Re: more H2 hurtful truths
- From: "chickenhead" <kuNOrtshapiroSPAM@NOSPAMhotTHANKSmail dawt cawm>
- Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2007 22:04:59 -0700
Just got my 4GB card. Yeehaw! IIRC, it was about $35 at New Egg. So now I
ought to be able to do almost 4 hours of 48K 24-bit stereo, or almost 2
hours of 4 channel. The guy from Giant Squid seems pretty confident about
his mics with the unit too.
It'll kind of suck though if instead of dropping $235 on an H2 and 4GB SD
card, I could have just bought a 4GB T.Sonic mp3 player for $80 and gotten
the same fidelity, smaller size, and a radio and .mp3 player too.
It BETTER sound better at 24 bits, or I'll be ticked off.
I'm still not sure whether these things will handle an 8GB card properly --
Not that I plan on dropping that much dough on a card anyways.
"lukejazz" <lukejazz2k@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1193923408.071401.111900@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Oct 31, 7:47 pm, "Chickenhead"
<kuNOSPAMrtshaTHANKSp...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Nice playin', man! NSU is lucky to have you!
Sounds like you suffered from the same H2 audio issues -- The recording
sounds remarkably similar in frequency response. Like mine, the audience
and room noises are also coming through loud and clear. Probably louder
than it seemed when you were recording it. At least that's how it was
for
me. It's always that way when I'm using omnidirectional mics or
distance-mic'ing.
I guess it's the trade-off in mic design, i.e., whether to keep the bass
and
do omni mics which will pick up EVERYTHING from every direction, or lose
low-end definition at a distance or off-axis by using a
pressure-gradient.
I wouldn't expect Zoom to be able to afford to produce
near-zero-proximity-effect directional mics at the price point of the H2.
Now if you happen to have a spare $1800 for a pair of Earthworks SR30 or
SR30/HC, I suspect it would be less of an issue.
Anyways, like I did, if you imported the H2's .mp3 files into an audio
editor (like Audacity) to normalize the levels, then you had to re-encode
them back to .MP3 to post the clips. There's probably some fidelity loss
simply from that process alone. If we had been working with .wav files
from
the H2 instead of .wav, there'd only be one MP3 conversion instead of
two.
As it was, when I recorded to direct-encoded .mp3 on the H2, there was
the
H2's conversion to .MP3, the conversion from .MP3 to .wav to tweak it in
the
audio editor (I used Reaper), and then a conversion back to MP3 for
web-posting (I used CDEx's Lame wrapper). In my case, there was also a
dithering down from a 24 bits wave to a 16 bits wave when exporting from
the
audio editor, but prior to the MP3 conversion. The reason was that I
wanted
to EQ and limit the files in 24-bit mode so that I'd eliminate rounding
errors. That, however, was probably a crapshoot, since the rounding
errors
might have been less damaging than the 24 bit to 16 bit conversion.
I'm hoping to get better results with the .wav mode. Someone, somewhere,
on
some forum mentioned that the H2's mp3 encoded files were relatively
lifeless and flat compared to the .wav files. They also mentioned that
it
should be expected: It's not that it's the H2's fault, but just a
limitation of MP3 conversion.
Even at high bit rates, it's still going to suffer fidelity loss due to
the
MP3 CODEC. Your recording seems to have a bit of that same flatness to
it -- Not that it's YOUR fault. It's either just the design of the the
H2,
or the result of the MP3 conversion (or both). I'll be interested to
hear
it when we get some A/B's of MP3 mode versus .wav at both 44.1K, 48K, 96K
at
both 24 and 16 bit quantization. We'll probably never get a definitive
answer as to the best recording mode, but we might be able to draw some
conclusions from the trends if we get enough clips. I hope cats here
will
keep posting H2 clips along with info about the mode and recording
method.
Somewhere, I saw forum post which said the actual audio chip in the H2
was
really designed for 48K. I'm wondering if 48K might yield even better
results than 96K or 44.1K. Likely if the H2's chip(s) and/or ADC is
designed for 48K, then recording at 44.1K would involve some resampling
and
create artifacts otherwise not present at 48K that would then need to
filtered. If that's the case, then it might make sense to record 48K
files
and then resample/convert them later in non-realtime with a utility such
as
Voxengo's R8brainhttp://www.voxengo.com/product/r8brain/. Likely the
r8brain resampling would yield far better results than whatever they
built
into the H2.
If I did it that way, my question would be whether to do the 48K to 44.1K
resampling before mixing/normalizing, etc., or to work with the files in
48K
and then resample to 44.1K simultaneously with the dither down to 16 bits
at
the final stage?
"lukejazz" <lukejaz...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1193846218.233946.243990@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hello Everyone -
I just got an Zoom H2 (as well) last Friday and I tried it to record
my duo on Saturday.
I wound up setting it up between us with it set to record on either
side.
* used the highest mp3 setting (like I think Chickenhead did)
* didn't adjust EQ at all
* used AGC
The levels could have been better - I didn't want to take the time to
try to experiment and set them.
After I imported it into audacity I just reset the volume there.
Here are some results:
<a href ="http://www.lukejazz.com/sounds.asp";>sounds</a>
Thanks CH - for your kind comments and everything else too. I'm eager
to try wav files too but I didn't feel like running out and getting a
bigger SD card (hey, it was bad enough buying the H!!) and I wanted to
get the whole 3 hour gig so I used the mp3 setting with the included
512mb card.
Later on, I'll probably get a 4 mb card. I'm not so concerned with
making quality recordings right now as with just documenting
performances.
Luke
.
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