Zoom H1essential

He estado utilizando la Zoom H1 Essential principalmente para grabar mi música con un setup dawless, y en general la experiencia ha sido bastante positiva. La función de grabación en 32-bit float es muy práctica, ya que facilita mucho la post-edición sin preocuparse demasiado por los niveles de entrada. Además, el tamaño compacto de la grabadora la hace realmente portátil y fácil de integrar en cualquier flujo de trabajo.

Como puntos menos favorables, diría que la interfaz se siente algo poco intuitiva: cada vez que realizo alguna acción (ajustes, navegación de menús, etc.) resulta un tanto incómodo. En cuanto a los micrófonos integrados, no los he probado a fondo, pero en mis primeras pruebas ofrecen una calidad correcta, dentro del estándar para este tipo de grabadoras portátiles.

En resumen, la Zoom H1 Essential me parece una opción muy interesante para músicos que trabajan sin ordenador y buscan una grabadora ligera, sencilla y con la seguridad de grabar en 32-bit float, aunque la usabilidad de los controles podría mejorar.

La llevo usando unos días y me parece una grabadora genial, con unos resultados más que profesionales. Fuera de las complicaciones de viento en exteriores como cualquier otro sistema de grabación, las grabaciones son más que nítidas y altamente sensibles. Responde perfectamente tanto en mono como en estéreo. Hecho en falta una funda y un antiviento, que espero incluyan dentro de poco. También sería bueno que las instrucciones habladas estuvieran también en Español.

I bought this as an upgrade to my H1 first generation, received it today and called a saxophone playing friend to try it along loud percussions, and the "32 bits don't bother the gain just play" was immensely satisfying. We made two quick tests to find the right relative position and just peed the rec button and improvised, the result was as advertised, no clipping. Very handy recorder and an amazing upgrade to the previous generations. My friend who's also a producer and a sound engineer was pretty convinced too, and will probably get the H4essential or H6essential - despite the self noise which is not a problem in most contexts but we're sitting about a tenth of the price of a sounds device mix-pre6. This model is a must have for quick field or jam recording or backup ready to solution.
As a sound interface, unlike previous model it has dual recording and playing so it might be a cheap sound interface except it seems to be limited to 48 khz operation in this mode.

Quickly tried the overdub, it's fun and can come in handy, but only operates on 48KHz and had a few limitations. It is not destructive on the first track your overdubbing, that is it creates a new track with the overdub. Would be awesome to have two more tracks when overdubbing instead of one : the isolated overdubbed track and the mix as reference, to be able to properly mix later in a DAW.

As a hand device, even using the handle that came with the H1 accessory set, it's a bit delicate to not create noise, even squeezing a bit too tightly the handle results in heavy extra noise, the mics are very sensitive to the wind including the one when moving around, and without a pop filter you have to keep quite a distance to the mic to avoid clipping - so for short range voice either use a pop filter or external microphone, and for the wind or waving quickly the microphone from one side to another maybe a good rycote-like protection will be necessary.

Nevertheless, for my main purpose which is some girls recording and live musician recording with the least hassle, it definitely fits the goal, offer some extras and it's a huge upgrade to the previous versions. 5 stars overall, only 4 for quality because plastic, self noise and sensitivity to hand operations (no problem on a tripod) but still that's too be expected given the price tag.

I suppose it could run on a USB power bank which is great because with a 64gb card you're good for me than 21 hours of recording in 96kHz.
A perfect set of accessory would include charger/power bank/cable/tripod/bag for the recorder+accessories/adapters for mic stand/a stereo splitter cable/pop filter+adapter/foldable headphones