Comment on Zoom H1 Handy Portable Digital Recorder by Bob Costa.
Great but not idiot proof,
I own a Zoom H4N. I bought the H1 so I could do casual recording of live music while out in bars. The Pros: It has great mikes, like all ZOOMs. It does a nice job of being directional (and minimizing crowd conversations, etc). At one gig, it was set a couple of feet in front of us on the table, and picked up almost no talking. It is VERY tiny, and you could probably turn it on and stick it to a wall with some double-sided carpet tape (getting above the crowd noise). I am working out how to bungie cord it to a pole. Although starting it up take a full minute with a 16GB card, once it is on it is unobtrusive and fits in my pocket even with a mini-tripod attached.
The Big Con. The auto-level will drive you insane. After recording three different bands, I can say that unless I learn more than I already know, using the autolevel is useless in a band/bar environment. It will record at full volume for a while (5-15 seconds of the song) , and then dramatically cut the gain (50% or more) to the point that the recording can really only be used if you get with an editing program later on and fix the screwed up volume levels. I would not even give the unedited recording to the band, as the volume switching is insanely bad, IMHO, the auto level switching algorithms need to be reconsidered and tweaked for a less-techie environment. Perhaps faster and more gradual adjustments? But I am not a pro-engineer, just an amateur with enough knowledge to be dangerous. I have worked with other AGC circuits that are much more useful.
I am going this afternoon to record another band, and will try it with manual-only settings to see if that is practical. I suspect it will have its own issues, since bands tend to change levels from song to song. Monitoring is not practical, and adjusting volumes is tedious. This device is VERY sensitive to handling noise. I will post an update to this review if I learn anything useful about how to solve this problem.
I also agree with the other comments to get a RedHead windscreen. They are awesome, whereas foam windscreens are mostly useless. The door for the MicroSD card seems very fragile. I thought I broke mine opening it. Be careful installing it, and then never touch it again. If you really want to monitor recordings, get some good noise-isolation ear plugs, and forget earbuds or cheap headphones. I did NOT buy the accessory kit, since phones, windscreen, etc are useless. Buy ala carte.
My hope was to have a real one-button solution to recording bands (set it and forget it), and I am not sure this device meets that target yet. I have also not yet tried a calmer environment like a solo performer. That is in the plans for tomorrow. The AGC may work fine there.
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