It also lets you overdub which is pretty cool to build out a song by playing all the instruments if you wanted to
I think you’re missing my use cases here. As a standalone device to tote in my acoustic guitar bag for working on songs and practice. No mics, cables, stands needed. Meaning, it has builtin mics for that use case. Has varispeed for slowing down audio without changing pitch, for learning and practicing phrases. For capturing impromptu jams with friends, rehearsals, and live gigs (not worrying so much about highest audio quality), has builtin mics for decent quality capturing, optionally feeding a couple of lines or mics as needed for anything that needs a little more reinforcement.
The Mixpre is a high quality field recorder, where I’m looking for a handy-dandy every day / occasion good-enough recorder, and one that doesn’t cost an arm.
I don’t think you’ll find any digital recorder with built-in mics to have good enough preamps for it to sound good. For whatever reason built-in mics seem to indicate lower quality, a device trying to do too much and doing none of it well
Oh okay I don’t think it has that
Just a quick search on youtube, this is good-enough audio quality for my use cases:
Everyone in the band can be heard clearly. It doesn’t sound like a clipped mess or hideously noisy. Nothing is offensively bright or muddy. It’s likely a pretty decent representation of what that band sounds like in the room. Good enough. I’m not looking to make a pro quality album with a portable recorder. I’m looking to focus more on playing and making music without sweating so much over the gear. According to comments in that video, that is a a 2-track recording with lines from the mixer.
And here is a duo using the same recorder:
The poster of that video says that is just the built-in microphones. It sounds like they are using the built-in reverb too.
So I’m wondering here if one of these portable recorders (fitting the use cases outlined above) has both usable line inputs and usable mic preamps. Say for example I wanted to throw up the recorder as a drum overhead, adding an sm57 on the snare and a beta 52a on the kick, using nothing but the recorder and those mics. Surely the preamps in one of these portable recorders could at least handle that (enough gain for loud and close sources). Even the preamps on the old 4-track cassette machines could handle that.
A drum sound clip where the poster used the internal mics + dynamics for snare and kick. The device is a Zoom H4N.
I have the predecessor, the DR40. Great unit. Are you having second thoughts after ordering it?
I mostly used it for recording small ensembles, or ambient sound, occasionally with a directional shotgun microphone. Never had complaints about the pre-amps.
If you’re looking to record multiple microphones and you’re thinking about canceling your order you may consider a portable recorder with more inputs, more like the sound recorders that sound guys in film use. Disadvantage is that they are bigger, more expensive, and won’t fit into your guitar case.
I canceled my order for now. Doing more reading on these portable devices, it seems that if someone intends to fully utilize the features on them there will be issues with all of them. The DR-40 and DR-40X look fine for recording from the internal mics, line inputs, and even condensers, but the gain of the preamps is too low and therefore the noise is too high for dynamic mics (that includes all Tascam models except the DR-100 MKII/III, which is a 2-track only device). On the Zoom side (looking at the H4N Pro), the preamp noise is probably ok for recording loud sources using dynamic microphones. The line inputs on the Zoom units are actually instrument level inputs and will require heavy padding when inputting line sources. I found some discussion where some people found suitable workarounds for inputting line level to the instrument level inputs, using either unbalanced XLR to 1/4" cables or 40-50db pads. So it seems that the Zoom H4N Pro might have the edge, having quieter preamps and having adjustable onboard microphones.
Good thing I’m not going to need the interface capabilities of one of these devices, because I’m reading that they are pretty miserable in terms of performance and/or noise (Tascam and Zoom).
I thought that picking one of the devices was going to be easy enough. Wrong.
Also, with all of these devices, none of them come with anything useful, so the total prices on them will be higher than the sticker price. Suitable size SD Card, power supply or rechargeable batteries (or both), usb cable, maybe a windscreen. So add probably $50-90 to the sticker prices to make them practically useful.
Thinking about practical applications of a portable recorder.
- Acoustic guitar and vocal scratch recordings. Only really need built-in mics.
- Phrase learning. Only need line inputs to grab some audio, varispeed, and looping.
- Live band recording (whatever situation). Only need lines from mixer.
- Occasional field recording of environmental sounds. Only need builtin mics.
From that practical perspective, mic preamps that are noisy with dynamic mics don’t really matter. And I would only really need 2-track simultaneous recording.
Also, I ran onto this demo of using external microphones and the mic preamps don’t sound nearly as bad as some people have made them out to be. The reviewer uses a Sennheiser E835 at one point.
Another dynamic mic demo here
It seems like this thing might actually be a really cool little 4-track device.
Sounds good enough for guitar + vocal using the internal mics
