What is a good upgrade from the H4N?

J

jshbckr

Veteran
So on most of my shoots, I work with a couple sound guys who have more and better gear than I would ever care to own (I'm primarily a shooter), but for a couple lower-budget gigs I have coming up I will probably be on my own to grab audio. I normally capture straight into my FS700, but for these interviews, we won't be showing the subjects on camera. So I want to use a portable recorder to keep things small, personal, and hopefully more natural.

Some gripes I've had with the H4N: It eats through my batteries. Granted, this is mostly due to me needing phantom power for my mic, but it's still kind of ridiculous. Second, I (and many other people) have lost long audio clips when the recorder batteries die mid-clip. This is completely unacceptable to me. I'm also annoyed by it's long SD card loading times, where the loading time gets increasingly longer as your card size increases (16GB SD card takes about 30 seconds to start up, a buddy of mine with an H4N took about 2-3 minutes to start up with a large card).

So lately I've been looking at selling the H4N and getting something a little nicer, like the Marantz PMD661. Anyone have experience with that or any other recommendations?
 
Though there are lots of better recorders than your zoom, seems like most of your issues are with power. Most any pro level recorder will need remote power, so had you considered remote power for the zoom? The Tascam dr100 has dual power within, both AA and a Lith-Ion. Either can be used as the primary and the other as a backup. so though it is similar in style to the zoom, it does prevent you from a shutdown.

You will want to consider how many channels you need and how you will want to work with your video cam. Imagine a recorder, recorder plus mixer, or combo mixer-recorder. You might want to look at the Sound Devices combo units. Expensive yes, but great build quality, versatile, retains value, and best available field unit preamps and limiters.

For a lower end unit, there are some great deals now on the DR680, but plan on remote power.

Grant
 
I have the PMD671. I use a mixPre as the front end so I'm not sure what battery life with phantom power on is but with out it I get five hours or so/ I get about the same on the MixPre so it works out well. The DR40 last pretty long (again I haven't done a test with phantom so don't know how much that would impact.

I'l have to do a power outage on both to be sure but I'm pretty sure I did one on the 671 and didn't loose the file. I was paranoid when I was shopping for it because MiniDisks have that problem. In fact they would also sometimes trash the whole disk if the power died during record.

I tested everything then so I would be surprised if I didn't do the 671. The test is simple. start recording and pull the batteries. When it boots do you have the interrupted file, no file, corrupted card. One I like, one I can live with if it has good low battery warnings, and one is a deal stopper.

The 671 does put out an audible low battery warning and it does a shutdown when the batteries are about to die, I just can remember how it did on the battery pull test.
 
ggrantly said:
Though there are lots of better recorders than your zoom, seems like most of your issues are with power. Most any pro level recorder will need remote power, so had you considered remote power for the zoom? The Tascam dr100 has dual power within, both AA and a Lith-Ion. Either can be used as the primary and the other as a backup. so though it is similar in style to the zoom, it does prevent you from a shutdown.

You will want to consider how many channels you need and how you will want to work with your video cam. Imagine a recorder, recorder plus mixer, or combo mixer-recorder. You might want to look at the Sound Devices combo units. Expensive yes, but great build quality, versatile, retains value, and best available field unit preamps and limiters.

For a lower end unit, there are some great deals now on the DR680, but plan on remote power.

Grant
Click to expand...

Thanks for the help. Like I said, most of my productions have a sound guy involved, two of the guys I work with use Sound Devices 788T.

As far as channels go, I'd probably need two at most. The built-in XLRs on the FS700 work fine for most of my lower budget gigs, this recorder would be more for capturing audio-only interviews as well as wild/ambient sound.

Honestly, the Zoom is almost exactly what I want, I just want to step up to something a little nicer. The DR680 looks pretty nice but it's a bit bigger than I'd prefer. The PMD-661 looks to be about half the size and a little thinner. I know a lot of you guys are running really nice preamps into your recorder, but if I'm looking to keep things really lean (single mic + recorder) and less than $700, which recorder would have the best preamps? I also heard about the Oade mod for the PMD661, but know very little about it.
 
I would probably recommend the DR-40 in your case. One reason is that Marantz makes it very difficult to do firmware updates fixes etc. Another is the DR-40 came out later and probably has slightly better electronics. It's about the same size as your zoom and the mic are more flexible that the PMD661.

The DR-680 doesn't sound like a good fit at all. The 661 and the DR-40 should be about the same price, oops the 661 is discontinued and the replacement the 661MKII is over $600 so it's a LOT more expensive than the DR-40 as in less than 1/3rd. The flip is that the 661MKII will also have current electronics so that is not a drawback.

However my firmware issue with Marantz becomes a bigger one with a new device. The first 671 I got had major issues because of a firmware bug. Luckaly I bought from a local dealer who let me keep using it while they got an updated one from Marantz. Everything they had in stock had the defective firmware and Marantz had not bothered to tell them. And Marantz requires that you send the unit to them to update firmware, a MAJOR PITA.

I like my PMD671, but the firmware issue (and poor customer support - I couldn't even find out from them IF there was new firmware and What it fixed) would keep me from buying another Marantz recorder.
 
The Zoom H6 has quieter preamps than the H4n, and when I tested battery life I got over 3 hours running four phantom powered mics and the XY module simultaneously.

Fran
 
I'm going to buck the norm here and suggest purchasing something along the lines of a Sound Devices 302 mixer rather than another recorder. Use the mixer to feed both your camera and your H4n.
 
Use the mixer to feed both your camera and your H4n.
> To elaborate on David's statement. A (XLR compatible) camera could be fed by the 302's XLR balanced output, the H4n by the unbalanced TA3 'Tape out'. Of coarse in that scenario the H4n would likely not be necessary.. at least for interviews and such.
 
David W. Jones said:
I'm going to buck the norm here and suggest purchasing something along the lines of a Sound Devices 302 mixer rather than another recorder. Use the mixer to feed both your camera and your H4n.
Click to expand...

+1 I do exactly this whenever my cam is on stix, works great for interviews. Then move the 302 into bag if your shoot is on the hoof.

But you will want to get an auxiliary power supply as well.
 
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