Zoom Zoom Zoom

When we began carrying the Samson Zoom H4 nearly 2 years ago, it was one of an emerging style of recorders.  Today nearly everywhere you look from consumer audio, to camera companies, to professional audio has a small format mp3/wave recorder with built in stereo mics.  The market is flooded.

In our industry, timecode transcription quickly came out of the dark ages of cassette and these recorders and their associated formats became a quick norm.  The H4 and H2 recorders have been remarkably successful products for us at Trew.  When Samson announced the H4n at CES this year, we were very curious.  It is a light-year’s step forward on a previously successful product.

First, and possibly most notable, the H4n improved the interface.  The menu structure, selection joystick and jog wheel on the H4 were a challenge to say the least.  The recorder functioned well, but the learning curve was high, and the display was small.  Navigating menus was painful.  The H4n nearly triples the screen size, reduces multifunction menu navigation and provides hot keys for the most common recorder change menus.

Other physical changes include a harder, seemingly more durable, plastic body with rubberized coating.  The transport controls are basic and well laid out providing an actual stop button instead of a pause button as in the original H4.  The built in XY microphones in the H4n have switchable patterns from 90 to 120 degree angles.  Unlike the H4 the built-in microphones and external XLR-1/4 combo jack inputs may be used simultaneously allowing for true 4-track recording.  Also available for the H4n is the RC4 remote.  The RC4 provides transport controls, volume adjustment, and input routing.

Although the recorder does not have timecode, transcription is still as possible with this unit as it was in the H4.  With the H4n you will need to pad the timecode channel 50dB as the input is mic level only.

Several aspects of the H4n are completely new to the Zoom Handy recorder family.  A built-in playback speaker will allow users quick confidence. Mid-Side decoding is now a feature.  A power save mode, Samson calls “stamina” can increase power time up to 11 hours.  The final feature that caught me was the H4n’s SD card compatibility.  The H4 and H2 were limited to 4 GB cards.  The H4n takes up to a hearty 32GB card.  Suddenly the recorder is not just a transcription or music production tool.  With a 32 GB card the H4n is capable of being a large project backup recorder.  Either stereo mix or mono with timecode, the 32GB capacity opens a huge door at a very small price.

Learn More about the H4n