Zoom H5 Demo and Overview

hi Darryl from Golden Spiral media here today with a video review of the zoom h5 digital audio recorder now did my first look and unboxing of the recorder a few days ago thank you to all of you who have checked out the video left comments on the video either on the YouTube channel or Twitter or Facebook and I said in the video that I'd be back in a few days with my full review and today I'm doing that full review let's get started let's start by talking about the build quality of the zoom h5 it feels really well-made very durable in the hand the outer body of the zoom h5 is a rubberized feel so that it doesn't slip out of the hand very easily it is made out of a plastic material but it doesn't feel cheap in any way it feels tightly made and well constructed now with these capsules that are at the top of the unit these are the interchangeable capsules with the zoom h6 these are very well made in fact the housing of these are made out of metal I was a little bit concerned on these tabs here fighting angle here with my shirt you can see that these tabs you push them in and that's what will release them to the body of the zoom h5 and I was a little bit concerned that they might wear out or might be the weak point of the unit the only time will tell for sure but my first impression is that it's very high quality and it will it will withstand the test of time one thing I'll note here when I'm putting this back on you can see here at the top of the unit there are two tabs right here one tab here at the bottom and those will line up here with some tabs that we have here one and two tabs right here so that it's not possible to put this on backwards it only goes in one way the guys assumed know what they're doing and you heard that snap that means it is in place and it is not going to go anywhere again a nice signifier of a quality build while we're looking at the capsule I mentioned the other day that it had in my in my first impressions video that had these rubberized shock mounts on the XY microphones and these are good they definitely do cut down on some of the noise that the unit is going to receive from being held by hands of course they're not going to be completely isolating any of the hand noise so don't let that fool you into thinking that you can be careless with the device as you handle it you still need to handle it in a way that's going to allow you to get the cleanest recording possible another thing that I failed to mention when I did my first impressions in my unboxing video was that there is a port here on the side this is the line in port for the recorder there's not a line in port on the actual body of the recorder we have two outputs here on the side we'll discuss in a moment the only input here is this one so you can plug in an external microphone or an external line in from let's say your phone or another portable media device even your computer could go in and then it's going to be the volume will be adjusted by that and we'll do some samples with that here before this demo is all over now let's turn the unit on and take a look at it here I also mentioned in my first impressions video we would talk about this hold button II let's say you have to hold it down here for just a second you'll see it Pat the screen will power on that's typical with zoom products that way you don't get a slight touch that will turn it on once you get all of your settings in place you can hit that button up into the hold pattern and you'll see you saw the hold come on there let me get this off of the menu and I see I've got the hold button on let me take it off the hold take it off the menu and now you'll see once it's on hold any of these buttons won't do anything it's going to say it's on hold so that means that once you start recording ideally what you would set that after your recording and none of these button pushes are going to be accidentally hit and pushed off however the volume controls either on channel 1 channel 2 or the right and left volume knob that is still adjustable even in the hole position so I'm going to take it off the hold so that we can take a closer look here at the zoom h5 alright let's take a look at the menu existen that we have you can see here as I'm talking it's picking up my sound through the X&Y microphones that are here at the top although I'm not recording right now the numbers you see here at the top of the screen are actually showing you how much recording time is left on the card you can also set it so that once you hit the record button it will either count down to how much time is left before the memory card fills up or it will count up to tell you how long your recording is now this is a feature that I'm actually going to give it a score down on when we come to the end of the video you'll see here that I'm recording all the audio here on my zoom h2n let me see if I can get it side-by-side here now what I have here you can see at the top of the zoom h2n is the counter counting up my current recording time on this audio recording and you can see down here at the bottom of the h2 in here right behind my finger that one is also recording down so the top one is counting up to the length of the recording the bottom line is recording down telling me how much time is left before my memory card fills up and I actually have currently custom to using both of those throughout the duration of my recordings to kind of keep an eye on how things are going with the zoom h5 unfortunately I can only choose one or the other despite the screens being the same size now there is a reason for that they have rearranged some the real estate on the zoom h5 we'll talk about those features so they did get rid of a feature but they added some other things in its place so you might actually like it better where I'm not crazy about that change now let's get into the menu existin so that i can show you some of these now before we do let me point out some of the things here on the zoom h5 keep note here of how there is nothing on the side of the El where the AR or the 1 or the 2 and also take note here across the bottom black stripe there is only the indicator as to which file format I am recording right now which is wav 44 point one kilohertz 16 bit depth that's what I'm currently recording at so let's hit the menu button here on the side of the recorder and that will bring up the menu and here you can go up and down and using the joystick the joystick is also a button if you push it straight in which is a little bit clunky something that I'm not really crazy about with this recorder the zoom h2n has the same joystick style of button and I'm not crazy about it on that device as well let's sit so what I have selected here let me you can push the menu button always go up a level in the menuing what I have selected here is the N Out option and so these are the features that you're going to have available for each of your channels this has two channels here at the bottom of the recorder these are XLR or TRS tip ring sleeve which would be your quarter-inch style cables either one will fit into these so this is channel 1 and channel 2 as you can see and then of course here at the top we have your left and right which is currently the XY capsule that I've connected so those are the really the three inputs one right here or here let's see let me get that back on screen you can either use the input right here or the XY you cannot use both at the same time so that's going to be one input and then the two channels here at the bottom will be your other two inputs a total of three inputs all right so for the top option there we have the low-cut and from there I can and I can choose which which of the inputs I want to affect or have the low-cut effect either all of them the number one or number two input that's at the bottom of the device or the L R which is the XY microphone and so once I choose which of those inputs I want to apply the low-cut to I then can choose which of the frequencies I want to cut out you can see we have a quite a range there from 80 Hertz all the way up to 220 note 237 Hertz if you're not familiar with a low-cut filter what that's going to do is help cut out low frequencies low frequencies are going to be wind noise it's going to be perhaps an AC unit or a fan that's blowing in the background those types of low hums and buzzes that you might get in the background you can use that low-cut filter to actually cut those off from getting into your recording so if I were to choose 80 Hertz for example the recorder would put a hard ceiling that that is set at 80 Hertz and everything that it's below 80 Hertz is going to be cut off and actually not included into the recording let's hit the menu button to go out a level and this gets me to where I could select which of the devices are which one of the inputs rather I wanted to apply it to I select the menu button one more time and now I can go down to the next effect which is the compressor limiter again here I can select which one I want to put it on let's put one on input one there we go and I can obviously turn it off if I have one on I have four different compressors here I have the general vocal or drum I set for it's actually three and then we have three limiters the general concert and studio these weren't the same settings that I use in my studio but I still found it to be quite good I was very pleased with it now let's go ahead and assign that compressor let's go the vocal compressor and now we have assigned that to number two let's go now back to the same input here and let's look now at the limiters with three limiters we have a standard limiter a limiter for live performance or a concert that is and then we have the studio or the live recording setting I use the studio setting on this and found it to be very good as well okay let's back out of this and back out of this I'm actually going to run back up here to the low-cut and I'm going to assign that to the X Y and we'll put it in 115 kilohertz okay now we're going to jump back out here and are there any other options oh yes plug in power so if you have a device that you want to plug in here to the 3.5 millimeter input jack that requires plug-in power then you would turn on the plug-in power first through the menu settings and then plug the device into that port that is the only port that will support plug-in power however if I go down here one more oh I'm not we're looking here at is phantom power we do have phantom power supportive but phantom power is only supported in the bottom to the XLR jacks and we'll do in a sample with those in a moment you have 12 volts 24 volts or 48 volts available to you so I would use whichever one the smallest is your device will support so that you can especially if you're on battery life and that will extend your battery life so let's go ahead and turn on voltage of 48 volts and 2 let's see which one did I send that to let's try that again oh that was set that was determining the voltage now I'm actually going to assign it to input 1 there we go ok so now let's actually back out to the main readout and let's take a look at a few things that are now different about this readout so right here on the side right here this little icon which it's hard to see what it is but that is the low-cut filter icon that is to tell you that you have the low-cut turned on this channel right here which is the XY adapter if we go down right here this is the C and that tells you that you have the compressor or the limiter doesn't distinguish which one that is connected or turned on are activated rather for channel 1 and these would light up all the way down you could have the low-cut filter and the compressor turn-on for each of these so it's going to tell you at a glance which functionality has been assigned to each channel and then if you look right down here next to where we only had the recording type before now it tells us that we're at 48 volts and we're sign to channel sectional one so bit hard for me to read from where I'm standing okay so in that let me go back through here just say well if I've overlooked anything here the plug-in power we've talked about the in this is for in and input one and two let's say if you're coming from a mixer and that mixer is increasing your decibel level by four before it even sends it into the recorder and that is maybe overloading the recorder a little bit you can choose this setting to actually decrease the decibel level by twenty as the input is coming into the recorder and to give you a little bit more Headroom that way the major the MS matrix that's the mid side microphone I don't have a mid side microphone so I won't be discussing that today and then the MS raw monitor again goes with the mid side microphone settings I won't be using that today and then monitor mixer allows you to monitor your recordings through your headphone jack here or through your line out rather and you can specify in there whether or not you want it to be with a lag or not with a lag depending on if you are trying to do real-time monitoring or trying to do some looping to to loop in with some music and record it I won't be showing that functionality today but that is part of the functionality of the recorder and then the line out level so this is really cool with the line out here let's say we're sending this line out to a DSLR or other device it also has some sort of preamp built into it so that you want to have more control on that device rather than this device you can actually set the line out you have some options here all the way down to negative thirty I believe yea negative 30 decibels that you can turn this down before it actually outputs it out through the line out Channel you don't have a volume knob the volume knob that we have here go specifically to the headphone port so the way that you would control that output level of the line out port is through this menu option right here so so that just kind of keep that in mind actually I'm going to set that back to zero decibels there we go okay all right so that gets us through the input/output menu the recording menu is going to allow you to choose your recording format it has a whole variety of recording formats if you are in stereo mode which I'll discuss the stereo and multimode in just a moment the stereo mode in mp3 gives you 48 kilobits per second all the way up to 320 kilobits per second stereo mode in WAV gives you 40 4.1 kilohertz at 16-bit all the way up to 96 kilohertz at 24-bit and the if you're in multi mode you're only going to be able to record in the wav format you're going to have WAV 44 point one kilohertz at 16-bit all the way up to 48 kilohertz at 24-bit so that's what your recording formats are going to be auto record and pre record are some features that you can use to once it comes to the auto record would be once it goes it detects a decibel level above a certain point it will automatically start recording pre record will allow it to actually record a little bit before you hit the record button so if you're a little bit late on that button and then it'll actually help you out and save your skin a little bit now the backup option here I'm not going to demonstrate that for you but what that will do is it will also record a secondary file so you have the primary file that you're recording at the levels that you have set and it will record a second recording of the exact same thing at 12 decibels lower so that if you're recording let's say it Peter and it distorted then you would have that backup recording at a lower decibel level that's not distorted again trying to save your skin all right you can rename projects this is your counter setup I mentioned that a moment ago and what you can do with that is either choose to have it count up or count down as you're recording as I mentioned I would love to have it do both so those are your options in the recording menu tools that has a built-in metronome and a built-in tuner so you can tune your guitar with the device you can also use the metronome to count you down let's say you're using this for a type of band recording you set the metronome to give you a count and it will count you off as you start the recording so that's a really handy feature and then within the system the you set the date time the backlight and if you are going to use batteries you want to tell if you're using alkaline or nickel metal hydride batteries you set a lithium ions in my previous video I was mistaken on that and then your firmware update if you want to do that so a lot of things that kind of nested within the the file system here the SD card also has some new features one of those is you can actually do a performance test on the SD card and it will kind of give you the health of your card I hadn't seen that feature with the zoom h2n that I had before and that's kind of a neat feature the USB will allow you to connect the device to your computer and you can not only use it to transfer data on or off the device excuse me but you can also use the zoom h5 as a microphone device for your computer so you can plug it into your PC or your Mac and actually use it as a microphone for your computer so there you have it a lot of functionality here with the recorder I know you're wanting to see what it sounds like so all the recording that you have heard up to this point has been recorded I have a shotgun microphone just out of view here it's my htd ZHT 81 shotgun microphone I have a video available for a review on that and that's all being pumped into my zoom h2n let me do a side-by-side of these videos let me zoom my camera out here and then I'll do a side-by-side of the zoom h5 the h2 in and the roland ro5 okay so here we have the roland ro5 in comparison to the zoom h5 you can see and it's a couple of inches taller about an inch taller without the capsule and then a couple of inches taller if you add the capsule here and get an idea of how they compare on their heights and then if you look at their width you can see you know it's just a bigger recorder it's got more functionality than the roland has as well so that's kind of expected let's compare the zoom h5 with the zoom h2n now do it this way there we are so there you can see I'm still recording via my zoom h2 in and a little bit taller than the ro5 but they're still shorter than the h5 and then if you look at them on their thickness and get that over there for you now let me show you around the front controls of the recorder here a little bit you can select or deselect which inputs you want to be active by either by just tapping the buttons here either the left or the right will work for the XY capsule and then you can activate the 1 & 2 channels individually you can do that during and recording so I could be live recording and have 2 devices plugged in here using the XY capsules or have a connection here and actually turn those off and on during a recording so that's quite handy and we'll actually I'll demonstrate that for you in a few moments you can see I can monitor the levels as I'm talking here right above the XY capsule and then you can see the readout here as I adjust the input volume knob here and you can see them blinking as they blink that means that I am peaking and so it gives you a quick eyeball indicator also look here on the on the side of the recorder here it has turned black on the various black rectangle there at the end let me turn these off now as I turn them back on I haven't picked and then as I peek you'll see it now turns black and stays black so that's another if you missed a blinking you can also look over and see that the rectangle has become black and that will give you another indicator that a peak has occurred all right now what I want to do now is give you a demonstration of some of the according flexibility and capabilities of the zoom h5 what I'm going to do is a simultaneous recording through the XY microphones I'm going to plug in a dynamic microphone to the channel 2 input that's going to be the heil PR 40 and then i'm going to connect a condenser microphone to the number 1 input channel that's going to be the HT DZ htat one shotgun microphone it requires phantom power and i'm going to pull that phantom power from the zoom h5 so let's set that phantom power up first I'm going to hit the menu button I'm going to go down to the N Out option and then select phantom power I'm going to choose on/off and then select input 1 and turn on phantom power 2 input 1 now I already have it set to the 48 volts but if I wanted to change the voltage I could you can see right there at the bottom it tells me that it's at 48 volts I think my shotgun microphone will also operate off of 24 volts but since I don't know that for sure for the sake of just making sure it works properly I'm going to keep it at 48 volts ok so what I'm going to do now is I am going to connect my heil PR 42 the number to input the zoom h5 and then i'm going to connect the HT DZ h t81 shotgun microphone to channel 1 and you can see I'm not getting any readouts right now because none of these channels are activated and I'm going to actually make sure that the phantom powered microphone is off want to show you when it comes on and bring that into view here the first thing I'm going to do is activate the XY microphones right there you can see when I did that starting to get a little bit of a readout I can turn this up here and get an even bigger signal out of these XY microphones ok now let's turn on let me turn that down just a little bit more hello check check check check check check that'll work now let's say I bring in the high lpr 40 and I also need to activate channel 2 for that so channel 2 the light is on and now as I speak into the microphone there we go I've got a nice readout from the high OPR 40 and I'm going to swing that down there there's a look at the high Oh for you and then I'm going to turn on my phantom powered microphone you're going to hear it click alright now you also see there's no readout yet because I need to activate the channel and now once I do that there you go so I've got the htd ZHT 81 through getting phantom power from channel 1 I have the high lpr 40 not needing phantom power being plugged into channel 2 and then I'm using the XY microphones at the top capsule for channel left and right now let's start the recorder here you can see it counting up right there it tells me that it's recording now what I'm going to do is a recording you can see I'm going to record all of these at the same time and I'm going to isolate these in the video so you can get a better idea of what they're going to sound like so up to this point all of the audio that you've heard has been from an HT DZ htat one but not this one that you can see on screen I have another one that's just off of screen now I'm going to switch over to these mics individually so this is the hyal PR 40 dynamic microphone that is plugged in to the zoom h5 digital audio recorder into channel 2 of the zoom digital audio recorder now I'm going to use the dynamic excuse me the condenser microphone the HT dzh t81 switching over to it now now this is the audio from the HT DZ htat one you can see or hear rather from my tapping that it is the microphone located right in front of me this is a condenser microphone and it's pulling phantom power from the zoom h5 digital audio recorder now I'm going to switch over to the XY capsules you can hear that tap right there and this audio that you're hearing is being recorded from the XY condenser capsules that come included with the zoom h5 digital audio recorder these are recording in stereo where the other channels are recording in mono although you can set up channel 1 & 2 to record in stereo I don't have them set up that way currently it did but the XY capsules are obviously recording in stereo that's not necessary for a vocal but in this case that's why I'm doing it now I've got one of the thing that I want to do here for you what I have is my phone that I've got just off-camera here I have the Apple 4s and I'm going to go ahead and plug my headphones you'll see here I'm going to connect them into the side of the h5 there we go and I made an indication I'm going to put these into my ears and I'm also going to connect a 3.5 millimeter cable here I've got and I'm going to connect this into the line input jack of the zoom h5 which is found on the side of the XY capsule you heard that popping there and so now the XY capsule isn't recording anything because I'm not resending a signal to update the microphones will turn off automatically and and now it's going to wait for a signal from the line in and that is going to be through my phone so what I'm going to do is demonstrate here how you can use an app like the boss Jacques studio app and actually record a podcast from top to bottom right here with the zoom h5 so I'm going to start some podcast music so I can turn this down and I can do some voiceover a while I'm talking over the music and turn the music back up yeah so there you go I think that peaked a little bit more but you get the idea of how flexible it is to use the zoom h5 you can plug in multiple microphones at the same time not only that you can have one or two of them be condenser while the other one may not be you can also record with the XY capsule or bring in a line in this is very versatile it is now a portable recording studio if you're a podcaster like I am you can take this on the road and do your complete podcast that's what I plan on doing with it this fall as I go on vacation all I need are a couple of very portable microphones I can plug them into the number one and number two slot and play my music through the phone or my iPad and it'll work just great you can connect it to the iPad as well as a microphone I didn't mention it could connect to your computer as a microphone if you have the camera connection kit for your iPad it'll connect to your iPad and it can be in a microphone for your iPad as well a whole lot of versatility for the zoom h5 I love the device and I can't wait to keep using it some more so that's going to wrap up my review here of the zoom h5 and as I wrap up I want to give you some of the pros and cons from my opinion of the zoom h5 and one of them is both a pro and a con I love that it has the XLR and the TRS connectors here at the bottom but I also found that the XLR s can be a little bit hard to pull out it depends on the XLR like this one here that I've got plugged into a channel number one I really have to kind of grip it and pull it out whether it's on channel 2 it pulls right out pretty easily I have a third style of XLR connector here in the studio and it pulled out even easier so I think it's more of the XLR cable itself then the zoom h5 it doesn't have a locking mechanism but I didn't feel like any of them were so loose that it would actually come out during fieldy's so I don't think that's a big of a deal that big of a deal but it is something worth noting I did mention in my unboxing and first look the other day that I thought this had the play/pause feature and it does you can see here that it is now recording it's counting up and I can hit the play pause button and it will pause you can see it indicated right up here that it's now paused and I can hit the button again and now it's going to start recording again that will also set a mark if you like to use marks for any number of functionality I know some podcasters use them to kind of indicate where they've made a mistake they want to go back and easily find that to edit it out that's one function of the mark feature but you can use it for a whole variety of things and so when you do the play or pause rather it will leave a mark for you so I like that feature as well a whole lot of flexibility of course that is probably the biggest feature the biggest Pro of the zoom h5 is all of the flexibility I like the analog knobs here I don't have to fiddle with like the zoom h2n has a single knob on the side and it was always kind of awkward to see what the recording level was set at here on the zoom h5 and they're all front and center I can use them and adjust them even during hold I love that it's very tactile and very easy to use and understand I like on the side where it has the the output for both headphones which is you can control the volume of the headphone right here and you can also have the line app that you can send to your DSLR so you have multiple monitoring options and I like that as well one other thing that I love about the zoom h5 is the placement of the SD card slot now as I've said numerous times I love the zoom h2 and I've been using it for years but one thing I didn't like was that if I was going to mount it to a tripod the SD card slot was right here next to it and I actually keep it mounted to a tripod on my desk all the time just so I can kind of a I was worried about falling over when I'm recording and stuff because I have multiple cables going into it and any time I'm done with recording I either have to get out a USB cable to connect it to my computer or I have to take it off the tripod pull the SD card out and it's just it's a nuisance it's not a big deal but it's a nuisance well no more that with the tripod mount being here squarely on the back and the SD card being right here on the side I don't have to worry about taking the tripod mount off in order to get the SD card out anymore that is a big feature for me but also practically speaking if you are using this with your DSLR you think that this is mounted to the top of your DSLR with your hotshoe you need that that SD card to be accessible and with it being here on the side of the device accessible even when you're mounted to your computer or excuse me your camera so very practical in that sense so those are my pros for the device again a little bit nitpicky here on some of these cons these are also looking at it on what could they do to improve the device one thing that I would love to see in a future iteration of this maybe they could do it through firmware but probably not and that would be a noise gate we have a compressor and a limiter the low cut filter will help with a noise gate with those low level frequencies that you might get from a fan or a compressor or even wind but I would love to see a noise gate that works off of a decibel functionality rather than a frequency functionality so the h6 doesn't have that either as far as I can tell so it's not like they had that in another recorder and didn't include it in this one but I would love to see that in a future version of a zoom recorder another thing that I would love to have and this is something that I compared at the top of the video and that would love to have simultaneously count up and count down on the readout I understand why they got rid of it they added some other functionality but I had become kind of spoiled and I would love to have both of those on screen at the same time not having to choose between one or the other another Konnor thing that I don't like I mentioned this in my first impressions video is that it comes with a two gigabyte micro SD card that's just not practical if you're going to be using this at for any type of long and long distance or long length recordings a 2 gigabyte card is not going to be very useful to you you're me really going to have to go out and replace that card I know that those don't cost very much so why not include a high-capacity SDHC card of 16 or 32 gigabytes with the recorder I've paid good money for the recorder you forced me to go out and replace something that came with it that you charged me for I would rather to see zoom step up and give a nice practical SD card with their recorders let's see oh yes this is the other one this is kind of a what I think could be a big thing you take the capsule off and now you have the connectors that are exposed and you might be saying well why would you take the capsule off because those are your microphones well if I'm in the field and I want to use this for interviewing or let's say I'm shooting a film and I have you know shotgun microphones that are my sound guys using I don't need the X Y capsule the X Y capsule is going to add weight and size to the recorder in addition to it being exposed getting hit or other things I would want to take it off to reduce weight size and the risk of harming the X Y capsule but now in doing that I have exposed the connectors here of the h5 recorder I would love to see some sort of cap available to protect these so that I can remove the XY capsule or any capsule take this out into the field and still protect my recorder likewise I'd like to see a cap for the capsules and the final negative that I will say is this joystick it saves space I think it's I love the rocker action what I don't like is that because it rocks and I have to push it in if I pushed in at an angle I can't it has to be straight on and sometimes I get a little fat fingered and fumble with the menu I would like to see something else either another tactical button that I could push so that the the joystick isn't a joystick and a button that's something that has annoyed me with the h2 in and it still annoys me now with the h5 a minor inconvenience because I don't have to get into the menuing systems that often but it is still an inconvenience is something that I find annoying and I think that they could improve so overall my rating on the zoom h5 is a a+ + device I am thoroughly glad to have this as a part of my studio and I think it's going to give me more functionality when I travel it will enable me to do more things and produce better recordings without having to take as much equipment with me I've been taking mixers and other things with me when I travel so that I can get that great pristine recording that I love for Golden Spiral media now I can simply take the h5 and a couple of microphones and I am good to go if I had that noise gate it would be even better but I can get rid of most noise in post-production and set up my recording environment to give me a good starting point so that's it this is my been my review of the zoom h5 if this review has been helpful for you I would appreciate a thumbs up leave a comment in the comment section down below if you have any questions or I can answer anything if I've miscommunicated anything let me know I want to help you answer or help answer any questions that you might have and I've also got an affiliate link here in the description if you want to purchase the zoom h5 I would appreciate your support by purchasing it through my affiliate link thanks for tuning into this video and until next time take care

Channel: Pro Podcast Solutions

Views: 253,291

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Id: 6XrPwMqfUfU

Length: 38min 49sec (2329 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 19 2014