Now in addition to being a great field recorder,
the Zoom F3 can also be used as an audio interface for your phone, tablet, computer- but in this
video we'll only be demonstrating how to connect it to your computer. The steps are basically
the same for mobile devices. You can find more info about that in the F3 user guide. What's an
audio interface? In this case, it allows you to use your F3 as the audio hub for your computer.
You can connect mics to your F3 and record to your computer, and you can plug headphones into
your F3 and listen to the sound of your computer through the F3 itself. Now, before we start, there
are a couple of things you need to note here. Just take note of those in case you're using one of
these scenarios. First, plug a USB-C cable- make sure it is in fact a data cable- into the F3's USB
port. Then plug the other end into the computer. Now, we need to put the F3 into audio interface
mode. So, go into the main menu and scroll down to USB Audio I/F. Select that option, then specify
whether you're connecting to a PC or Mac, or a tablet or phone. Then you choose whether
you want to be in linear or float mode. So if you're going to use this for Zoom calls or live
streaming, 24-bit linear is the right choice for you. Choose 32-bit float mode if you'll be
recording really, really loud, unpredictable singing/screaming/laughing. So it can be useful
for boisterous podcasts, for example, or very loud sound effects. For our general purposes, we'll
choose 24-bit mode. After you make that selection, you'll be returned to the main monitoring screen,
and the F3 is ready to go! Lastly, we need to make sure the routing is correct on your computer. In
MacOS, this means going into the System Settings > Audio > and choosing the ZoomAudioDevice as
both our output and our input. Then, in our digital audio workstation or recording software,
we'll also want to open the audio preferences and choose the F3- again, it usually appears as
something like 'ZoomAudioDevice'- as both our input and our output device. Yes, you need to
set them in both the digital audio workstation and in the operating system to ensure that audio
flows correctly throughout the entire system. If you want to confirm that the F3 is in 32-bit float
mode on MacOS, you can also pull up the Audio MIDI Setup app. Again, select ZoomAudioDevice and make
sure that it's registering as a 2-in/2-out device at 48 kilohertz with two channels and 32-bit
float enabled. Now, if you set it up at 24-bit, it'll show 24-bit linear instead. Now the F3 is
ready to be used with your computer as an audio interface! Let's try a test recording with our
F3 set up as an audio interface directly into our DAW or recording app on the computer. [Sample
Audio] And that's how you set up the Zoom F3 with your computer as an audio interface! If you need
the basics on how to set up your F3 to record with microphones and set the input levels, have a
look at our quick setup guide, which we left a link for down below. In the meantime, get out
there and make some great sound. Talk to you soon.
