Re: Zoom H4 for laptop looping

[Joshua Carroll <josh@infinivert.com>]

That's weird.  I didn't notice any artifacts, but I haven't really run 
it through the ringer yet.  I'll play with it some more and see if I can 
get it to reproduce your results.  If so, I'm going to be all over Zoom 
to fix that as I bought it specifically because it could double as an 
interface and I need it to work.

Thanks for the heads-up!

--Josh


Per Boysen wrote:
> Yes, of course. By writing "the dedicated software drivers" I meant 
> the "H4 ASIO Driver Version 1.0.0.1". AFAIK there are no other drivers 
> for H4 (I tried ASIO4ALL but it did not detect the hardware, but on 
> Mac the OS X took care of it right away, although still with tiny 
> audio artifacts) . I'm hoping an update to the ASIO driver is due 
> soon...  ;-)
>
> per
>
>
> On 10 nov 2006, at 02.22, Joshua Carroll wrote:
>
>> Ha!  Very cool.
>>
>> Did you download the ASIO driver for it?  I've not had any problems 
>> getting a great sound as an interface via ASIO...
>>
>> --Josh
>>
>>
>>
>> Per Boysen wrote:
>>> Date: Wed, 08 Nov 2006 10:06:16 -0600
>>>
>>>> Just thought I'd throw out a plug for the new Zoom H4.  It works as 
>>>> a great 2x2 audio interface for Mobius (it has some built-in 
>>>> effects I haven't tried yet, but will work in audio-interface 
>>>> mode), and the other features make it ideal for collecting 
>>>> found-sounds or putting together rough song ideas on the fly.  The 
>>>> built-in stereo condenser mic has really impressed me so far.  I 
>>>> expected it to pretty much suck for the price, but I've been 
>>>> getting some excellent acoustic guitar recordings with it.
>>>>
>>>> Anyway, for the price, I'm really happy, so I thought I'd pass it 
>>>> along.
>>>>
>>>> --Josh
>>>
>>>
>>> Someone posted and asked about latency. I just picked one up this 
>>> morning to check out, and may have some information to share. 
>>> Regarding the option to use the H4 as an audio interface the 
>>> software drivers are bad news. So bad actually that I would rather 
>>> say that the H4 is not usable at all "as laptop sound card". I 
>>> tested it for hours and although I used the largest available buffer 
>>> I could not get a clean sound from it. Not on Mac with OS X and not 
>>> in Windows XP with the dedicated software drivers. I'm glad I don't 
>>> have to review it in a magazine because the marketing of it is 
>>> partly misleading.
>>>
>>> But the H4 is great for other purposes - just forget about that 
>>> audio interface dimension - like for example the stereo recording 
>>> and the effects. Good guitar sounds in there  (Some people might 
>>> want to use it as a four track porta studio as well). H4 is also 
>>> awesome as a USB2 based SD card reader. And it rocks as a portable 
>>> field recorder. I like it so much that I decided to buy one as a 
>>> replacement for my old portable DAT recorder.
>>>
>>> And I did actually find a place for it in my laptop looping rig - as 
>>> a mic pre amp, merge box and input reverb unit :-)  I feed the H4 
>>> with one acoustic flute mic and one line level EWI synth clarinet. 
>>> Then I put a simple stereo cable from the H4 into the PCMCIA sound 
>>> card Echo Indigo i/o on my lappy. That's a minimal set-up that 
>>> sounds decently ok. Two instantly connected instruments of which one 
>>> is electric and can be used for heavily distorted sounds that would 
>>> not be possible with a microphone.
>>>
>>> Greetings from Sweden
>>>
>>> Per Boysen
>>> www.boysen.se (Swedish)
>>> www.looproom.com (international)
>>> http://tinyurl.com/fauvm (podcast)
>>> http://www.myspace.com/looproom
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