Zoom H6 Recorder Shootout

[Doug Young]

I've had a number of people ask me if it's really possible to get a good recording out of the hand-held digital recorders, and whether the quality stands up to "better" gear even when using external mics. My only answer to date has been "check out my you tube videos and see if they sound good enough. But I started wondering how much difference there is, and decided to do an actual comparison, and here's the result.

What I did:

I don't have 4 matched mics, but I do have 2 pairs of matched small condensers, so I recorded with spaced pairs, with Schoeps CMC6/MK41s on the right, Neumann KM184s on the left. I ran one Schoeps/Neumann pair into the external mic inputs of the Zoom H6, and the other thru my usual studio chain: Great River preamp, Cranesong HEDD A/D, RME AES Interface into a Mac Pro. So we have identical mic setups on each signal chain, placed as close together as I could get them.

Just for kicks, I also recorded with the XY Zoom "internal" mic module (it's actually an attachable mic module on the H6), set at the 120 degree setting.

I recorded a short doodlette, one pass, recording all three signal chains at once, and then loaded all three tracks into Logic, did my best to match levels, added a touch of reverb, and saved each mix. No EQ on anything, except for a low end rolloff below 40Hz on all three tracks, tho I might want to do more if I was really mixing one of these.

Because we're influenced by knowing which is which, I'll post these blind for now. See what you think. I'd say the questions are: 1) Can you hear a difference? 2) If so, which do you prefer? 3) Can you tell which is the Zoom recordings and which are the Great River, et all, chain?

The Zoom internal mic track should be pretty easy to pick out. For starters, it's XY, while the other tracks are spaced pairs. I also hear a tonal difference (remember that the Zoom mics probably cost like a dollar or two!), so that one should be a freebie. The others may be harder. Or not. See what you hear. Tracks can be downloaded:

All Three Tracks on Soundcloud

Individual Tracks:

Zoom Shootout Take A
Zoom Shootout Take B
Zoom Shootout Take C

[M19]

First of all, Doug, you could make a cigar box rubber band guitar playing into a Mr. Microphone sound great!

My guesses:

2 is the H6 internals. Sounds "narrower" to me.
1 and 3 sound markedly better to me, and 1 maybe just a touch "fuller" so I'll guess that is your normal chain and 3 is the mics through the H6.

Please don't wait a week to tell us, or simply link to a second thread where the answer and your comments might be found?

Thanks for another thought and ear-provoking post.

[Thrillhouse]

Cool idea. I think the first one is the Zoom. No idea on the other two. Take B is my favorite.

[mc1]

these are always a lot of fun and very enlightening. especially when done so very well. thanks.

through medium-quality headphones i slightly preferred C to A, and thought B was the zoom. i liked B as well, but it isn't as as spacious a sound.

[YamaYairi]

2 sounds to me like the internal mics.
1 I think is your normal chain.
3 I heard a small amount of what I can only describe as graininess or distortion. I think that one is the Zoom.
Listened on Sony MDR-V6 headphones.

[moon]

A - zoom

Bit too much top end and I thought it was a poorer quality sound overall. I'm not sure I can explain what I mean: I'd be throwing around words like "solidity" and "richness" (or lack of it relative to the others) without really knowing what physical properties of the sound I'm referring to.

B - KM184's

Extra depth and (sorry..) "solidity" instantly makes me think of a quality mic. It's also quite bright so it must be the Neumann. I feel like I could EQ out a little top end and then be left with something pretty good in a way I don't hear in A. It's like there's extra information in B which just doesn't exist in A.

C - Schoeps

Again, richer & more solid but more balanced frequency response so this must be the Schoeps. I always like these mics better than anything else in a blind test - so far anyway.

I'm listening on MDR-V6 too and my RME Multiface which is a mid-range kind of box. I'm fairly confident I guessed right - but of course I may be completely wrong

There's also the question of how good does a mic have to be? I certainly wouldn't call A objectively bad (if indeed that is the Zoom). A lot of inexpensive gear is quite good nowadays. You have to spend exponentially more to go those last few steps.

[Doug Young]

You may be misunderstanding what I did, moon. There are three recordings:

Zoom with internal mics (in XY)
Zoom with a KM184 on the right, schoeps CMC/Mk41 on the left (spaced pairs)
Great River, etc, with KM184 on the right, Schoeps in the left (spaced pairs)

So identical mic setups between the 2 spaced pair paths, with the one XY track thrown in for free. Want to guess again?

[moon]

Originally Posted by Doug Young

You may be misunderstanding what I did, moon. There are three recordings:

OK - got you now.

B is Zoom in XY isn't it? I'm not sure I can tell the other two apart now. I thought I could before.

[Doug Young]

Yeah, B is the Zoom internal mics, should be pretty easy to hear with the different stereo image. Interesting that some people prefer it in spite of dramatically cheaper mics. Could be that if you prefer the tighter XY image, that trumps any mic advantage. Since I'm less a fan of XY these days, it's harder for me to warm up to this one, or to separate the mic quality from the stereo image aspect.

So that leaves the real test I was trying to do, basically Zoom pres and D/A vs the pricier chain.

[Wengr]

Tough one. I'd like to think that A is your usual chain, but A also seems to have a very slightly higher noise floor than C, so I'm not sure.
I have a Zoom H4, and the noise floor is not great so that influences me. Despite that I'll defer to the tone and go with:
A - Great River/hedd
C - Zoom pre/conversion.

Thanks for this - very interesting and helpful.
Did you consider doing it with all three pairs in X/Y?

[rick-slo]

I'll guess C is the fancy stuff, and A is the external mikes Zoom.

[Doug Young]

Originally Posted by Wengr

Did you consider doing it with all three pairs in X/Y?

Yes, but I think it'd be hard to do. Space-wise, it'd be hard to fit three X/Y pairs together without a significant difference in sound just from the mic location. Also, pairing 1 Schoeps and 1 KM184 in an XY pair wouldn't be very optimal. If I had 4 matching mics, maybe it'd be doable.

I'll comment more on this, with answers shortly. I've been tight on time here since I posted it

[Andy Howell]

I reckon A is Zoom with external MICS and C is the normal chain. I've only listened once but I figure C to be more refined.

[Doug Young]

OK, here's which is which:

A is the Zoom with external mics
B is the Zoom with internal mics (XY)
C is the fancier chain (Great River, etc)

We didn't get enough guesses to be particularly meaningful, but if I counted right, we had 3 people thinking A was the better chain, 3 thinking C was the better chain, and 1 person simply preferring the internal XY mics. Not too surprising. I felt like I could tell A and C apart (and preferred the better chain), but I tried an ABX test tonight, and could only score 40%, so I can't really tell the difference either. I really wasn't sure when I tried this whether there'd be a big difference or not.

As far as differences, there's clearly more noise on the internal mic track, not too surprising. But not all that bad, considering. There' also seems to be a tad more noise on the Zoom track (A) than the Great River track, tho apparently not enough that I could reliably pick it out in a blind test. Some people may hear it more easily - I hear more noise on the tail on the Zoom track, tho I still failed the ABX :-). I feel like the internal mics (B track) are a bit less pleasing on the high end as well, but that could just be me.

One issue with this exercise (there's always something that goes wrong....) is that both the A and C tracks have some odd noise on the right channel. (I incorrectly swapped what I reported the tracks to be in my original post - it's KM184s on the right and Schoeps on the left.) The KM184 tracks have some odd digital noise at 2KHz and harmonics. I chased this down tonight to the KM184s seeming to pick up something in my room. I almost never record with these anymore - I mostly use them for live micing, so I was surprised to see the problem - sorry I didnt catch it before posting. I recorded samples tonight with the Zoom in other rooms of my house, and the noise went away. Back in the studio, and there it is. I'm suspecting the LED lighting I recently switched to, but need to investigate more. In any case, this noise, common to both signal chains may be masking the higher noise level of the zoom a bit - basically making my Great River/Cranesong/RME chain sound worse than it really is..

I tried comparing the noise floor between the 2 chains tonight (with the Schoeps, not KM184s), and found it hard to differentiate between environmental noise and any self noise of the 2 paths. It appeared to me that the Zoom might have 1 or 2 db more noise at higher frequencies, but I'm not sure my measurements were accurate. There are better ways to measure this, I'll try again at some point.

Anyway, the basic question people were asking me was if you could do an acceptable recording on something like the Zoom. My conclusion is that the Zoom *may* be be slightly less quality in some respects (perhaps noise, for example) than a *much* higher price chain, but that, at least for a simple solo guitar recording like this, it's so close that very few people can hear the difference, or even if they can, it's not enough difference to matter. It's just one test, and might come out differently for someone else, but it's interesting, and a bit surprising.

[rick-slo]

Thanks for the test demo.

I thought C had a slight bit more body on the notes (the same thing I noticed when I bought my NPNG preamp). A and C were very close though and very easily a wash depending on the playback system and given Soundcloud quality limits. I was listening via an ASUS Xonar Essence STX sound card into Grado 325i headphones.