Minor annoyances

[mdlbear]

A couple of minor annoyances with my current gaggle of gadgets:

• The Samsung monitor is fscking gorgeous, but with its 2ms response time and 3000:1 contrast the jitter coming through the VGA input is annoying as heck. I'll have to get either a graphics card or a motherboard with a DVI output. (The jitter could be coming from the KVM switch, but that would open yet another can of worms. I'll have to deal with it pretty soon in any case.)
• The Zoom H2 won't record four channels in any mode but 44.1KHz, 16-bit WAV. So much for recording concerts with audience reaction, or an evening's worth of surround-sound at a circle. Minor; it'll do two channel surround-sound, and that's good enough for circles. I can get audience reaction by recording from the first or second row.

Comments

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. My Zoom H4 will only record 4 track in a particular format (I think it's the 44.1KHz/16 bit WAV one you mention). I wonder if it's something they have in common in the hardware?

Anyway, I sympathize on the frustration of discovering limitations in one's nice new gadgets.

[mdlbear]

They're probably deeply similar inside. Inability to multitrack in MP3 is probably due to having only one, stereo, MP3 encoder/decoder chip. Inability to multitrack at 96KHz might be due to the write speed of the SD card, but I don't think so. (In the case of the H2 it could be a matter of saving a couple of bucks on the analog side and only putting in two 24-bit ADCs, but that doesn't make much sense either.) Possibly the I/O bandwidth of their CPU chip.

Trouble with having been in the IC and embedded software business for thirty-odd years is that I know too much. Gadgets are much more impressive when you don't know how easy it would have been to do them right.

[hms42]

Thanks for the reviews on the H2 and H4. I recommended your review to a friend the other night right before they purchased an H2. (I am thinking about getting one myself for my recording kit. (Holiday/Birthday gift for myself later this year is the likely purchase point.))

Harold

4 Channel Audio resolution

[(Anonymous)]

I'm quite sure Samson stuck with the 16 bit audio due to fact that you need those bits and samples to be able to calculate and encode the recorded audio for Surround Sound - mostly for DTS or AC3 in general. In fact 24 bit would be better for this process with least a sampling freq of 44.1KHz. If this were to be recorded at any lower sampling rate, (mp3) its just impossible to work the psycho-acoustic analyses. Most of these samples captured will have to be removed thru the masking process while balancing the bits in all 4/5 channels which you would process for later. This encoding process exploits an effect called auditory masking and in addition adapts the input signal to the spectral sensitivity curve of the human ear. Yes our ears are outsmarting our brains to say its not surround anymore if its of any lower format. For all you'd here afterwards would be noise.

Hope this is making any sense to you.
However, with the price of SD cards going down each day I think its not a big issue. If its of any help, here's a link (http://www.all4mp3.com/tools/sw_fhg_demo.html) to later convert those wav files to mp3 stereo surround. Have fun with your new Zoom H2. Its incredible to think how or what its capable of doing. ~ rastAsia

Re: 4 Channel Audio resolution

[mdlbear]

I'm much more annoyed with the inability to record 4-channel sound at 24 bits -- that's more what I was interested in. And I really have no interest in recording surround sound; I mainly want the ability to record four channels, then mix down to stereo with some audience reaction thrown in where it works and suppressed when it doesn't.