Zoom Gear & Home Recording Forum

How does one start this topic, there are so many competing issues with the user interface.
First of all, I've been a recording musician my entire life (I was signed to A&M and had a hit record) and have worked on a variety of recording devices: from a Sony hand held audio cassette recorder to Protools HD.
The H2 Zoom should have been great but aside from very decent sound quality, it's extremely flawed. Let's start with the poor quality of the display. Yes I can read the small lettering on the tiny screen and if that was the only inconvenience I would not be writing this. How about the number for features it offers? It's easy to flip from stereo to front and rear but which buttons do you use, oh I get it the top ones-oops, I'm in record mode and now I have to pause. I don't want that segment-how do I delete-which file, oh, I didn't label it. Oops, I hit mark. What a pain in the ass, when all I am trying to do is record a song. Yes, I've connected it to my macbook pro and it recognises the device and I can copy and label files and delete them from the drive. But every time I use this device I find another inconvenience with the lack of ease fo use. Am I the only one who feels this way? It could (have) been a great device but they piled on too many unnecessary features and made it very unintuitive. I'd rather record in my iphone.

Sounds like you'd prefer the H2n...

I consider the H2(n) to be "field recorders"... The type of thing to be used when all one is likely to do is set it on a stand and let it run; most all settings would have been preset for preferences. IOWs, a small portable equivalent of $40 cassette recorder. And at that, I wouldn't even consider it a memo recorder -- the startup/shutdown overhead is too much.

yes, that may be true, but (taking a page from Steve Jobs) the underline interface is not intuitive and in my mind not user friendly.

First of all, H2 and H2n have very different user interfaces. Personally I find the H2n mch better readable than the H2. My old eyes made me prefer H2n over H2, apart from the extra features.
Unless you have a big (touch)screen and handy dial, most UIs will be cumbersome and the H2's are no exception. I find that the H2n has a good balance between things you can do with the flip/push of a button and things that need browsing through settings panels.
But the bottom line is that for normal operation you have to make all settings at ease, and then have it record without much ado. If only they'd fix the AUTO REC + PRE REC bug.
At first I thought I'd miss the PAUSE feature but even though I have a remote control I hardly ever use it. I haven't encountered any problems with recordings being split across files. The H2n records, MS-RAW or 4CH, everything else I do on the PC with Audacity.

If Steve Jobs would have been interested in creating a iH2n device it would definitely be much nicer, probably easier to use, much more expensive, and locked to AAC recordings only.

Having said that, I think that user defined preset profiles would be a nice addition.

So, I'll check out the H2n as see if it's more to my liking. Fact still remains (and I hope the Zoomfolks are reading this) that it is needlessly cumbersome. They guys who design this product have to imagine it from the user perspective and not from an engineering one. I'm a pretty technical guy and I can figure this stuff out-which makes it all the more annoying because I'd really rather use my time for efficiently and not play tech detective.

As usual, they try to make it too flexible to please everyone.
My use of the H2n: power on, occasionally adjust M/S width (for 4CH, otherwise I always record RAW) and volume level, and start recording. One or two hours later I switch it off, copy all the files to the computer and start processing. When done, I reformat the SDcard.

With a 16GB SDcard I do not see the need to record at anything but the highest setting. I do not need to edit on the recorder. I don't need to remove files and such. But sometimes I use the playback feature to check that the recording is not too loud or too soft, or otherwise unusable.

But I assume there are other users that are very happy with all these features. I just don't use them.

You've missed one important step: stop recording

Darn. I always thought that powering the H2n down would stop the recording. Next time I'd better take out the batteries as well .