Zoom F4/F8 vs MixPre-3 and 6 Audio Recorder Comparison

one question I've heard a lot is should I get a mix pre from sound devices or a zoom f4 or f8 well let's take a shot at that question [Music] first of all I'm sorry to disappoint you if you were looking for a very very clear answer there's no clear and easy answer to that question that's good and that's bad it's bad because there's no clear answer it's good because that means there are two series of devices that are very very good for about the same price range the mix Prix and the zoom FA both come in at around $900 us and the zoom f/4 and mix pre three each come in at about six hundred and fifty dollars us so there are some really great high quality audio recorders out there now that really up the gain over the previous recorders that we've had available to us over the last several years the reason I say that there's no clear answer is that the each have features that kind of outdo each other and they each have kind of weaknesses where the other one might be a little stronger so it really depends on what you'll be recording how you generally record and what your workflow is and also the priorities what's most important to you for the types of shooting you're doing so let's talk about the strengths and kind of I guess relative weaknesses one against the other and that should give you some good ideas about which one may work best for you now first of all if your question is well I just want the one that gives the best audio quality which one is that go have a listen to this previous episode where we actually recorded with the mix pre-six the zoom f8 and the sound device is 633 which is a completely different league of recorder much you know higher end than either one of these just as a reference point and listen for yourself and see if you can tell a difference if you're listening with earbuds you may not even be able to tell a difference if you're listening with high quality speakers or headphones you may be able to tell a difference the reality is is that all four of them the mix pre three and six and the zoom F 4 and F 8 all record fantastic audio that's much better than any prosumer level recorder I've used in the past up to this point so unfortunately there's no clear answer of which one to get if you just want the best audio quality all four of them are really superb now just as a background before we dive into each of the individual features on each of these Byam coming from the perspective of a corporate video shooter and a every once in a while I'm also a sound mixer for another production so that's where I'm coming from so the reason I tell you that is that that really kind of dick hates my biases what kinds of things I'm looking for in audio recorders and it may not be the exact same thing you're looking for so I just want to be clear on that so you understand what my biases are coming into this and the perspective from which I'm kind of talking about all these features in addition just so you're aware I purchased the mix pre-six the zoom f8 and the zoom f4 all with my own money so I'm not being sponsored by anyone no one's paying me to make this episode these are my own opinions coming from my own bias perspective so let's get to talking about the features and the relative strengths of each of these I want to talk about the zoom f4 on the zoom f8 together there obviously are some differences and again go take a look at the zoom f4 review if you're interested in what those differences are I've also got a full review for the zoom f8 we've also got lots of other videos all of them are up in this upper right hand corner with a little eye menu if you hover over that press that you'll see a whole bunch of videos I've talked about so I'm not going to go into depth in terms of getting audio samples for each of these right here first of all one thing that's very important to me is powering options if you're out on a shoot and you're out for say somewhere between 4 hours and 12 hours which is a kind of a typical production day powering is pretty important and if you have to change your batteries every hour and a half that becomes a real problem and a serious annoyance that can also be a costly thing as well so if you ran out of batteries in a middle of a take and you didn't realize it that means you have to do a retake and that can actually get pretty problematic if you're just working on a passion project and you have all the time in the world well maybe not just that big of an issue but if you're actually getting paid to do a job that's an issue and so you need to have a solid powering set of options ready to go the nice thing about the zoom f4 and f8 is that they do come with a tray for 8 double-a batteries and I found depending on how many microphones you're bringing in and what you're recording that that powers the unit from about I think generally about two and a half hours to maybe three and a half hours so depends on what you're doing so that's nice but you can also add a variety of different other types of batteries via the the 4 pin High Rose input and this is a really nice professional type of locking connector I think it's really awesome that zoom put that on these recorders and opens up the possibility of adding all sorts of very high-quality professional-grade batteries from say you know v-mount or anton bauer batteries and if you want something a little smaller the mp1 style batteries which are often used with professional audio recorders you can also use even USB battery banks and in fact for the zoom f4 and f8 I recently bought this battery I'll put a link for this down below if you're interested your typical USB power bank cannot provide 12 volts typically so this one's a little bit specialized but it's very affordable less than $40 then you add the cable and you're able to power these units for hours if you want to be able to control your recorder remotely using an app on your phone or tablet that is possible with the zoom f8 only the f4 cannot do that so we're going to put that aside for just a minute while we talk about this on the zoom f8 you can use an app on iOS so that's Apple buy phones and iPads zoom has not produced up to this point an app for Android so a lot of people were disappointed about that I guess I can understand that you know that is disappointing if you are an Android phone user but if you do have iOS or an iPad you can control this it has a pretty nice app too it allows you to set up each of the inputs in terms of the game it also allows you to mix use a fader to pull the level of one of the inputs back individually it allows you to enter metadata as well so that is notes about each of the takes and things of that nature so it's a really fantastic app unfortunately it is only iOS and it is only for the zoom f8 one of the things I absolutely love about the Zoom F series of recorders is that there is also this addon called a zoom F control or F rc-aid this doesn't add any additional functionality per se to the zoom f4 and f8 but what it does give you is much better controls to work with and we're going to talk a little bit more about the controls on those two recorders in just a few minutes here but this makes it like a proper mixer and this is a sort of a traditional mixer with linear faders is what these are you have your game trim here this is your amplification this is what you use to attenuate or pull back the levels while you're recording on an individual microphone you have a fade so you have all these really fantastic controls you have some kind of quick buttons here that get you around the menus and things of that nature a little bit more quickly you have your encoder here which allows you to make selections within the menus and select items of course you have your transport which is record play stop fast forward fast back and then of course you have a control here for your headphone output volume this is really really really nice if you're doing if you're actively mixing a piece so if you're actually listening to it and actually making adjustments in real time this is a really really valuable tool for that it is about a $350 tool so there is a there's a constant involved with it but it's really great to have that option if you're going to be doing the types of recordings where you need to do that for example panel discussions or recording a band live and things of that nature this makes it very really really nice to be able to do that where you can create a really nice mix at the same time that you're recording individual microphone channels in the same file so this is really nice from that standpoint so if that's something important to you that is something that's offered with the zoom F series of recorders one of the practical issues with digital recording regardless of which device you use is that if your talent or sound source suddenly gets very loud louder than you expected what you often end up with in your recording is digital clipping and distortion and it sounds absolutely awful so there are a couple of different ways that manufacturers have gone about producing tools that will help eliminate that issue or control that issue a little bit better one way is using what's called safety tracks another way is using something called limiters now technically the zoom f4 and FA both have safety track recording feature and they also have digital limiters however there is a nuance about limiters someone's talking on a microphone you know saying their lines for a film and they suddenly get louder than you expected what happens is you get that clipping well what a safety track does is a safety track actually records out single microphone to two different microphone channels two separate channels so kind of two separate tracks if you will it records the first one at the level that you set it records the second one the same mic at a lower level on that a secondary track so in post what you can do is if you do get a situation where the talent gets very loud suddenly and does clip on the main track the secondary track or the safety track shouldn't be clipped and yet in post you can actually cut in that second track and make it sound very very nice on the other hand what a limiter does is a limiter actually tries to take care of that for you in real time while you're recording so a limiter is really nice because then you don't have any work imposed to do if it's able to capture that input level and kind of pull it back before it clips the problem on the zoom F series is that the limiters are digital so what happens is that damage that clipping and distortion can already occur before the limiters kick in and that was just kind of a weird thing I don't understand why a lot of the kind of the prosumer and consumer grade recorders are doing that I think it's to save money because analog limiters cost money there are a separate component that they have to put in the recorder so I would really say that digital limiters don't really do a lot for you in terms of preventing clipping and distortion on the zoom F series but they do have the safety track feature so you can record a single microphone to two separate channels at a lower level on the second one so that if you do get a really loud sound source suddenly you know someone starts screaming or yelling or laughing then it will be recorded to that secondary track at a lower level and you'll be able to use that in post so overall I guess I see the limiters on the zoom f8 and f4 as kind of a weakness however they do have a safety recording feature so that's a nice I guess consolation prize another super nice feature on the zoom F series is they both have two SD card slots so you can essentially record the exact same thing to two separate cards you also have some flexibility you can record say for example a WAV lossless WAV file to one card and an mp3 file to another card so you have a lot of options there that gives you some flexibility and it also gives you redundancy and safety so that if one of the cards go bad you still have the recording on another card really really nice feature one of the things that the zoom F Series have done is they provide a whole lot of inputs the zoom f8 has eight XLR TRS combination input so you can input microphones you can input line level feeds so say for example if you wanted to record the sound coming out of a mixing board at a live concert you could do that as well the only quirk with the zoom F series is that the only way to get line level is in is to use a quarter inch and the only way to get mic in is using XLR that's not necessarily a showstopper it's just a quirk what that means in practical terms is if you are going to be recording line level you're probably going to need to get more cables that have a quarter inch on this side if you need XLR on the other side or they're going to need to be quarter inch to quarter inch on you know to get out of the mixer and into the zoom F series so kind of a little quirk not a big deal not a showstopper but you may need to buy more cables in addition to that both a zoom F 4 and F 8 have this accessory input here that allows you to cou buy an additional accessory that you can bring two additional microphones or line level signals in and it can record those the only limitation is is that that module does not provide phantom power so you it's really not meant for condenser microphones unless they have their own power source but really I see that mainly to be used to get additional - additional line level inputs in so if you're recording from a mixer or you're getting you know individual microphones that have already been amplified somehow you can get two more lines in here now here's where things get a little bit weird on the zoom side on the zoom f8 for example they have these two miniature XLR outputs so they're balanced outputs that's great you do have to use some adapters it comes with the adapters to adapt to a regular size XLR output not a big deal but the thing that's odd about it is that this is consumer line level output not professional level line output so that's one of those things where I just sort of scratch my head and say - zoom what were you guys thinking because you put so many professional features on here and then the line outputs our consumer level not sure why they did that there is also a an unbalanced output if you are going to feed the audio - say for example to a DSLR or mirrorless camera you can do that as well so they have lots of options but it was just kind of a head-scratcher that it's only consumer line level output here which could make it a little bit difficult to hook it up to cameras that have a line level input say for example a cinema camera or a sort of a newsgathering type of video professional camera you're going to potentially run into some issues there so I don't understand why they did that and while it's nice to have balanced outputs would have been really nice to have professional line level as well the nice thing on the zoom F Series they use a quarter inch jack for the headphone output the this is one thing there I was a little bit critical of the zoom F series before the headphone output is I would say okay but not stellar it's very I want to be clear on this because some people kind of gave me some grief about this it is completely usable I just want to be very clear about that it's completely usable it just doesn't sound as nice and it doesn't sound as clean as the output on the mix pre-series so some people kind of use that as kind of a show stopper issue like I'm not gonna buy a zoom F series because the headphone output is horrible well it's not horrible it's just a little bit colored from my experience and doesn't sound as clean and as nice as those that I'm used to on the either the sound devices 6 Series which I wouldn't expect it to necessarily be that good but it's also not quite as nice as those on the mix Prix series so we're going to talk about next zoom f4 and f8 in terms of form factor size are pretty much identical they look a little bit different and they kind of see the build is a little bit different here like this is an inset here where it's a solid piece here but in terms of size they're pretty much identical in terms of weight they're very similar as well so there's not a lot of difference they're small it's nice because they are quite small but that's a trade-off as well and we'll talk about that more when we start talking about the control layout especially on the zoom f8 both a zoom F 4 and F 8 can be used as an audio interface with your computer if you're not familiar with what that means you can connect this to your computer using a USB cable then what happens is that this becomes the sound input and output for your computer so if you want to record microphones directly to your computer you plug them into the zoom at4 or f8 and they can be recorded directly to your computer or if you want to listen to the sound from your computer you can listen on the headphone out put or you can hook up near-field monitors or speakers to your zoom f-series and it becomes the sound card essentially for your computer and it's a very high quality one digital to analog converters are good and so I think these is a very capable audio interface the only warning I would give is a lot of people say hey I can buy one of these and I can use this as my field recorder and my audio interface in on my edit computer well yeah that's true you can do that it's not the same as most audio interfaces from the standpoint that every time you turn it on first all you have to power it somehow so you can plug into AC power so that's not necessarily an issue but just something you need to know about it cannot be powered from the computer itself you must supply power separately to the zoom f4 f8 and every time you power it on you have to go into the menus kind of do some menu diving to get it into audio interface mode so that's not necessarily a huge issue but I just want you to make sure that you're not going in with thinking that it's just a matter of flipping it on just like you would any other dedicated audio interface for computers this one takes a little bit more work to get it set up each time build quality is super substantial for both of these again all metal framing here the only thing that's not really metal are the controls here are plastic on the zoom f8 the encoder is actually metal and nicely damped I believe that the headphone dial here is also metal transport controls are kind of a hard plastic and it all seems like it'll hold up well but these are a little bit more plasticky than I'd like I guess but not a huge deal again they're protected by these metal straps out on the front so if you did drop it directly on the surface here those straps would protect it from smashing all of that so that's really good as well and you know everything like the battery door is metal everything seems very very solid I have no complaints really no substantive complaints about the build quality of the zoom f4 or f8 now ergonomics is a little bit different matter and fortunately there's that zoom F control control surface that can get you out of it but I find the zoom f8 in particular not so much a zoom f4 but the f8 is a little bit too cramped to work quickly with and for example here here is how I enable that channel there's just tiny little button here that says pfl on it is how I get into the setup for that channel so I need to you know for example turn on the phantom power turn on a high pass filter turn on the limiter or so on and so forth so it's uh it's a little bit more difficult to use I I don't know if I have particularly I have long fingers but I don't have particularly fat fingers but I still find these difficult to work with other than just getting a you know getting a microphone set up initially but if I have to make adjustments while recording this is kind of difficult to work with to be entirely honest so that's something to keep in mind and I think you know it's a consideration definitely from the ergonomics standpoint another thing that is a little bit wonky in terms of ergonomics or not ideal I guess it's if not a showstopper again it's not something to say I'm not going to buy this because of this thing that Curtis said don't don't use it as something like that after all I bought both of these I love both of these I use them but the menu structure on the zoom F series is not quite as efficient to use as the mix pre-series which we're going to look at in a little bit let me give you an example here so if I come back out and I turn on this channel and I go into the setup if I want to turn phantom power on I go into the submenu now I go into another submenu I change it to on I select that and then I come out with two other tabs again it's it's just not as efficient as it could be I think it would be nice if you could somehow have the setting just right here just click once turn it on click again and be on your way it's a little bit there's a there's a just a few more clicks there than I think are really absolutely necessary so again it's not a huge complaint but I think it is something that sumit improve upon now again all those not-so-great things I said about the controls on the zoom f8 again the nice thing is is from zoom you do have the F control so you have an out if you are if you need a bigger surface where you are going to be actively mixing and adjusting settings while you're recording it's really nice to have that other option another professional level feature that both the zoom f4 and f8 have is timecode input and output inside of the zoom f4 and f8 there is a timecode generator technically it's a temperature compensated crystal oscillator it's a highly accurate timecode clock that writes timecode to the metadata on all of your audio clips and it allows you to sync up with other timecode generators which would then connect your camera for example so that makes it so that your camera also records timecode and it makes it super simple to sync up in post great option really impressive that they included such a high quality temperature compensated crystal oscillator or timecode generator in the devices themselves in my test they held up very very well we sync them to a tentacle sync timecode generator and eight hours later these were both still in sync they were off by a tiny tiny fraction of an individual frame so they really stay in sync nicely over time and that's a really interesting and nice professional feature included here one area where the f4 and the f8 differ quite significantly is their screen you can see the screen on the f8 is bigger it is also brighter it is also fully color and higher resolution than the f4 is that a practical issue on the f4 this is inferior in some ways well I think actually yes in some ways it is well before I go to that though they're both viewable out in direct sunlight so that's not an issue can you get everything done you need to with the f4 screen yeah you certainly can but I would say that where this became a little bit problematic for me I think it's the lower resolution makes it a little bit more difficult for example here so I can cycle through the different views you can see here for example most of the metering views don't even show you what each of those lines represent in terms of decibels there's only one view that does that so you have to kind of memorize what those are unless you're going to be using this particular view this particular view I don't like to use all that much because it doesn't show the isolated tracks it doesn't show each individual mic input level you have to go back to one of these others to see that and then you don't have the numbers showing of what those lines each represent it's easy to figure out okay that middle one is minus 12 DB which is often kind of where you're targeting maybe a little bit lower than that so it's not a huge deal but also this screen is a lot slower than the screen and that actually becomes a problem in terms of what we call the ballistics of the meters so it's a little bit harder to see what's actually happening because the screen responds quite a bit slower than a normal LCD you know this kind of screen so I haven't found it to be a massive issue but it's definitely not as nice to work with as something like the f8 can you make good recordings with this yes of course you can does it make it a little bit harder to see where your levels actually are a little bit you missed some of the transients that just can't react quickly enough to really represent some of those transients so that's an interesting thing as well so it's a lower pricepoint but you're also not getting as nice of a screen on the f4 also just to be clear these are not touchscreen everything is controlled via the encoder and the buttons touching the screen does nothing all right let's move over to V sound devices mix pre this is the mixed precip sphere the mixed precip has four combination XLR TRS input jacks and you might be asking yourself well why's that why is that the mix pre-six then it only has four inputs actually does have input five and six on a 3.5 millimeter jack right here that can be used to bring in a stereo microphone a lot of lavalier microphones will work with this as well but this jack could also do some other things as well so technically yes there are six inputs in practical terms in terms of XLR inputs there are four in terms of powering options it comes with a four double-a battery sled and that gets you somewhere around I would say depending on how many microphones you're powering maybe somewhere between an hour and a half to two and a half hours so it's not a huge amount of time but there is also an eight double A batteries that you can buy optionally and there is also this battery sled which will hold Sony NPF style batteries you know hold actually two of them this one is a little bit different in terms of how it fits in if you have both of the slots filled with those types of batteries that makes this a kind of a unusual shape this is really made for putting in a sound bag it's not really made for you know typical just setting it on the table or anything like that although I suppose you could put something under here and do that if you wanted to some people criticize to make spree for that for me not a huge deal I mean generally going to only use this if I'm working in a bag anyway but that's another option as well now in addition to that there is a USB C input on this side of the unit here and what this allows you to do is a variety of things only to connect it to your computer to use as an audio interface but also to power the mix pre and what that means in practical terms is that you can use say for example USB C battery banks to power your mix brief that's a really nice option as well now that's all nice and that gives you a lot of options in terms of powering the mix pre but there are some downsides as well it's not the most robust connector you can easily pull a USBC cable out accidentally you know you could always have your double-a batteries and we continue to be powered as long as you have power here so it's not necessarily a showstopper but it would be nice to have a high rose input like we have on the zoom f4 and f8 which is a little bit more robust and it's locking so is that a downside well I guess that's up to you again if you're going to be operating and you're gonna be careful about it and you're not gonna be running around a whole lot then this is probably just great but if that leaves you feeling uncomfortable will then definitely look at the zoom F series instead really great news if you want to remotely control your mix pre with an app on your phone or tablet the mix pre supports apps on both iOS Apple devices and on Android as well so that really opens up some possibilities here if you are an Android phone or tablet owner and you would like to have those remote features you can do that with the mix pre-series now the app on the sound devices side is a little bit different it's called the wingman app and it's actually quite good it doesn't allow you to do quite as many things as the zoom app does but I think they did that intentionally and let me explain what I mean by that so for example you can start and stop recordings on the remote app you can watch your meters on none of the apps both on at the zoom side or the sound devices side you cannot plug headphones into your phone and listen to or monitor the sound there's just not enough bandwidth on Bluetooth to really do that so just to kind of set your expectations you can also enter metadata what you cannot do on the wingman app on the sound devices side is you cannot mix you cannot control the fader while you're recording from the app you have to actually come up to the device to do that now that sounds like a real downer and a bummer but to be honest I think that was an okay decision and here's why on the zoom app where you can control a fader it's really wonky it I don't find it to be very ergonomic because what happens is when you go to change the fader and you put your finger down on the screen it automatically jumps three decibels no matter how gently or how much finesse you use it jumps way too much initially and that's actually audible that kind of a jump so for me I don't find the mixing feature all that great on a surface like that but other people may have another opinion and may be just fine with that so your mileage may vary with the mix pre three and six there is a USB a input on the side as well that allows you to connect a standard USB keyboard that allows you to enter metadata and notes and change project names change file names all those sorts of things makes it very easy to keep your footage very very well organized um however the mix pre-series does not have the equivalent of an F control surface like the zoom series recorders do so if you were really looking for a proper sort of more traditional mixing style control surface unfortunately that's just not an option on the mix pre side now is that a showstopper again only you can decide how important that is to you and that's why again I'm kind of illustrating here there's no clear answer about which of these devices is the best there's no such thing is the best there's something that suits certain situations in certain people better than others one thing where the mix pre really shines is that it does have proper analog limiters we described all that previously in the zoom section and what that means in practical terms is that if your talent suddenly gets very loud louder than you expected they would normally clip on most recorders but on the mix pre that limiter kicks yin pulls the level down and prevents it from flipping and distorting so you have a lot less work in post and you can avoid retakes in those situations so really really nice feature and actually from what I understand unprecedented on a device at this price point so normally you only find that on the higher end professional recorders that cost at least $3,000 and from my point of view limiters are a much more effective way to do that they save a lot of time in Post versus safety tracks just a better way to do things for the record the mix pre-series does not record safety tracks people have asked me that it doesn't need to in theory because it has the limiters instead so if you're kind of in that mindset if I need safety tracks it's kind of hard to let go of that but go ahead and test those limiters out if you do end up going this direction I think you'll find that this is a much better way to approach solving that problem now as I mentioned before the VIX pre-six has four XLR TRS combination inputs on the mix pretty three there are three XLR inputs that do not have a TRS input as well however all of these whether XLR or TRS can be used as line level inputs which is very nice so if you are getting a feed from a mixing board for a live panel discussion or concert or whatever it is you can use this without a problem now outputs is a different story on the mix pre vs. the zoom recorder zoom recorders have balanced XLR outputs again consumer-level but nevertheless they are balanced so you can run long cable runs without getting a lot of extra noise and hiss the mix pre on the other hand has a 3.5 millimeter stereo output this is the type of output that you would normally use to connect this say for example to the microphone input on a DSLR or mirrorless camera and that's just fine if that's your workflow it's going to be a little bit more fiddly if you are going to send the audio to a proper cinema or again newsgathering camera a video camera that has XLR inputs you have to do some adapting and it's kind of you know not necessarily the optimal type of setup so that's kind of illustrating how I think sound devices was very particular about who they were designing this device for this was not really and for those types of workflows where you have to send a balance signal to the cinema camera or the Eng newsgathering camera it's really made for workflows where you're working probably more likely either recording completely separate from the camera if it is a cinema type camera or a Eng professional video camera but if you do want to send audio to the camera it's really kind of assumed that you're going to be using a mirrorless or a DSLR style camera instead so what that is kind of a design trade-off what that allows them to do is it's a much smaller output it saves a lot of room and allows them to keep the device smaller and lighter so it's not good or bad it's just a design trade-off that's optimized for certain workflows so that's where again I say the mix pre is a really great device but if you really need balanced XLR outputs pretty much all the time it may not be the best choice and that's where a zoom might be a better choice or even something else might be a better choice the headphone output on the mix pre-series is actually quite impressive I was a little disappointed at first to see it's a 3.5 millimeter output because it's a little bit less robust than quarter-inch but again that's another thing where it was a design trade-off they can keep the device much smaller by using a smaller output Jack so the great thing about it though is that it sounds fantastic it is the best sounding headphone amplifier on a field recorder that I've heard in the sub $1000 price range so it's very clean it helps you quickly and easily identify any potential recording issues which is kind of a critical thing for headphone outputs on a field recorder timecode was something that they did a little bit differently on the mix pre as well it does not include an inbuilt timecode generator like the zoom f4 and f8 do however they do have a kind of a clever approach to addressing that issue by having a couple of inputs that can take timecode if you decide to add timecode to your workflow later again for those that are familiar with timecode what that allows it to do it's a very precise clock you record to your audio recorder you also record to your camera at the same time and then in post is very easy to sync those two up so the way they've done that deal on the mixed pre series is they have either a 3.5 your input for a timecode generator or an HDMI input what this means in practical terms is you can connect a more traditional timecode generator via the 3.5 millimeter input and it records that to the metadata of the audio clip that you record so it doesn't take up an audio channel it just records it as part of the metadata saying okay this file started when the timecode clock said this time and your camera does the same thing and then in post you sync them right up and that's great so you could use it as something like a tentacle sink like ambient nano Lockette or any of those other timecode generators that can input the 3.5 millimeter which is pretty much any of them now in addition to that and this is a really cool feature you have this HDMI input here a micro HDMI input what that allows you to do is if four cameras that can feed timecode via HDMI like a Panasonic gh4 you can actually connect your Panasonic gh2 the mix priest six or three and what that does is it sends timecode from the camera to the recorder you're gonna have the exact same time on your audio clips as you have on your camera clips and so it's very easy to sync them up and post and what's more than that is if this can actually take HDMI control signals so when you start recording on your camera your Panasonic gh4 for example this will also start recording at the same time without how to depress the record button on this also really really nice feature so you don't accidentally forget to press one the only thing is the only limitation is you have to be within an HDMI cable length between the camera and the recorder to make that work now you can mount it there's a quarter twenty screw on top you can mount this underneath your camera if you're going to do that type of workflow that's a really cool feature for those that are shooting with something like the Panasonic gh4 or other cameras that have HDMI timecode the only downside I really see to this is that this is a micro HDMI connector it is not the most robust connector you know even when you insert the cable it kind of wobbles around a little bit if you bump it too hard you can pull it out or it could lose its contacts so it's not my preferred choice of connector but it's kind of a cool feature again if you're if you want to do that workflow nice feature that they thought to put it in there they kept it small again so they could keep the device small so I'm sure that's pretty sure that's why they went with a micro HDMI input ideally it would be at least in mini or a full-sized HDMI but that would be a design trade-off and you'd have a much bigger device again one thing you probably noticed is that the screen is significantly smaller on the mix pre relative to the zoom f-series show you that there however and that was a concern to me when I first heard about the mix pre but I think they've implemented it very nicely it's a very high resolution first of all very bright so it can be used outdoors and direct sunlight without a problem it also is a touchscreen and at first I thought that's way too small to be an effective touchscreen but it actually works pretty nicely the way they've set up the menus you can see there are nice big buttons so it's very easy to get in there choosing what you need is very simple and straightforward if I want to bring a line level input there I could do that you can see it's very quick to get around in the menus the way they've designed it so whereas at first I was kind of skeptical at how they set this up in practice I find it to work very very well it eliminates some of the controls you need on the surface of the device to actually control things you don't need a separate encoder but you know you've got one over here if you need it this one here can set your headphone input level but it can also set some other things in here so for example if we go into okay we'll click OK there let's go into the setup here if I need to change the game level I can do that with the encoder if I need to more I could just do it via the touchscreen so I've got options there but overall the way they've laid out these menus and the way they've implemented the touchscreen it's actually very easy to work with quite intuitive and you can scroll through the different menus here by tapping there you can set your headphone preset you can go back so they make it really quite nice and quite straightforward to get around and get what you need quickly so I feel like it's a less onerous sort of a menu experience then you get with some other devices like the zoom is a little bit more fiddly to get what you need - not as bad as a Sony camera mind you sony cameras are some of the worst I've ever used and I'm not saying I don't like Sony cameras I'm just saying their menus are really bad zoom F series is better than Sony cameras but this is even better than both of those so I think they've really done a nice job implementing this touchscreen and I think it works very well now the only other thing that I was kind of concerned about is it's less real estate to show the meters but the meters actually work very nicely you know I'm getting a little older so my eyesight isn't as good as it used to be but still the meter ranges from minus 50 to 0 DB full scale and the ballistics are very good it's a very fast and responsive screen so I find that it works quite nicely size and weight now this is where the mix pre really shines I wish I had a mix pre 3 here to show you I don't unfortunately this is the 6 you can see that the relative to the zoom f/8 it's smaller this way and this way it's even a little smaller it's not as deep as well it's also lighter weight but you might be thinking okay well do they have to sacrifice on build quality and I think the answer is really no this is this feels like a solid it's like two pieces of aluminum that are incredibly like molded aluminum it's incredibly tough it feels like I mean there's quite literally that you could drive a car over this and it would not crush this it's that sturdy it also has the straps up front so that if you did drop this on the control surface here it would protect that likewise on the sides some people were skeptical of this battery sled system but I found it actually be quite robust it's a very high grade somewhat pliable plastic and people were concerned that this would come popping off it doesn't it really doesn't it is on their super firmly and I've been really happy with that another thing that people complain about a little bit is that the SD card is buried underneath the battery tray I haven't found that to be an issue because frankly if I'm gonna take the SD card out I'm powering down probably anyway so not a huge issue for me personally but it might be for you if that's really really important to you some people complained about that another thing in terms of ergonomics with the mix pre as that these knobs and actually overall the button layout and the way they're implemented I think works quite a lot better the control transport buttons are all backlit so you know what's going on or any given time even if you're working on a dark set which is you know sounds a little silly but actually that's a very serious practical issue and I've run into that with a zoom series is all those controls are not backlit so on the zoom f8 in particular if I need to find a particular trim control if I'm in a dark set it's hard to find these and I've got to either have a flashlight or turn the light on my phone on to be able to find the right one on this on the mix Prix it's much more straightforward you can see you know you also get these ring lights around each of the inputs so you know when signals coming in on one of those you also know when it's clipping but it's also he's very easy to find it you know if you're stopped you know if you're recording at a glance in the dark all very very nice so the faders in addition are much I think easier to work with they're spaced apart a little bit more nicely they're bigger it's easier to make adjustments with them so I find that really really nice as well so there are some significant things and some thought that went into the mix pretty series where I feel like the zoom that kind of crammed some things in a little bit more so overall which one should you buy well I can't answer that for you hopefully looking through those features kind of gave you some ideas of what might work better for you what I can tell you and again this is from my own very subjective biased opinion based on the type of work that I do I actually found that I preferred the mix pre in most cases now there are a few circumstances where I would still reach for the zoom series first but for a lot of the cases where I'm recording and I need to keep things small and I'm not going to be working from a table almost always I will choose this to work with just because of the feature set and the ergonomics and things of that nature on the other hand if I'm going to be working from a desk for a large recording session and I'm going to be actively mixing I'm going to really want to use that F control and then in those circumstances I prefer the zooms now assume F 4 versus F 8 unless you need the 8 inputs and the remote iOS app I think the F 4 is probably that's a tough one I don't really know if you have the money to spend on the F 8 it's really nice and you don't mind the kind of crowded control panel here for the things you're doing that's not going to be issue then that's great I think the f8 is really nice the screen is much nicer the iOS app is very nice this one is a tougher decision I think between the f4 and f8 if you have money for both you know I do like that the this is less crowded just because there are only four inputs I like that they're full-sized XLR outputs if you do need those I do like that it's a quarter inch headphone output that's very nice the f4 actually has a camera return which the f8 does not have interestingly not and I should also say that mixed pre has that as well we didn't cover that previously but I don't know I really like the f4 as well the screen is again a little bit of a downer it'd be awesome if we could have the f8 screen on the f4 but again that's one of the choices they made for to differentiate between those two products so it is what it is but in short I choose this however I think there is very much a case for where these are gonna be a better choice if you need more inputs the zoom f8 is hard to beat so there are just so many different factors that hopefully going over those features gives you some ideas of what's gonna work best for you if there was something I didn't answer here are some specific things that you want to know about go ahead and leave a question down below I'll do my best to answer that also if you have not already subscribed make sure you do that and we'll be sure to get you more great videos on how to improve your lighting and sound and if you want to be notified when those new videos show up every week just go ahead and click the bell icon next to the subscribe button and we'll talk to you again soon [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Curtis Judd

Views: 109,438

Keywords: Audio, Sound, Video, Film, Zoom, F4, F8, F-Control, Sound Devices, MixPre, MixPre-3, MixPre-6, Comparison, Shoot out, Zoom F4, Zoom F8

Id: NadEMwaCNEY

Length: 44min 34sec (2674 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 09 2017