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Gear / Technical Help => Ask The Tapers => Topic started by: captain88 on May 02, 2009, 11:21:04 AM

Title: Zoom H2 Set-Up
Post by: captain88 on May 02, 2009, 11:21:04 AM

hey, i just bought a zoom h2 with a battery box and external mic to record concerts with, and i was wondering how to set it up. I know you plug the mic into the battery box, but which one do i plug the battery box into: Line In or Ext Mic In?

Title: Re: Zoom H2 Set-Up
Post by: Audioslaved on May 02, 2009, 11:12:50 PM

I have used both.  I have read a few reports of folks saying that the ext mic-in is more noisy than the line-in.  Unfortunately, my line-in jack screwed up before I could use it to record a live show, so I had to use the mic-in jack.  The recording turned out pretty good though!  The H2 has an option to turn off the plug-in power.  So, you can use your external mics with a battery box or pre-amp just fine with the mic-in jack too.  My suggestion is for you to just experiment with it & see which sounds better to you & go with it.  Plus, it wouldn't hurt to know how to use both jacks because someday you may be faced with the situation that I was in & have one of the jacks screw up on you & you would only be left with one to use...

Title: Re: Zoom H2 Set-Up
Post by: tailschao on May 03, 2009, 08:12:36 AM

The Mic-In adds gain (and the pre-amps for the external mic socket are noisy, as stated above). The Line-In adds no gain - just passes the signal through. If you had an external pre-amp, you would only ever want to use Mic-In if you need even more gain than the external pre provides, or, of course, if the Line-In goes faulty. However, as you only have a battery box, which you use depends on how sensitive your mics are and how loud the sound is that you are recording. If it is loud enough with the 0 gain of the Line-In, use it. If you need amplification, use Mic-In.

Title: Re: Zoom H2 Set-Up
Post by: zzrck on May 17, 2009, 10:32:36 PM

i have a zoom h2 , the line in records less noisey then the mic in , the only down side to using the line in to record with  is you cant control the recording level , the way i got around that problem is to get a inline volume control device , i picked one up at radio shack for about 5 bucks , you put this on after the battery box  and before the recorder.

on a side note , my inline jack went out on my recorder also , one of the channels went out , so
i upgraded to a edirol r-09 hr , and becouse of that ive got a whole new can of worms to deal with ,
go figure ?