As with much equipment–and especially with lower-cost equipment–the performance specifications and the actual operational data is not published. There are reports of the H2 clipping on the line inputs in some of the reviews and it appears that a lack of understanding how the inputs were configured exacerbated that situation.

There is nothing wrong with the line inputs on the H2. BUT there are some caveats:

1. DO NOT use the input level control on the line inputs to go below 100 or the preamps will clip before the signal reaches 0 dBFS.
   ALTERNATE WORDING (thanks Greg H.):
   Set Zoom H2 RECORD LEVEL to 100 or greater to avoid clipping at the Line In preamp stage.
2. Use an external attenuator with the gain set at 100 to avoid overdriving the line inputs.
3. The noise floor is not spectacular, but is not too bad. With the inputs terminated in 150 ohms, the peak noise was -70 dBFS, but that improved to about -85 dBFS or better, measuring it as an A-weighted rms figure, which is how most noise is measured. While this certainly isn’t what one would expect out of the Sound Devices, it is far better than the 50-60 dB(A) that one can achieve with an analog cassette tape without Dolby.
4. The maximum input level to the line input should be no more than -5 dBV or -3 dBu.
5. Try to avoid clipping as there appears to be a delayed recovery in some instances.

With this information, you can optimize a pad between the source and the H2 line input so that the recorder is never overloaded. Try to keep the levels as high as practical as there is a relatively limited dynamic range. On the other hand, I have found that the recorder noise is not objectionable even when I’ve boosted the levels 20 dB for a quiet choir piece from our church. The room ambience totally swamps the recorder noise–at least as far as I hear.

The H2’s internal mics are reasonably good for many purposes. While I still prefer the SD722 for many things, I think the H2 is one of the better oral history conversation capturing devices I’ve seen. It uses SDHC cards which may require a new card reader. Don’t use the built-in USB connection unless you’re recording MP3 files as you’ll be there all day. The internal card-reader mode is limited by the USB 1.1 interconnection. This interconnection is adequate, however, for using the H2 as a 16-bit live audio interface/microphone connected to your computer (at either 44.1 or 48 ks/s). The unit will record up to 96,000 samples per second, 24 bits,  but many of those bits will be noise.

Please let me know if this has helped or if you have any questions or comments.This work was done with version 1.50 of the H2 firmware.

The cost savings in using bargain-basement digital speech recorders are offset by the labour required to reformat these files upon their receipt by an archive and also the fidelity of the recording suffers, and with fidelity, intelligibility also suffers.

DSS was an industry standard agreed upon by Olympus, Grundig, and Philips in 1994. Like the compact cassette and the micro cassette, this format was developed for dictation. My perspective is that oral history is more than dictation, although the DSS format claims no loss when compressing a WAV file. It includes nuances and other cues that are often lost in the dictation-only environment. My personal preference is for stereo recording of oral histories, but that is certainly not universally accepted.

While Olympus claims that DSS offers future-proof access to recordings, it becomes another standard that must be maintained and should converters become unavailable for new platforms, then the entire archive will need to be reformatted at that point.

The oral history resources I have listed here are generally looking at archiving WAV files. CD-quality WAV files should be more than adequate for oral histories, but that is a far different quality level from DSS.

There are a variety of software packages that will convert from DSS to WAV files. Switch (a great free utility) will convert SP mode, unprotected DSS files and a host of other file formats to WAV (and MP3). Olympus has a player as well.

The decision to archive in WAV or MP3 is tough. While concatenation of compression (stringing two compression cycles together, end-to-end) is considered poor form, if the MP3 file is not too heavily compressed, then there is saving vs. archiving in WAV if the program material originated in another compressed format. Tests with program material and critical listening should be undertaken prior to accepting this. If the decoded DSS or other compressed file is stored as a WAV file, then nothing is lost. The amount lost with (for example) a well-compressed 96 kb/s mono MP3 file at 44.1 ks/s will be low.

Archiving WMA files is another question. As long as Windows Media Player is available, these files should be playable. I’m not sure about the cross-platform compatibility of these files, so that is a negative at the start.

The best suggestion is to archive as few different formats going forward as possible, and then make sure at each major upgrade of software that these files will all be accessible.

A comment:

Your readers may also be interested in the Acappella Conference Audio Recorder and Playback Assistant which improves the reliability of transcripts and the time taken to produce them by recording in CD quality audio and telling the typist during transcription the name of the person speaking.

http://www.acappella.com.au

http://audiorecorder.wordpress.com

[Blogowner’s comments: This was posted by someone who appears affiliated with the company. We have no experience positive or negative with this system. It appears capable and I released the comment to the blog but am adding this note that this is not an endorsement, but you should review it as a possibility and see if it meets your needs.]

What I use is shown on my facility page. That’s one of the main reasons it is there. If I’m using it, it’s because I like it or it solves a problem for me. If I’m not using it, either I don’t have an opinion about it, won’t spring for it, or don’t like it.

It seems the good stand-alone CD recorders (like the Sony CDR-W33) are going out of production. Your best bet is to use a computer. Please consider a good USB/1394 audio interface and a good audio editing program.

Pro Tools is a good program, but I think Samplitude (which I use) offers more bang for the buck and is very, very clean sounding. Many musicians that I know use the Steinberg lineup of software. Adobe Audition (the former Cool Edit) is also widely used.

Browsing all the topics in this section, reviewing the Formats & Resources section, and looking at my facility page should give you a good idea of where to start and why.

I’d be happy to answer any questions submitted via email. Some may be answered here, so please let me know if you wish to remain anonymous or quoted by name/email/website.

This supports my contention that Firewire (IEEE 1394) and USB 2.0 are the preferred methods for connecting high-quality, high-resolution audio interfaces to computers.

While I have two RME Multifaces (the original, not the Multiface IIs shown in the link) that use dedicated PCI cards, this means that if I purchase a new computer with a PCI Express interface, I’ll have to purchase two new PCI Express interface cards for the RME Multifaces — and hope that RME makes it at the time I need it. Many users have expressed satisfaction with their Digital Audio Labs CardDeluxe.

This sounds a lot like the Zefiro Acoustics ZA-2 ISA card that is languishing in a Dell Dimension XPS PII 333 MHz machine.

My recent foray into an audio interface via IEEE 1394 was the MOTU 828 MK II. So far, I am happy and it’s finding uses in the studio as well as the remote notebook-centric applications I originally acquired it for.

I would think that a good audio interface might last longer than a good PC, so consider this approach.