The Zoom H2 HandyCorder is perhaps the lowest-cost digital recorder on the market that provides reasonable and useful results. While I have a Sound Devices 722 for my more serious work, I bought the Zoom to test it out to see if it could be part of a simple tape digitization system for archives on a budget who wish to do the work themselves. It does this reasonably well.
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:
- 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. - Use an external attenuator with the gain set at 100 to avoid overdriving the line inputs.
- 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.
- The maximum input level to the line input should be no more than -5 dBV or -3 dBu.
- 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.