[Mike Rivers]

On Mar 11, 4:05 am, Steve wrote:
Mike, the reality of the situation is, as far as sound goes, the Edirol
and Zoom models are going to sound similar, with their cheap built-in
preamps and mics.

I figured as much. But both of them have received great praise for
their sound when using the built-in microphones. Just because of the
way that they can reasonably be placed, I wouldn't expect spectacular
results. Is anyone really going to put one up on a mic stand unless
it's being used in something like a band rehearsal where nobody's
looking. I'd be more interested in knowing how a boundary, like a
table, affects the mics. I'd be inclined to put either of them on a
table with the bottom surface on the table and the mics raised by at
least the height of the recorder, but neither one looks like it would
be stable like that.

For me, it came down to real world usage. I liked that the Edirol unit
was smaller. An inch in length and a half inch in width may not seem
like much until you try and fit it in your pocket.

That would be the same for me, but first I'd need to decide if I was
going to use it at all, or rather, use it enough to justify the cost,
low as it is. I'd love to have a $1,000 digital camera because I like
quality things, but I bought a $100 camera because I take about a
dozen pictures a year, and most of them are for articles and my $100
camera is good enough. Back when I carried a cassette recorder with me
to learn songs at parties and festivals, I would have welcomed one of
these flash memory recorders. But today I don't do that, so that's a
big chunk of usage I wouldn't get from it. I need something that's
cheap enough to not use, if that makes any sense.

There a 2GB SD Card limit (unless there's been a recent upgrade) for the
Zoom, and an 8GB card limit in the Edirol

That's not a big deal for me. While memory cards keep getting larger,
it will be a long time before they're inexpensive enough to put on the
shelf and not re-use (and then how the heck are you going to file
them, with no space to even write the contents on them). If I'm going
to record more than a couple of hours in a shot, it will be 10 to 20
hours, and I want it on a hard drive. Micro Center is selling 2 GB SD
cards for $15 now, so I'd probably get one of those (assuming it works
in the recorder - camera folks have found some cards that don't work
in some cameras and I assume the same is true with recorders) and it
would be all I'd ever need. I might get one more as a spare.

Edirol is inclined to do firmware updates, Samson (Zoom) isn't. So
while they say that its memory capacity may be extended, I wouldn't
hold my breath. I'm still waiting for them to come up with a working
version of the meter/gain control application for their USB
microphone. The one that they released when they introduced the first
of those mics didn't work at all (Tech Support confirmed it, but it's
not really necessary) but it looked pretty. I think it's still on
their web site with a link to download it. It's possible that it's
been updated since they now have a Universal Binary version for the
Mac. I haven't bothered checking it out again.

I also have to mention the dedicated "record" button and how easy it is
to just start a recording on the Edirol without going thru menus.

The Zoom has a Record button. I assume there's a certain amount of
menu selection to set parameters, but once that's done, unless you
want to change something, is there more to recording than pushing the
button? As I recall, you have to press it twice. The first press puts
you in Rec/Pause so you can check the record level, the next press
starts recording. That makes perfectly good sense to me, though
something more convoluted probably wouldn't.

I'll also mention that in my area, the H4 is $299 and the Edirol is $399.

That seems to be pretty standard. I've never seen either one for less,
so I guess your 15% discount must have been an unadvertised deal. But
until I know that I'd be happy with either one and get some mileage
out of it, I'm holding out for that $500 hard disk recorder with
phantom powered XLR inputs and decent preamps that would replace two
pieces of gear for remotes. I'm curious about the Korg DSD recorder,
but the big version is $1,000. While I have the cash, I might find it
hard to justify as long as the Jukebox still works.