Topic: Eight portable recorders tested using the same audio file played into their mics

[Ozpeter]

This video was prepared originally just to compare the Zoom H2e and Zoom H2n, but it got out of hand... it seemed worth making a dedicated thread for it.  Opinions welcome! 

(Sadly you will have to listen to the same one minute from a song of mine from the last century ten times...)

https://youtu.be/E-t9im-oUDU?si=YKtDWhFFnbIlyj4Z

0:00 Introduction
0:54 Zoom H1 XLR & Superlux S502 mics
2:07 Zoom H2essential
3:16 Zoom H2n
4:29 Zoom H1n
5:38 Sony A10
6:50 Sony M10
8:00 Zoom M2 MikTrak
9:15 Zoom M3 MicTrak
10:28 DJI Pocket 3 camera
11:36 Zoom H2essential with EQ

[rastasean]

Thanks for doing this real world test with music.

In your other post, you mentioned LF...what is that? low cut filter? I agree there is clearly really a lack of bass in your recording with the h2e compared to all the other recordings. The bass and symbols are the clear difference to me. Even your osmo action 4 sounds reasonable for just coming straight out of the camera.

The silence portion of it seems to be slightly louder than the other recordings, but I was quickly cutting between each of them. Others may think they're all about the same.

Do you have any idea how Zoom made their recording of the brickwall song sound so terrible and mono?

One of the tests Curtis Judd would do is a spoken word test of different mics/recorders. Do you think i could twist your arm to do that? Read a couple sentences from a book or something with all these recorders? Ideally all recording at once, so you only have to do it once. It's not a real practical test for music, but the results may be surprising to hear.

[Ozpeter]

I'll post a more limited (in terms of number of devices) voice test as soon as I get a chance - good suggestion.  I'll put it in the H2e thread as it will be more targetted at that particular device.  Straight out of the recorder I don't expect it to sound competitive.  I think the choice of hypercardioid capsules for the front and back may not help it.  Note that the venerable Sony M10 was quite bassy, almost too much, but that uses omni capsules which tend to be bass heavy (I believe).  The opposite of hypercardioid.  The stereo image from the H2e was perhaps the best, however.  The Sony A10 sounds very good to my ears, and its tiny size does not seem to place it at an obvious disadvantage.  Also the Zoom H1N surprised me - given its miniscule price, it's not too bad at all in real world conditions.

Given that in the last sample, the H2e with low frequency (LF) added in the editor sounded rather better than the out of the box sound, I wonder why Zoom didn't just build that into the mic preamp?  Hmmm. 

As for that official Zoom sample recording, I can't believe they stuffed it up like that in the first place, and then they haven't taken it down.  Marketing rather than engineering did it I guess.

[Ozpeter]

Something this test seems to show is that the two MicTrack devices tested give very good results, well, to my ear anyway.  Hardly stealthy though!  But for very easy to use mics-that-record at good prices, especially if you shop around, they have a lot to offer.  Sadly their reputation was tarnished at the outset by reviews which highlighted RF breakthrough problems in the original production run - now fixed.  But those reviews are still online.  Shame.