Like many others here I have a zoom too, I got the newer h4n tho. All in all they are quite similar I've only briefly tried the h4. The preamps are suppose to be less noisy in the newer one but I suspect the difference is quite insignificant. These devices are not made to make super high quality recordings of quiet sources but you should get away with a moderately played acoustic guitar, from a distance of, say 60cm.. using a pair of condenser mics with good output levels should also yield better result. The h4n feels sturdier and less toyish than the h4 and another cool detail is that you can twist the internal XY setup from 90* to 120*. The h4 has nice cage's to protect the mics, the mics on the h4n feels a little but vulnerable but on the flipside you get a hardcase with it. With the h4n you can also use a special 4track mode to record 4 tracks simultaneously, internal mics + external inputs. All in all it's a device well worth the money paid. I tried it as an interface too, I couldn't get it running full duplex, ie. I had to use my internal card as output. And I only got buffer size down to 512frames 2 periods @ 48khz. However, I don't run an rt kernel atm.. > Hi there, > > I'm interested in getting a portable digital recorder, something > that can run on batteries or ac power (presumably through a > wall-wart?), that has built-in stereo mics, and something which > will take 2-4 line external inputs. I've seen a lot of such > things come on the market in recent years. Many have SD or SDHC > cards for their audio memory, which is fine with me as I have > an SDHC card reader in my computer. If I get one with a USB > interface it's my _requirement_ that it operate with Linux over > USB. The same would go for firewire, though I haven't seen any > of those. Some units record only in lossy compressed format > only, while others have uncompressed formats available. I would > prefer the uncompressed format to be available. I'd also need > at _least_ 4 hours of stereo 44.1kHz at at least 16-bit, with > something like 24-bit being more desired by me. > > I'll be doing remote recordings, then bringing the audio home to > chop up with Audacity and/or Ardour, then authoring the result to > CDs. > > So, what works well with Linux and works well in general? > > Thanks people! > > -- > Kevin > > > _______________________________________________ > Linux-audio-user mailing list > Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user > > _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-user mailing list Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user
