Digital recorder - advice?

[untune]

Hi all,

Me and a mate are going to get a project underway very shortly and I've come to the conclusion that we're probably going to need to invest in some kind of recorder. Reason being - we're going to have to use a rehearsal room somewhere in Manchester (we think Blueprint Studios might be the one) due to where we both live and time constraints etc. We need a portable recording solution. We've both got old Tascam 4 track cassette recorders which are lovely and old school, and truth be told I'd love to have a nice 4 track reel to reel to get things down on :lol but naturally, that's not going to happen.

I've got a Zoom H4 but that will only do 2 inputs and it's probably not the best really. The focus is going to be getting clean, quality recordings that can be post-processed afterwards. The requirements are:
[list]
[*]96kHz/24 bit recording
[*]4 XLR inputs if possible
[*]Simple, decent quality, low noise, save to SD card
[*]Not bothered with effects or any fancy bells and whistles, I just want to get tracks recorded
[/list]

I'm going to be using mics, DI and external preamps and experimenting a lot. The idea will be to get things recorded raw, then I can bring the recordings back home and mix things/process with outboard/drop to tape/reamp etc... Really not looking to spend a fortune either - 300-400 max?

If anyone has any experience of a decent unit that ticks the boxes, or even has something sitting round gathering dust?

Be great to hear some opinions

Cheers
Lee

[untune]

Scratch the 96kHz... doesn't really make a difference. 24 bit is a must but 48kHz would be fine, otherwise 44.1 would do it

[charic]

I was about to say do you really need 96kHz it's a nice to have

The Korg D888 is a quality bit of kit (I've had mine for years, just not much call for it lately, although that may change shortly!). They're discontinued but I'm sure they'll turn up on the bay now and again, it was just over £500 new so should be within your budget.

This looks pretty nifty [url="http://www.dv247.com/studio-equipment/zoom-r24-digital-recorder-sampler-usb-interface-and-daw-controller--74227"]http://www.dv247.com/studio-equipment/zoom-r24-digital-recorder-sampler-usb-interface-and-daw-controller--74227[/url]

[51m0n]

Forget 96KHz, you dont need it, it wont help, 48KHz is plenty but 24bit is an absolute requirement.

I would suggest a [url="http://www.zoom.co.jp/english/products/r16/"]Zoom R16[/url], giving you 16 tracks and 8 XLR inputs (and two condensor mics built in for very quickly getting stuff down) and a super fast transfer to PC come mix time via a Memory card->USB converter.

If you are clever you can transfer to the PC, bounce 16 tracks to 1 or 2 and put the bounced tracks back in the R16 and track more stuff, allowing effectively unlimited tracks. Come mixdown you mix with the raw tracks (ie none of the bounced for tracking tracks). This is effectively rather like Bruce Swediens technique to get unlimited tracks when tracking Michael Jackson, but digital, and lots cheaper

Great sounding units, perfectly good for what you need and about £280 these days (which is less than my Zoom H4n was!)

The Zoom R24 will give you more tracks on the device, and costs more as a result, it is another fine bit of kit, but if you are planning to mix on PC the limiting factor with both machines is that they can only track 8 inputs at a time, so why get the R24 (other than like me you want to have the top of the range one )

Edited August 29, 2012 by 51m0n

[untune]

Thanks gents - after reading around last night I had settled on a Zoom. They always seem to have had the edge on inputs - I have the original Zoom H4 - remember when that was the only one that offered XLR inputs?

I agree on the 96kHz point (hence my last minute change of mind post ) and that it's just overkill - after all bearing in mind Nyquist's Theory, and the fact that your upper hearing limit is going to be well under 20k anyway - is there a point? The 24 bit is the deal breaker though, the extra headroom makes a big diffference.

I had settled on the Zoom r8 last night purely based on the fact that it offers 48/24 whereas apparently the r16 does not - it;s 44.1/24 max. The downside to that unit, although cheaper, is a max 2 inputs recording at once. I think that would be fine for us BUT I like having flexibility. The reason 48 is good to have is because I'm a video producer... any audio I record for video is done at 48kHZ and in terms of sync, it would be a great additional feature should I need to use it for a video project at any point. I'm just reading up on the 24 track one, which I hadn't really looked into (I forget with these units they're not like mixers - more tracks doesn't necessarily mean more size anymore ).

DV247 says it does 48/24, I need to confirm it. I've also read that the R16 and R24 have a hardware crystal oscillator problem whereby the sample rate drifts quite significantly. About 4ms per minute - which could be a problem.

[charic]

I have to be honest, I've not done a great deal of reading on the mixer I linked, it just looked like a quality bit of kit

[untune]

It does look good... I've got a lot of reading to do Cheers

[51m0n]

The Zoom R24 can go up to 48KHz according to the Zoom page on it...

I've heard similar woes regarding the clock in the H4n and all the other Zoom handy recorders. IME my one doesn't appear to drift out as far as I can tell (when put up against 4+ minute tracks in Logic on a Mac Book Pro)