Topic: ZOOM M2 M3 M4 MicTrak Recorders - 32 bit float dual ADC one-piece devices

[rastasean]

I seem to recall I first used Ocenaudio ~10 years ago! I made my very first small donation to the project just now; probably should have done it sooner.

Glad to hear it will work out for you, Peter! It;'s very easy to make recordings with these nice modern recorders, but if the apps people use suck, they're less likely to do anything with the recordings, and they'll just 'rot' away.

[Ozpeter]

I just spent about 3 hours editing a video for which I had recorded the sound separate from the video.  Lots of clips needing to be carefully hand synced. I put the video into a new folder and the audio into a subdirectory of that folder.  I then decided to close the video editor and use Ocenaudio to raise the level of the audio clips (which the video editor would not do, long story).   When I raised the level of the first file, something weird seemed to happen to the file name of the file in the audio folder.  So I undid what I had done Ctrl/z - and the whole audio folder just disappeared.  Gone.  It took another hour or more to get the audio off the recorder again and then reinsert each clip into the video editor, lining it up as best I could as there was now no way to properly sync it (another long story).  Moral - if you use Ocenaudio, make sure you have the whole directory you are working in backed up.  Or - don't use it.  In 50 years of computing I've never seen a whole directory deleted by a program.

And now, back to the Zoom M series...

[TheJez]

I just spent about 3 hours editing a video for which I had recorded the sound separate from the video.  Lots of clips needing to be carefully hand synced. I put the video into a new folder and the audio into a subdirectory of that folder.  I then decided to close the video editor and use Ocenaudio to raise the level of the audio clips (which the video editor would not do, long story).   When I raised the level of the first file, something weird seemed to happen to the file name of the file in the audio folder.  So I undid what I had done Ctrl/z - and the whole audio folder just disappeared.  Gone.  It took another hour or more to get the audio off the recorder again and then reinsert each clip into the video editor, lining it up as best I could as there was now no way to properly sync it (another long story).  Moral - if you use Ocenaudio, make sure you have the whole directory you are working in backed up.  Or - don't use it.  In 50 years of computing I've never seen a whole directory deleted by a program.

Oh my, that's really bad indeed...
So it seems we have roughly three options for a GUI application:
1) Use a very ugly free tool that gets the job done (Audacity)
2) Use a beautiful free tool that makes you loose everything you have (Ocenaudio)
3) Spend a lot of money on a tool that looks beautiful and gets the job done (Audition & friends)
It now becomes very tempting to make a sexist joke about this, so let's not do that... 
This does make my fingers itch and write some software for this, just for the fun of it. Normalizing is one of the easiest things you can do on audio files, regardless if it's 16/24/32bfp, so it amazes me that there are still tools around that won't handle 32bfp properly for this.

And now, back to the Zoom M series...

Yeah, right, sorry... 

[rastasean]

Regarding missing files - obviously something happened, but without ways to reproduce the issue, we're left to only speculate what caused the issues.

A quick test i did was open a file in Ocenaudio, rename it in my file explorer, and go back to Ocenaudio, which the app knew the file wasn't there.

I did notice when I went back into Ocenaudio, i was advised the file was not available and I can save as | close | keep as new. If you were not presented with any of these options, I suspect something went seriously wrong, perhaps at the OS level.

Code: [Select]

---------------------------
Warning
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Warning
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The file for the sound that was at C:\Users\taper\YouTube\RunningAway (2).mp4 has disappeared. The document has previously unsaved changes. Do you want to keep as new, save or close the sound?
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Save As...   Keep as New   Close   
---------------------------


[Ozpeter]

Regarding missing files - obviously something happened, but without ways to reproduce the issue, we're left to only speculate what caused the issues.

Sadly I can't reliably say exactly what I did.  But whatever it was, a whole folder shouldn't disappear just like that. I was definitely just working on one file.  I can imagine that if did that to a folder containing other folders of files, one could lose a mass of files and days or even weeks of work.  And yes, having backups on removable drives is the insurance policy - which is good practice anyway.  You can guess what I will be doing later this morning... Better to do backups than have a program get one's own back up!  (Sorry for the joke...)

[dogmusic]

Zoom is quite explicit that the 2 XLR/TRS inputs in the M4 use F-Series preamps. Is it possible that its built in mics do not?

[Niels]

Zoom is quite explicit that the 2 XLR/TRS inputs in the M4 use F-Series preamps. Is it possible that its built in mics do not?

They don’t say they do so I would assume they don’t.

However, the mics perform very well so they have not just grabbed some random preamp from the handy recorder series.
I haven’t purchased a XLR to 3.5mm adapter so I haven’t had a chance to compare 3.5 and XLR inputs with the same microphones.

[adrianb]

Zoom is quite explicit that the 2 XLR/TRS inputs in the M4 use F-Series preamps. Is it possible that its built in mics do not?

I initially thought this was an odd question, but then I remembered that my MixPre 3ii doesn’t share the Kashmir preamps on the TRS inputs, and it’s actually noticeable. This is one of the disappointing features of the MixPre, and together with only 2.5v PIP has come to annoy me since I want to use TRS inputs a lot.

What makes me think that the M4 might use the same F-Series preamps for the mics is that I have used them a lot and recorded some very quiet scenes with no more noticeable noise than using the XLR inputs. 

[Ozpeter]

The Zoom M2 claims F series and dual ADCs and it only has mics, no inputs.  Likewise the M3 of course.  So it would surprise me if the M4 didn't share that feature.

[Edited to add that of the three devices, Zoom's publicity only specifically mentions F series preamps for the M4.  Retailers talk about F series components in the M2 and M3 and some seem to focus on the ADCs without being categorical about the preamps.  So - it's a bit hard to be totally certain - at the end of the day I guess it's a matter of using one's ears to judge, if possible.]

[dogmusic]

Zoom is quite explicit that the 2 XLR/TRS inputs in the M4 use F-Series preamps. Is it possible that its built in mics do not?

They don’t say they do so I would assume they don’t.

However, the mics perform very well so they have not just grabbed some random preamp from the handy recorder series.
I haven’t purchased a XLR to 3.5mm adapter so I haven’t had a chance to compare 3.5 and XLR inputs with the same microphones.

Neils is probably correct. While the built-in mics may not share the F-Series preamps with the XLR inputs, the preamps they do use seem to be quite good.