metronomes, an interface and it comes bundled with a 48-track version of Cubase. (I put a tripod on mine and use it as a “sound gun.”)



Thanks for coming back and hope to see you next time.

If you've got any suggestions, comments, or questions—or if you have equipment you'd like reviewed—give Steven a shout: svasquez86@gmail.com



MORE HEADROOM ARTICLES:

“Drop Everything!”
Morpheus Drop-Tune: an octave guitar effects pedal is reviewed