My Rode Stereo VideoMic couldn’t handle loud gigs and was clipping the sound. On Tuesday I became the proud owner of a great little device, the Zoom H4N.
I won’t bother describing what’s great about it — that’s all over the internet. I’ll just say the recording quality is excellent. And, most importantly, it copes brilliantly with concerts. To put it through its paces I went straight to a show at Orlandina, where the German band WE BUTTER THE BREAD WITH BUTTER were playing yesterday. They play heavy stuff, so the recorder was thrown straight into the deep end of a loud, heavy gig.
In the recorder’s settings there’s a COMP/LIMITER option — as I understand it, that’s a set of presets for recording. I shot a video at the show with audio from the recorder. It’s in two parts. The first I recorded with the LIMIT2 (CONCERT) preset and a manual recording level (level 8 out of 100). I’m not too happy with how that came out. The second part used the LIMIT3 (STUDIO) preset — even at home it makes the sound cleaner and more pleasant. I left the recording level on AUTO. I like the result much better.
Either way, the way the audio came out at a gig like that is a strong sign that the device records very respectably. I think I’ll stick with it.
From the start of the video up to 9:43 it’s LIMIT2 (CONCERT) and recording level 8; from 9:43 to the end it’s LIMIT3 (STUDIO) with auto recording level. Result: