ZOOM PodTrak P4 Podcast Recorder Review

in this episode we take a look at the zoom pod track p4 a recorder for podcasters [Music] this entire episode is recorded with the zoom pod track p4 and ashore sm7b dynamic microphone the reason i'm using this microphone it's very popular amongst podcasters so that's what you're hearing first of all let's go ahead and give you a podcast sample okay tell me about star watching uh we went and stood on the platform otherwise known as my sandbox um to try and observe neowise a few weeks ago uh what's neolize comet comet neois it actually it's uh i can't forget the technical term for the closest point to earth was a couple of weeks ago but it's still visible i think and we came close we got really good at finding the big dipper yes and arcturus so we got close but it was either i think a couple nights it was cloudy um one night we couldn't stay up late enough you know to actually see it but it was cool and then this week is the perseids we will have another attempt at some meteors yes next up here is a remote call sample all right so we have on the line here emma uh tell us what's the latest with ableton uh i got it to make noise yesterday you got to make noise okay that's a step forward i'm gathering uh it is i what i had done was loaded a midi patch like a pre-done chord preset chord progression wow um and i didn't load an instrument to play it oh whoops yeah so once i figured that out a lot of stuff made sense okay good so have you written your first song in ableton yet i'm working on it okay cool what happens when you're done uh composing then what's the next step and is everything okay sounds like just knocked over um once i've written out all the midi patches i usually try to do a mix my mixing is still mediocre but you know that's part of the curve next up let's run through all of the pros for the pod track p4 first of all it has four xlr inputs for professional grade microphones each of those inputs can provide up to 70 db of gain which is pretty impressive for 200 device haven't seen that before also on each channel you can independently turn on or off the 48 volts phantom power so if you are going to use condenser microphones you're all set there too this recorder records both a mix of everyone's microphone plus independent channels for each input or each microphone and in addition to that it also records the sound pads which are the four buttons you can use to play back sounds that you have preloaded onto the p4 all those recorded to separate tracks so you can do a super careful mix in post if you choose to do that or there's also recorded a stereo mix to a separate file and you can just use that if you need to turn around and deliver very quickly there are four independent headphone jacks and they each have their own volume control you can power with two double a batteries and also there are two usbc inputs one of them is dedicated to power the other one you can connect to your computer and record to your computer or your mobile device when you're connected to your computer via that input you can bus power the p4 as well so a lot of different power options which is good now when the p4 is connected to your computer via usb it becomes a two input to output audio interface that is to say you can connect microphones to the p4 and then that will go via usb to your computer your mobile or your tablet and you can record it there now in that case you're recording just the mix not the isolated channels as well but the good news is you can also record to the sd card in the p4 at the same time that you're connected to your computer via usb and you can record on your computer as well now if you are connected to your computer via usbc and you want to do some sort of remote call bring in a remote guest or host via skype for example there is also a mixed minus feature now if you're not familiar with that what that does is it makes it so that when the person on the other end of the remote call is talking the p4 is not sending their voice back to them which would result in a sort of echoey kind of disorienting sound so it just turns that off so they're not hearing it but you're still recording them and yourself locally on the p4 there's also a 3.5 millimeter jack that you can connect your smartphone to the p4 with you can then use that to record anything coming off of the p4 including phone calls skype calls any other sort of voice over ip and there is also an optional bluetooth adapter that allows you to connect your phone via bluetooth instead one of the things i really like about the podrak p4 is that it's very easy to control it has dedicated dials for the input levels or gain and it also has dedicated controls for the headphone volume you really don't have to go into the menu all that often so maybe when you need to do something like format an sd card maybe turn on the limiters or anything like that that you would do before the recording starts but then as soon as the recording starts all the controls you need are right there on the front speaking of menu settings there are two things limiters and low-cut filters so these help you solve some practical problems first of all a limiter will actually turn down the volume if someone gets too loud and prevent that audio from clipping very helpful feature it's just a matter of turning it on in the menus before you start recording here's an example we're going to do a little test here testing the limiters on the zoom f4 i'm using the shep cmc 641 and right now we have the gain set to about five and a half out of ten and we've hit the limiter a couple times but let's push it really hard and see how it sounds we now have the gain set to 7 out of 10 and it seems to be pushing really hard up against the limits here at 0 db and it actually is sounding i'm not getting a ton of distortion of course there's a little bit of a pumping sound but that's a lot better than distortion so it's definitely doing something interesting here not entirely sure how the limiters on this work but overall i'd say much better than i expected a low cut filter likewise is useful to cut out low frequency rumble and things like maybe air conditioners it'll help remove some of that noise one of the things that kind of surprised me about this as a 200 device is that it does really well in terms of self noise the spec from zoom says that the ein which is the spec for self noise is minus 124 dbu measured with the ihf a method in our test we found that when we did some very practical tests and measured the noise after recording myself talking for a little bit loudness normalized to minus 23 l ufs and then measured the silent portion where i didn't talk and that's measuring not just self noise but other things as well and that came in at -73 db rms on average and then as far as the max the max came in at minus 71.78 db rms so that's actually extraordinarily good especially for a device in the 200 range and as i mentioned before the podrack p4 comes in at 199 dollars u.s which is a pretty impressive price for something with four microphone inputs with very clean performance now no product is perfect let's run through the cons really quickly first of all in terms of build quality it is plastic it's not super robust so you're gonna have to be careful with it to get a good long life out of it i think you can get a good long life out of it if you take care of it i would probably if you are going to be taking it mobile which it's really kind of built for then i would plan on getting some sort of case for it doesn't come with one so that's up to you to provide on your own but if you are going to do a lot of traveling i wouldn't just throw it in another bag with a bunch of other gear i would be more concerned about it holding up over time and if it fell it would probably withstand one or two drops but if you drop it on concrete i think there's a good chance you might ship something there one thing that is just kind of a weird thing it records at 44.1 kilohertz 16-bit and i don't really even have issues with the 16-bit or 44.1 kilohertz necessarily it sounds great the problem is is that all of the video standards are 48 kilohertz really i mean you can upload to youtube for example now and mobile phones now are starting to record audio at 44.1 kilohertz as well in an effort to save space and storage but all of the video standards technically are 48 kilohertz so it just seems like a kind of a weird decision and i would rather like to see a 48 kilohertz option as well there is a little bit of hiss in the headphone outputs i'm even hearing it right now as we talk so it's not generally a huge problem but it's always kind of there and persistent and that just kind of speaks to the kind of the quality of the headphone amplifiers they are clearly kind of budget headphone amplifiers now this one i'm going to present as more of a note and something you need to keep in mind i love that there are two usbc inputs so you can power the unit for a long time using a usb battery bank or even a usbc to ac adapter and so pretty much a lot of a lot of mobile phones have those available or you can just buy one third party but the great thing about that is you can power this for pretty much as long as you need to i should note however in our tests with double a batteries the powering time is not amazing so what i did is i've actually powered three condenser microphones each with the phantom power turned on and three sets of headphones with a 45 ohm 63 ohm and 80 ohm impedance rating and we were able to power that for an hour and 25 minutes so if you're planning to power this with just double a batteries i think you need to keep in mind and in that particular case i should mention those were nickel metal hydride rechargeable batteries ikea rechargeable batteries just keep in mind that if you are planning to power that way you probably can realistically expect about an hour i would be careful going anything beyond that without a usb battery bank or some other sort of power source via usbc all right so who is this device for i would say first of all it's really not for audio nerds if you're an audio nerd filmmaker i think you really should probably look at the zoom f series of recorders you have 4 f6 f8 f8n if you are a musician i would probably look more at the live track series of recorders or perhaps the zoom handy recorders h4n h5 h6 this one is really made to be super simple for non-audio nerds who just want quality audio for their podcast and that's it so it's a really focused device it's made for that very purpose so i wouldn't really use it for other things like that you could use it for a kind of an audio live streaming show but i wouldn't buy it and plan to feed the outputs of the headphones into cameras or anything like that it's really not made for that there's no other sort of output either unless you go to usbc to your computer mobile device tablet so there is a look at the pod track p4 from zoom hope that was helpful for you if you have any questions go ahead and leave those down below and if you've 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 for video talk to you soon [Music] you

Channel: Curtis Judd

Views: 39,028

Keywords: Audio, sound, video, ZOOM, PodTrak, P4, PodTrak P4, recorder, podcast, podcasting, podcaster, review, microphone, XLR

Id: 3xkoH0Tpzl4

Length: 11min 51sec (711 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 31 2020