Brad Linder, a freelance journalist, shared his Zoom H4 mobile battery pack hack at a recent coworking event in Brooklyn called Jelly. The idea of coworking is to get “virtual” electronic workers out of their apartments and in an environment where they can meet other people. “Lonely” I think is the wrong word, as many of us have chosen that life, but at the same time we’re aware of missing some of the potential of real-world interaction. As it happens, just that power of random happenstance has me collaborating with an industrial designer on a custom Monome, and picking up mobile recording tips from NPR producers.
If you’re curious to hear the results of the H4 in action, Brad’s story was on NPR’s Morning Edition yesterday. (More on the coworking story at Brad’s blog.) I make a brief cameo, and provide a fair bit of the ambient sound at the beginning, which I find amusing. But whether or not it’s the best choice for you, the H4 can certainly be used in pro applications.
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Well you know what we singles always say "I'm not alone, I'm by myself."
I think I may have to set up a cubicle and start tacking Dilbert cartoons to it, though.
Actually, the ambi in the beginning was taken from the folks working in the bedroom. Why does it sound dirty when I write it like that?
I had originally planned to include some sound of you and Joey talking but there was too much noise from the fans in that room for it to work.
FYI, the battery pack has made my Zoom 100x more useful, but it's still a bit finicky when it comes to things like handling noise and the inability to make track marks without stopping the recording. I'm seriously considering getting a Fostex FR2-LE, but I'll definitely keep the H4 as a backup and for travel. I'm taking a trip this week and it's going with me to act as a field recorder/audio interface for my laptop.
[…] Our friend David Battino writes from O’Reilly Digital Media site to share the massive reader response they got to the Zoom H2 recorder. (The H2 is a smaller version of the H4, which made a guest appearance of sorts on Morning Edition this week.) Mark Nelson didn’t manage to make this his fifth portable flash recorder review in Hawaii, but he made up for it in depth. His review of the Zoom H2 is almost 5,000 words and contains surround-sound links galore as well as some nifty audio examples. […]