Let’s Zoom!
Well of course usually I would use a ‘z’ instead of a ‘Z’ but not this time. The Zoom H1 portable recorder is a very cheap, reliable and good sounding piece of gear with a very small and lightweight way of construction.
The small recorder is a really giant looking at it’s values:
it comes with two X-Y electret mic’s on board and is able to record the stereo-signal up to 24bit, 96kHz WAV with 128x oversampling (original signalprocessing 32bit). You are also able to plugin in a external mic via minijack (offers plugin power), while doing this you have to abadon the built in low-cut function.
The Zoom H1 offers a full functional timecode and trackmarker function which is very important in a professional context.
There is also the possibility to buy a special windjammer by different manufacturers, what you will need, because at leat the built-in mics are really sensitive. One AA battery offers up to ten hours recording, which goes onto micro SD or micro SDHC (maximum size 32GB). With it’s 60g (!) you can easily wear it in your pocket.
Too good to be true?
Well, indeed it is! For around 100€ you get a very reliable high class recording device with some nice stereo-mic’s. I recommend it to everyone, unimportant you are fieldrecordist, filmmaker, soundartist or whatever you do with sounds, it’s the swiss-army-knife for audio-producers.