Zoom Gear & Home Recording Forum

Hello Everyone. I am new here and just recently bought a Zoom H2. I play in a band and I used the Zoom for the first time Saturday night. I recorded using the MP3 160bit setting (to maximize recording time). I used the 1GB card that was included with the Zoom. It is a Transcend SD card. The switch on the right is set to "L" for mic gain I think it is. The sound was really good when I was listening back after out first set, then about 2 1/2 minutes into listening the sound ceased though the counter kept counting. I wasn't sure what was up. I then recorded our next set, same result on playback. When I got home, I hooked the Zoom to my computer per the instructions and I loaded these recordings into Audacity and created individual tracks for each song (I saw when I loaded the tracks that the entire set recording was indeed there). I was able to create the individual tracks, but I found in listening to them the song would "skip" ahead 10 or 20 seconds in spots. Sometimes 2 or 3 times per song. The songs were unlistenable because of this.

I guess I need to know if there was something I was doing wrong. Is it because I was recording in MP3 opposed to wav? Is 160 not enough for a live recording? Should it be 192 or 320? Is there another setting I need to use. Maybe a faulty memory card, though it is the one that was included with the Zoom. As I said the recording sounded top notch till it dropped out and then later the tracks were skipping ahead on me. So many questions. I hope I am not overloading anyone.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Mark Rich

Ignoring the skip for the moment...

MP3 isn't really the best for recording on an H2 -- it tends to very rapidly roll off frequencies >15kHz.

A fast SDHC card (4GB+) at CD quality (16-bit/44.1kHz WAV) should handle a few hours (1 hour of stereo is around 650-700MB, so a 4GB card should reach near 4.5 hours -- split at 2GB marks, so you might find it better to start new files between sets by hand).

Have you checked the firmware version? You may not have the latest release.

Thanks Wulfraed for the response. I just updated my Zoom tonight to 1.80.

Back to the original problem - I just purchased one of these, which is on "The List". http://www.buy.com/prod/transcend-8gb-s ... 07682.html This should work well right? Does the Class 6 matter? My 1GB card does not say what class it is on it. Maybe that had something to do with my problem.

I will try recording in WAV format next time and see if that helps. Would you say that the result I got originally was due to recording in MP3 format as well as using a 1GB card as opposed to a higher capacity card? As I said before the sound was great until i got this "skipping". Makes me look forward to getting it working good for the recordings I will get.

Class 2/4/6 are increasing speed SDHC cards; I don't recall plain SD cards being rated that way.

At least yours came with a 1GB <G>

My H2 is old enough that it shipped with a 512MB. And the common consensus is to save the card it shipped with for one use -- upgrading the firmware (you can't use an SDHC card for doing updates to the firmware)