Zoom H4N Pro best settings/menu & audio interface

so there is one glitch with my device it will tell me to wait it will connect and then boom it will power up so a while ago i made a video where i explained how you can record straight into your camera using an external recorder such as the zoom h4n pro and one of my viewers asked me what are the best settings for this recorder so in this video we're going to address that we're also going to have a look at the physicalities of this recorder the menu and how you can use this recorder as an audio interface so let's go ahead and start [Music] okay so the first thing we're gonna start with is the physical aspects of this uh recorder so this recorder comes with two omnidirectional microphones uh these are condensed microphones and orientation of the microphones can be changed from 120 degrees away from each other to 90 degrees depending on the situation of your recording uh it comes with the inputs these are xlr trs uh you can also put ts because i have here some i'm similar these are only adapters but this is what they look like they're quarter inch teres the except some microphones have this kind of connection so they'll have a trs and uh ts is what usually instruments have and the reason they're called ts i'm not going to go too deep into this but i'm just going to briefly explain the reason they're called ts and trs is because the t stands for tip they are for ring and s for sleeves so tip ring sleeve trs and this one is ts tip and sleeve there's also connectors with two rings between the tip and the sleeves so those ones are trs those ones will have two of these rings the black ones the isolators they isolate the conductor because all these uh metal ones they're conductors so that's what trs and ts stands for so as you can see here in the center they have these holes and they will go like that or you can just plug an xlr cable which will go like this so either xlr or trs compared to the previous model this one has locking mechanisms the previous model did not have and also this recorder comes with a 3.5 millimeter input for small microphones and this is powered by 2.5 volts uh by the way these two inputs are powered by either 24 or 48 volts phantom power so you need to be careful you need to make sure your microphone does require either 24 volt or 48 volt phantom power if it does not some microphones can be damaged if you have phantom power turned on while you plug them in so i need to be aware of that and also some microphones require different voltage phantom unless they are either 24 and 48 like i said they will not be compatible and other side we have a remote socket line out or headphone output which has a dedicated uh control a usb socket and the power switch and the switch also has the function of locking everything on the device so if you slide the switch on the hold position everything on the device will be locked and nothing can be bumped into accidentally or change what you have to hold turned on so on the other side you have a clicky scroll wheel this is useful for going for the menu so and the menu button which can take you either inside the menu or outside menu and also you have a microphone recorder level adjustment and you can adjust this any microphone depending on what microphone you're using at that certain moment on the back you have a speaker and this is only for playback so you cannot use the speaker while you're recording because obviously it's going to interfere with your audio and it's going to be picked up by your microphone obviously this is the microphone input like i explained it's powered by 2.5 volt and you have a quarter inch mount this is useful for mounting it on the tripod or magic arm or you can even have it on top of the camera using a cold shoe and inside behind this flap you have the batteries and you also have the stamina mode switch so when you have this to the left now where it says on it means it's on and if you slide it to the right it will be off so i don't want to mention if you don't have the stamina on and you do want to turn it on you will have to slide this like i said to on position and then you'll have to power the device off and then on again okay it has the power supply socket so you can provide power supply to it uh while you're inside a house or studio which is very useful because if you use phantom power for your microphones you will go for the batteries very fast and it's annoying to change the batteries or having to buy batteries all the time even if you're using rechargeable ones you still have to recharge them very often because phantom power will run for your batteries very fast i do want to mention that you don't need either batteries or phantom power while you're using the as an audio interface so if you have it plugged into the computer in the usb socket then the device will be powered by the cable that runs to the computer so that is it for the physical aspects of this device and now let's go dive into the menu okay so let's power on the device uh you do want to make sure you're running the latest version of the software which will show at the top here when you turn on the device uh which in my case is version 1.10 so this device has four modes of recording here stereo 4 channel and multi-track recording it also has stamina mode but stamina model is just a similar version of stereo mode with a few limitations so you're limited to playing and recording files that are no higher than 44.1 kilohertz sample rate and 16-bit depth or mp3 files and also there's a few things missing from the menu okay so if we look at the device we have a few buttons over here so you have the record button stop and play pause and then the skip buttons so the button uh where it says microphone is for these two built-in microphone and the one and two is these two inputs so you can switch between them by pressing any of them so if i'm pressing these will switch to these two i'm pressing back on microphone will switch to these two so if i'm trying to record something now if i press the record once which will take me into pre-record mode it will show me the levels and also it will use these two microphones i stop it now and if i press these two buttons i press the record it doesn't show any level because i have nothing plugged in here at the bottom i'm going to stop that now and over here at the top we have four buttons and these are shortcut buttons and depending on the recording mode i'm using they can do different things in stereo mode they will do exactly things that they say over here so if i press the folder it will take me into the folder settings over here i can copy a folder move a further around i can delete or rename a folder if i go into the file then i'll have similar options i can copy a file i can move it around rename it i can convert it from waft to mp3 and i can delete it and also i can import it into a project if i want to and if i go to the speed the speed will adjust the playback speed so i can have a playback speed between 50 and 150 percent so over here i can choose what kind of files i want my recordings to be i can choose between a wife and mp3 and i don't know if you know this but wow it's a lossless uncompressed type of file and that's what i have mine set up in terms of choosing the sample rate and the bit depth let me explain the sample rate a little bit to you guys so when you record audio using a digital medium such as summative pro we're actually capturing certain bits of sound that are captured at certain moments in time this process is referred to as sample rate so if we zoom in any file we can see these timeline dots and each and every one of these dots represent a sample the reason some rates are expressed in hertz is because they tell us how often a sample is recorded in a certain time period therefore at what rate so if we want to capture a high frequency sound which naturally has a short wavelength it is best to use double sample rate of the highest frequency sound we're trying to record human hearing is believed to perceive frequencies between 20 hertz and 20 thousand hertz so twenty thousand hertz times two is forty thousand hertz or forty kilohertz that's the reason why when you're recording on a wi-fi you cannot go any lower than forty four point one hertz but i prefer having mine at 48 000 hertz or 48 kilohertz in terms of bit depth bit depth will determine the dynamic range of the samples you're trying to record so these frame pro has the option to record at either 16 or 24 bit depth 16 will give you a dynamic range of 96 decibels whereas 24 will allow a dynamic range of 144 decibels some pro recorders like for example the newly released f2 the f6 and some other ones from sound devices allows 32-bit float and these recorders give you the option to record without having to worry about clipping or distorting your audio so those are the settings that i'm using when it comes to the quality of my audio i'm using wife because lossless and it's uncompressed and i'm using 40 000 hertz or 48 kilohertz and 24 bits so let's go for the menu a little bit now i'm only going to cover stereo because this is probably the most used mode for this recorder and this is the mode that i'm using because i'm only recording dialogue and i'm doing voice recordings i'm not using the full channel or the multi-track recorder either because those modes are mostly useful for music i'm not a music creator so therefore i'm only using stereo so if we go into the menu in the stereo mode we have the fold and file which i explained a little bit earlier which you can access using these shortcuts from the main screen and if we go into the input over here we have the low cut low cut is also known as high pass and the reason they're confused is because what low cut does low cut will cut the lower frequencies in your sound the reason it's also called high pass is because low cut will allow the higher frequencies to pass so higher frequencies will pass and lower frequencies will be cut low cut high pass that's why the confusion by the one are the same thing a low cut is useful when you're trying to eliminate background noise such as running fans like a computer running or an air cone or anything that's low frequency it's not something i'm using a lot because i've tested it and it doesn't make that big of a difference when it comes to eliminating background noises i prefer using other things which are a little bit more efficient like for example you can eliminate our background noises in adobe audition i think it's always best to record a good quality audio straight into the recorder than trying to fix it for example i'd rather have my computer off while i'm recording audio and if that's not possible then i'll probably try and move it away and cover it with something rather than relying on the low cut which from my experience it doesn't do an amazing job when it comes to eliminating the noise coming from the fan of my computer so the next thing down are the compressors and the limiters so although i will explain what they are how they work and also which one i use please do bear in mind that compressors and limiters can take months perhaps even longer to master and even though they are very useful tools they can deteriorate your audio more than they can improve it if used in the wrong way so what are compressors and limiters a compressor will amplify your whole audio level so the quieter sounds are amplified and won't be as quiet anymore and the loudest sounds in your audio will be reduced so they won't be as loud anymore so overall your audio will be more even in terms of amplitude after a compressor has been applied to it similarly limiters will either reduce the loudest sounds in your recording or will limit them all together depending on the compression ratio compressors and limiters have thresholds and thresholds determine at what amplitude they will intervene in your audio thresholds are either manually set or they can be preset like in our case on the zoom h4n pro we have presets and you cannot adjust the threshold manually you won't have the freedom of choosing a preset this table here shows the presets available on the zoomy frame pro so on this table we notice the threshold which like i explained it determines when the compressors or limiters they kick in ratio will determine the level of compression so for example a nine to one ratio will spare only one db for every nine that will pass the threshold the output is what result to expect on that ratio attack time it's a bit self-explanatory so it tells us how fast our compressor limiter will kick in after the threshold has been passed release time is how fast or slow the compression will take to completely switch off please do bear in mind sometimes fast attack times and slow release time can make your vocals sound a bit unnatural so which one do i use i don't use any of them i prefer to use compressors when i do my edits and limiters i don't need to use because i can adjust and monitor my levels so my audio does not clip and although limiters are like a safety net i never felt the need to use one especially since like around six months ago i've upgraded the zoom f6 to zoom f6 give you the possibility it's a recording 32-bit float which means practically you cannot clip your audio and you'll never get distortion on the recorder and i'm using that recorder for most of my recordings nowadays but if you are a beginner and you don't know which one to use i recommend that you don't use any of them at first but if you do want to use them or practice i recommend that you use compressors in post production and you only use limiters on the recorder if you need that safety net okay so moving down here we have the monitor option and this option will allow you to monitor your audio for the 3.5 socket so you can have headphones plugged in and you can monitor your audio all the time further down we have the one slash 2 link this option will link these two inputs together if they're linked together when you adjust the record level it will adjust it for both them and if you have it unlinked when you turn it off then you can adjust them separately now level auto is an option that will adjust the level on your recorder by itself so you will analyze the input level and it will adjust it accordingly this is not something i'm using i'd rather have control over my levels and over here we have the monomix i think this is a useful feature uh what model mix does it will turn one channel mono into stereo so for example if you're using a shotgun microphone like i am you will only record on one of the channel and the audio will be mono so if you play that in a pair of headphones which are stereo or in a stereo system it will only play in one speaker or one headphone and your audio will sound like it's broken so this option will duplicate the audio from whatever channel you're recording either left or right and it will turn your audio into stereo and this is very useful if you don't have the possibility to do that in post i'm sometimes doing it in post so i'm fine recording mono onto the device because i can do that in post and the way i do in post i go to premiere and i apply this filter which is called fill left with right or filled right with left depending on what channel i have my audio please do bear in mind if you want to turn the mono mix on you'll have to have the one slash tool link on as well and if we move further down we have the ms matrix so this function enables you to convert stereo microphone signals when you're using a mid side recording configuration so for example if you have a microphone that has a pickup pattern pull it to the side and use a different microphone at the same time that has a pickup pattern focused at the front and this is a useful tool uh for music crates it is not something i have used so i cannot go into great detail about it so moving down to phantom here you have the option to adjust your phantom power from 24 to 48 volt and also you have the option to turn it off in my case i have it off because i'm not using it at the moment if we move down to plug-in plug-in is similar to phantom power so it will uh provide power but the microphone input at the back which is a 3.5 millimeter input at the back so that's what the plug-in power is for for example if i take this microphone over here which is a lavalier microphone this is a microphone that came with my tascam dr-10l this is a very good microphone he gave very good value for the money with this microphone because the quality on this microphone is uh very impressive so like i was saying if you have this turned off if you plug this at the back you won't get any signal but if you do have it turned on obviously then you can use this microphone so this microphone when you plug in will override these two microphones so these will be cancelled and only this one will be used when you plug it in and you have the plugin turned on in the menu so in terms of using this combination lavalier recorder my opinion is that it can be used if you're carrying a bag with you so you can hide this in a bag or if you're wearing like a large coat or with a jacket and you can hide this in the pocket or somewhere but if you don't have that possibility and you're recording something where you don't want these kind of things to show then this may not be a good option for you you may have to choose a smaller recorder such as tascam or zoom f2 something like that and also because this is kind of sticking out i think it's placed in the wrong position i wish zoom would have placed this somewhere on the side or at the bottom somewhere else i think it's not the most optimal position for this socket but yeah okay so that's everything for the inputs now we're gonna go out and we're gonna go to record in the record settings you have the option to choose your file format between wav and mp3 and also you can choose your sample rate in a bit depth like i discussed earlier auto record is an option where your device will start recording by itself so if you go into auto record you can set a threshold at what point after the device will detect levels you want it to start and at what point you want it to stop after it won't detect any more level so you can set these levels for when the device to start and when the device is stopped this is not an option that i've used but i guess it can be useful for people who don't want to record like uh when people are not talking because it'll be a waste of uh memory space and perhaps even power okay pre-record is an option where the device will record a couple of seconds extra before you press the record button and again it's not something i find useful but maybe it can be for some people and over here you have the option to change from default to date and time uh when it comes to naming your files and that's everything in the record and now we're gonna move down to tool tool is an option which is specifically designed for music creators and like i said i'm not a music creator and again i've never used this uh option in the menu but over here you can tune your instruments uh you have the metronome and to be honest like i said i'm not a musician i don't even know exactly what metronome does but i think it creates this temple and i think it made the device itself may even make these uh beeps or sounds while using this feature which i suppose it can be useful for music creators and a b repeat will give you the option to repeat a certain portion of your audio or file recording so you can set your a and b and you can repeat that which can be useful if you want to listen to it and over here you can adjust the speed of your playbacks and over here you have the option to record on the memory of the device i didn't even know the device has a memory or you can backup things and i'm going to exit and i'm going to go into play mode play mode self-explanatory it will give you the option to choose how you want your files to be played uh if we go into the system we can amend the date and time if we need to we can choose how long we want our backlight to be on and we can change the contrast and we can change the type of battery we're using and i think setting the right kind of battery is important because that will give you a correct estimate of how much battery you still have left and how much longer you can use the device by the way if you're recording something and you're running out of battery while you're recording and the device will power off everything will be lost so it's very important to make sure you have enough battery before you start recording and if you think you're running a battery anytime soon it's probably best to stop recording and save rather than losing everything because the device will power off now over here you can check the version of the device just like you can when you turn the device on and on this option will give you the factory reset device and that's everything for the system and now we're going to move further down sd card on the sd card you can see how much memory you still have left and you can format the sd card i'm not going to do any of them i'm just going to exit and go to usb and in the years you have the option to choose between using the device as a card reader so you can plug it to your computer and you can access the sd card from your computer and also you can use the devices and audio interface but if you want to do these two things you don't have to do it from the menu you just need to plug the cable into the usb socket on the device and into the computer and the device will turn on and it will give you these two options when it does moving down to mode and over here it's again a self-explanatory you can change between the record modes on the device okay and that's everything when it comes to the menu now we're gonna move on to how you can connect and use this device as an audio interface if you wanna use this device as a node interface all you have to do is plug in the cable that came with your device into the computer and then plug it into the socket and the zoom hrm pro will power on by itself and it will ask you what other interface so i'm going to choose audio interface here i can choose the sample rate and the next option would be to connect i'll click connect so there is one glitch with my device it will tell me to wait it will connect and then boom it will power off no warning nothing will just power off that's it so there is a way to overcome this i don't know whether this is an issue with every zoom h4n pro device but i know my one has it and i know how i can overcome it so in order to overcome this issue all you have to do is just to have power just during this transition power on by itself okay so i'm going to choose audio interface again and i'm going to click connect and now i'm going to wait for it to connect a few seconds okay and it's connected and now after it's connected i can take the batteries out i don't need the battery anymore and the device will uh stay on because like i said it's being powered by the the cord that runs to the computer if you have this problem like i said i don't know whether this is the case with every h4n pro device out there but i know i have this problem and that's how i can overcome it another way you can overcome this is by having the dc power supply while trying to connect and after it's connected and show you the levels only leave this usb cable apart device the second problem i came across while trying to use this recorder as an audio interface is not getting any levels on the computer and the way you can overcome that is by installing the drivers from the zoom official website onto your device so i went on their website and downloaded the drivers for windows i've installed them and after i've installed them not only the device will show on my computer the way it did even before i had the drivers but now i'm getting signals as well because before i was not getting any signals although it would show on premiere pro or isotope so that's the second issue and after you've done these two things then you can use the device as an audio interface uh for your computer no problem it works great like always everyone thanks for watching i do appreciate you staying with me throughout this video please don't forget to like and share if you want it helps the channel and if you're that kind of person who likes these kind of videos consider subscribing because i'm making this sort of video all the time and i'll see you guys next time take care [Music] done [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Florin G

Views: 52,984

Keywords: Audio interface, zoom, zoom h4npro, audio recording, studio recording, microphone, audio, pro, tips, new, lavaliere microphone, xlr, trs, best settings, phantom power, field recorder, settings, how to

Id: jIwE9XPljvk

Length: 24min 7sec (1447 seconds)

Published: Wed May 05 2021