AV News Magazine | Page 38

AV News 175 - February 2009 Zoom H4 Portable Digital Recorder Howard Gregory I have been asked to add my comments to Peter Appleton's excellent article on the Zoom H4 (Issue 174 Page 44), so, accepting that I haven't actually used one in anger, here goes. A quick trawl on the net revealed reviews ranging from "best thing since sliced bread/everyone should have one" to "input (stage) noise/frequency response measurements were so poor, I stopped ... testing." Not exactly helpful. The poor review was accompanied by various graphs etc which didn't seem to me to support the dismissive comments. This isn't a professional machine, it's a consumer recorder, and, as far as I can see, one of the better ones. The proof of the pudding, as ever, is in the listening, and Peter's voice recording, posted on the www.avnews.org.uk website, sounds fine to me. So the machine is capable of good results and could be an effective answer to getting a decent voice recording onto your computer. (I'm talking myself out of preamp sales here!) As regards recording a wider variety of sounds, there seems to be a suggestion