Noiz2
Sound Ninja
I was going to add to a prior thread but I couldn't find it.
Someone mentioned a long start time for the h4n, well I was on a shoot yesterday and the guy who was recording had a problem with his interface and so no recorder... The cameraman and I had both brought pocket recorders and we were only recording four tracks so I re-patched the mics to the recorders and away we went. This was for a weird video blog project a friend (the guy with the bad interface) does and I was just bringing mics and cables etc. but ended up running the pocket recorders.
SO...
The h4n with a 16 gig card took forever to boot, compared to the DR-40. DR-40 something like 3-4 sec. h4N closer to a minute.
The h4n ate batteries, it went from full bars with two new batteries to one bar in a couple of hours (phantom power on), the DR-40 had only two bars when we started (used batteries that I didn't swap out because of the very loose nature of the shoot) and at the end still had two bars showing (also phantom power on).
The h4n lost all of it's settings when I had to change batteries, level file format, etc. Requiring a second sound check to set the levels. This has never happened to me with the DR-40.
Setting split levels on the DR-40 is a bit of a pain, but as far as I could tell not even possible on the h4n. Luckily that was OK since the two mic going to it were close enough to the same level to work.
Longer meters on the h4n so that was good but the peak tracking was either not there or I couldn't find it and clip is marked in the LCD and not so obvious where the DR-40 has a red Clip LED, very easy to see.
One of the recorders was running a slight bit slow or fast. Some where in the realm of 1/1000 of a percent so not huge but a real PITA when I tried to get the recording in sync. I want to say it was the h4n, because I own the DR-40, but I have no idea who was off.
And the h4n meters were live when not in record stand by, which was slightly useful but may be why the battery usage sucked?
The disclaimer to the above is that I own the DR-40 and while I don't use it every day I know it fairly well and the h4n was not mine and I don't ever use it so maybe some of the "issues" were user error.
I also didn't really hear any defects like excessive noise. THey both seemed to sound about the same. Different mics covering different things so I'm not saying they sounded "the same" but that quality wise they sounded about the same. I could not pick one out because it sounded like a cheap recorder, for instance.
Someone mentioned a long start time for the h4n, well I was on a shoot yesterday and the guy who was recording had a problem with his interface and so no recorder... The cameraman and I had both brought pocket recorders and we were only recording four tracks so I re-patched the mics to the recorders and away we went. This was for a weird video blog project a friend (the guy with the bad interface) does and I was just bringing mics and cables etc. but ended up running the pocket recorders.
SO...
The h4n with a 16 gig card took forever to boot, compared to the DR-40. DR-40 something like 3-4 sec. h4N closer to a minute.
The h4n ate batteries, it went from full bars with two new batteries to one bar in a couple of hours (phantom power on), the DR-40 had only two bars when we started (used batteries that I didn't swap out because of the very loose nature of the shoot) and at the end still had two bars showing (also phantom power on).
The h4n lost all of it's settings when I had to change batteries, level file format, etc. Requiring a second sound check to set the levels. This has never happened to me with the DR-40.
Setting split levels on the DR-40 is a bit of a pain, but as far as I could tell not even possible on the h4n. Luckily that was OK since the two mic going to it were close enough to the same level to work.
Longer meters on the h4n so that was good but the peak tracking was either not there or I couldn't find it and clip is marked in the LCD and not so obvious where the DR-40 has a red Clip LED, very easy to see.
One of the recorders was running a slight bit slow or fast. Some where in the realm of 1/1000 of a percent so not huge but a real PITA when I tried to get the recording in sync. I want to say it was the h4n, because I own the DR-40, but I have no idea who was off.
And the h4n meters were live when not in record stand by, which was slightly useful but may be why the battery usage sucked?
The disclaimer to the above is that I own the DR-40 and while I don't use it every day I know it fairly well and the h4n was not mine and I don't ever use it so maybe some of the "issues" were user error.
I also didn't really hear any defects like excessive noise. THey both seemed to sound about the same. Different mics covering different things so I'm not saying they sounded "the same" but that quality wise they sounded about the same. I could not pick one out because it sounded like a cheap recorder, for instance.
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