NRD...

You know about NGD (New Guitar Day); even NBD (New Boat Day)... today is NRD (New Recorder Day)!

A year or so ago, Joan asked me to record some songs for her.  The best I could come up with for equipment to record with was the built in mic on my iPad Mini.  Not exactly hi-fidelity.  I have been looking for a compact recorder, preferably something that could do up to 4 channels.  All my research led me to the Zoom H4n Pro.  I ordered one from Sweetwater; it arrived today...

Check it out: an actual paper owners manual.  I have been looking through the PDF on-line manual, but it makes more sense when you have the recorder in hand.

I was surprised at how small it is.  Yes, I saw plenty of them on-line, but it seemed bigger.

I put the batteries and SD card in, and turned it on.  A quick "Mic test, one two."  Yep, it works.  I got out the new X20 to try a quick guitar recording... exactly one nano-second after pressing record, a neighbor fired up his Harley.  Not a quiet one.

I waited for him to pull away.  Looking at the mic level meters, I could see the overhead fan in the bedroom was being picked up by the onboard mics.  Turned it off.  Take two: I did an abbreviated song, then listened to the playback... oh, goodness - much better than recording with the mic on the iPad and the PA.  I think I am going to enjoy this... and the X20 has such beautiful tone; I hope I can capture the essence of that.

Recording in the motorhome is going to be less than great: plenty of hard surfaces in here... and noise that you don't even notice (tuned out: traffic, airplanes, etc) gets picked up by the mics.  You can set a "lower level" for recording, that the mics won't pick up below that level.

There are a lot of options for the quality of recording, from CD quality to studio quality.  Probably overkill for anything I will record, but I am looking forward to giving it a try.  Before getting any further with it, we are off for the afternoon with Steph and Dan.

I'll post something here after I get a little better with the post processing (files are huge).  It may be a while.