Questions for fellow H2 users out there

rogue_wave

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I picked up a Zoom H2 recorder and have been fiddling around with it for a little while. For the moment, I am really just trying to get a decent recording of my practices and attempts at songs, so I can listen and learn (and hopefully for posterity-s such as "wow, I was soo much worse back then (hopefully!)"

I know that some folks here are big supporters of this recorder and I wanted to pick your collective brains. I've been playing around with various mic positions and gain adjustments, but so far it seems that either the mic has to be practically IN the soundhole, or I have to have the gain so far up the noise is terrible. Has anyone hit on a nice magic formula?

For the most part I have been recording into the front microphone (though I feel like I have tried all). For those that are happy with the recordings they are getting from their h2, what's your secret?
 
You shouldn't need to get that close. Don't mess with the digital record level--keep it at 100--it will not prevent clipping at the mics, regardless of the setting.

The mics have three recording levels controlled by a switch on the side--lo, med and hi. Hi is so sensitive you'll probably pick up your neighbors' breathing in addition to too much electronic noise, so use either lo or med and make sure the clipping indicator doesn't come on.

Record to wav or a hi bitrate mp3 to minimize high end harshness. Turn off compression and limiter. Try to keep your average level at about -8 to -12db. Use Audacity or other sound editor to EQ and boost level after recording.
 
When I record my ukulele (about 50cm away from me) the signal comes up at about -22db which actually is really quiet. After normalizing to 0db I can hear some background noise. But this is far from being terrible. Of course it matters if you put the Zoom close to the fan of a laptop or similar.

To the settings, like euchre said. Actually these are more or less the default settings. If your SD card is big enough record in WAV. I also changed the bitrate to 24bit and the Khz to 48. After processing my audio files I reconvert them back to CD quality (16bit/44.1khz).
 
Read this post from the Zoom forum. I find it very helpful.

http://www.2090.org/zoom/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=9745

And remember - those are condenser mics in the Zoom - they pick up everything. For a more pro-sounding recording you need to be in a quiet room - no fans, ticking clocks, traffic noise, etc. It doesn't need to be a soundproofed studio, but you do need a minimum of sonic interference.
 
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hi can you plug this into a video camera so your videos can get pro audio, im not sure cause i never done this #'_'#
how would you go about syncing audio and video without software, i mean just through a video camera and the H2
thanks
 
I use Windows Movie maker. I save the video in a compatable format. Then I take the H2 recording mess with it in audacity, save it as a wav and import it into movie maker. Then you have to drag/slide the audio and video around to get them in sync. It's pretty easy.
 
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