Zoom Gear & Home Recording Forum

I've had my H4 for a couple of weeks now, and I'm generally very pleased. My main application for the H4 is live recording of acoustic jam sessions, band practices, and interviews - in other words, using the recorder's stereo mode.

I find the sound quality of the built-in mics to be very good and the stereo image of my recordings is very satisfying to my ear. So, there's not a lot of temptation to work with external mics, but I have some nice electret mics that I used with my Sharp MD recorder, and I'd like to be able to use them. From my tests, I don't think this is possible.

These mics all feature a stereo miniplug, and I"ve found an adapter so I can connect to the two 1/4" inputs. The one mic I can use successfully is a Sony ECM-MS907. This mic uses its own AA battery as a pwer source, and seems to work fine with the H4 (though I prefer the sound of the built-in mics to the Sony).

The mics I can't get a signal from are tiny clip-on electret mics that run on something called "plug-in power", I think. This kind of mic is/was very popular with MD recorders, which all seem to power these mics just fine. I tried both flavors of phantom power (24v and 48v) with the H4 and the clip-on mics and got no response at all.

So, it looks like I won't be using these mics with the H4, unless someone has a suggestion for a way to power these things.

In general, I'll do fine with the built-in mics, but these little clip-ons sounded very good on MiniDisc recordings, and the fact that each mic had a 6' cord allowed for some interesting placement possibilities.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Gary,
East snook, TX

Check out all the custom H4 exclusive third party interface adapters from "The Sound Professionals" here:

http://www.soundprofessionals.com/cgi-b ... AM-ZOOM-H4

http://www.soundprofessionals.com/mas_a ... ERFACE.jpg

http://www.soundprofessionals.com/mas_a ... HANTOM.jpg

Thanks, Steve -

Sound Professionals was the source for my mics in the first place; I just coulnd't remember the name of the company.

I'm not sure I'm ready to invest $70 to find out how the sound of my clip-on electret mics compares to the Zoom built-in mics, but I'm glad to know I've got that option.

Thanks again,

Gary