Samson Zoom R16: Multitrack mobile recording

ian McAllister

#1 – 5:14 PM June 15, 2009

Yes. Finally. Jesus. The first non-tape solid state recording device that answers the question....why not just use the computer you own anyway?

Thanks man, now just tell those woot folks to hook it down.

geekd

#2 – 8:11 PM June 15, 2009

$400 for 8 tracks simultaneous recording is great! I've been looking to update my multitrack, which only does 4 tracks at once, but more that that has been over $600 up until this unit.

The battery option is a plus, but I suspect the phantom power would be limited in that situation.

I'm skeptical about cheap audio gear by nature, and all I see on the net today are reviews based on the specs. I'll wait until I see a few reviews based on actual use before I get too excited.

Still, it's something I'll be keeping an eye out for.

Dinofond

#3 – 4:23 PM June 16, 2009

This thing is to small to be a controller which is what Samson is tooting. If it was big enough to be useful it would be an amazing tool for working musicians. Take it to rehearsal, record rehearsal, bring it back to home studio and use it as a controller with pro tools, cubase, logic studio etc. It's none if these things when you can purchase a Korg nano for $49 that does the same thing. Good idea but poorly thought out. SAMSON ZOOM FAIL!

Downpressor

#4 – 5:33 AM June 19, 2009

Dinofond I think you kind of miss the point. For one thing the Nano device doesnt do MCU, you have to map everything manually. For another it seems to me that control surface is just some icing on the top of the cake. Zoom has made a decent name for themselves in the portable recording market and their multi tracks do well for the price. Barring major hardware or software bugs, I dont see why this isnt a winner at the price point.

apple-o

#5 – 2:17 AM August 5, 2009

First some background on my experience with Zoom and why I am so excited about this product.

I have been a proud owner and regular user of Zoom's MRS-8 for 2.5 yrs. It's easily the greatest piece of recording gear I've ever owned, as it's
* convenient as fug,
* portable (I recommend getting rechargable AA batteries, I got 2 sets so fresh batteries are always ready to go),
* awesome SD format (can't beat it!),
* built in drum machine,
* built in FX (including mastering),
* and it sounds GREAT.
I cannot begin to express how convenient & great a tool the MRS-8 has been - my only die-hard wish was that it could record more simultaneous inputs. Support for SD cards >1GB would be nice although I have found you can really fit a lot of music onto 1 GB, even if you like to use up all 8 tracks.

So last year when I heard the MRS-8 was discontinued, I felt pretty deflated. You mean I can't turn my friends onto it at the music store anymore? Even worse, I thought maybe Zoom had given up on the all-in-one ultra-portable SD format I dug so much, and that we would never see a version with >2 inputs. Happily that has turned out not to be the case.

You can really appreciate what the R16 has to offer when you compare it to what came before. [warning: I get a little nostalgic here so skip paragraph if not interested in hearing a musician's trials & tribulations with various home recording methods]

I'm not old enough to have recorded onto wax cylinders or sheets of aluminum foil, but when I started recording my own music, I began with
1) an old school mono panasonic portable tape recorder, then onto
2) various boom boxes (overdubbing gtr/vocs/etc via ext. mic input in "karaoke" mode), then to
3) somewhat multitrack with an old quadraphonic reel-reel for a couple of months (no mixer, we just made a cable to merge the 4 outputs to a single mono out, to mix down to cassette. Also if you wanted to rewind for an overdub, your new part would end up on the tape like 1/4 second behind the other tracks probably because the recorder was meant for playing/recording all 4 tracks at once (ie surround sound, not overdubbing) and the tape heads probably weren't set up for realtime monitoring so you had to deal with a delay). By now I had a band so we were motivated to save for equipment and when we had enough dough, we splurged on
4) a Tascam Porta 02 cassette multitrack ($700 in 1989 dollars! And notable as it could record 4 tracks at once & worked on batteries, features I have not taken for granted since). At some point in my college band days, my friend got some $ for us to go into
5) a Real Recording Studio (24 tracks 1/2" mixed down to DAT!) which wasn't all that great because A) you were watching the clock the whole time since you're paying by the hour (luckily you had the foresight to record the 4 guitars for the most complex song on the 4 track at home, being a perfectionist and doing 80 takes of each, saving lots of moolah & stress in the studio), nonetheless there is still time pressure which doesn't exactly jive with the creative experience you think recording is supposed to be when you worship audio voyages like Sgt Pepper, SMiLE, Freak Out!, Flex-able, The Pod, Bad Moon Rising, Zaireeka, and Electric Ladyland, and then compromise creativity because when you're mixing your stuff down using thousands of dollars worth of equipment, the engineer (who is used to working with hair metal bands) insists on being the one with his hands on the board so you have to tell him every little fader, EQ and pan setting (you can forget changing these during the song), and when he doesn't exactly agree with your unorthodox (or in his mind, unlearned) approach, and you attempt to counter statements like "it doesn't sound like a BAND if you pan everything hard left/right!" (have they never appreciated the genius of the Beatles?) they don't always hear your "suggestions", and after much back and forth and bickering you realize the clock is ticking and compromise and wind up with a master tape that sounds like all the other blandly mixed crap on the radio, instead of the ideosyncratic masterpiece you had hoped it would be for the $500 you spent (in 1993 dollars) for 3 songs in 2 days. And you can't exactly pop the master tape you spent $50 on into your 4-track to play around with a remix. So you learn from the experience that your home-recorded 4-track songs sound better than hundreds of dollars spent at a "real studio", and best of all you can record for the price of a decent chrome cassette. Cassettes are mechanical though, and the glorious Tascam's tape transport kept breaking and being a poor student we can't keep affording $100 repairs so I then resort to an experiment, of
5) overdubbing between two 1/4" reel-reel recorders (I tried comforting myself that the quality of a wider tape might make up for real track separation). You should see the crazy switch box contraption I had to build so after you recorded a bass part on tape "A" then overdubbed rhythm guitar over the bass onto tape "B", you just had to rewind it "B", flick a few DPDT switches, press play on tape "B" & record in the opposite direction onto "A", and you could go back and forth without having to unplug cables or load tape reels. I think this method lasted about 2 days and it was back to recording on the boom box (and then a Sony pressman handheld cassette recorder, itself eventually supplanted by a Cassiopeia PDA, awesome for capturing riffs & scratch ideas as WAV files, but I digress because that wouldn't come til later). Finally I finished school, got a job & my cassette recording days peaked with the purchase of a
6) Tascam 464 4-track & Boss doctor rhythm drum machine. The cassette never sounded so good!
BUT I still have to bounce tracks to get more than 4. Around this time I got a Soundblaster sound card with stereo line in recording capability (a big deal at the time, previously my Mac Classic just did mono thru a mic), and got a copy of
7) Cakewalk (version 6? whatever was current circa 1996) using the broken Tascam Porta 02 as the input board. It wasn't necessarily better than cassette in terms of fidelity and if you recorded too many tracks you would get skipping or lagging audio, and mouse mixing was kind of limiting compared to having your hands all over the board, but it was the start of going beyond 4 tracks and digital multitracking. It took time to get right - in the next few years,
8) various DAW apps, mixers & soundcards came & went, none of which could record 4+ tracks simultaneously (for live band & to xfer 4 track multitrack tapes to DAW).
9) Eventually to maximize the inputs at one point I had two sound cards in my system (Win98SE, Darla w/2 in & 8 outs, Turtle Beach Santa Cruz w/4 in 6 out depending on how you set it up) with an Alesis Studio 32 mixer & all kinds of wires all over the place and taking up lots of precious room. I spent more time plugging in cables and trying to set up sound cards than creating music. I threw up my hands and vowed to simplify, put it up on eBay and FINALLY around 04 things got simpler when I got a
10) Tascam US-428, my 1st experience with a combo audio interface / mixer / control surface. It worked & sounded pretty good although you still needed a computer (though you could bring it along with a laptop if you were traveling, though the laptop's 4500 rpm hdd speed might limit your # of tracks per latency). Alas, the good old USB 428 was discontinued right after I bought it, and Tascam didn't replace it with a USB2 version, but a firewire version that was over my budget and would require me to get a firewire card for any computer I wanted to use it with.
11) Which brings us to Zoom. A couple of yrs ago, in need of something I could take outside or pack in a backpack, I purchased a Zoom MRS-8 and haven't looked back since. Best $300 I ever spent on any kind of non-instrument musical device. It only records 2 tracks at once (still fine for recording jams with a pair of mics and enough for overdubbing), and is limited to 8 tracks (as opposed to "the sky's the limit" on the computer), but it has almost no boot time, built in drum machine/DSP, and you even get mastering plugins for mixdown (something I never really appreciated until getting this unit). This little thing sounds fantasic! It blows away anything I've ever used (including the professional studio). If I want to go beyond 8 tracks I need to record the additional ones as "virtual takes" and import the tracks into WAV on the computer (using a free Windows utility to import from the SD), bring it into Cubase (or whatever) to mix down, so it's a slight inconvenience.

So like I said, the only thing I could ask for would be
1. the capability to record lots of tracks at once (for instance giving everyone their own track when we get together to jam & record, or close miking every piece of a drum set, or transferring over those moldering 4-track tapes before the oxide falls off to "remaster" and have a laugh),
2. for it to support >1 GB SD and
3. not be discontinued immediately

So the R16 is here, and it
* records 8 tracks simultaneously, and what's more has 8 combo XLR 1/4" inputs? What's UUUUP!
* can be daisy chained via USB to a 2nd unit and expanded to 16 tracks? are you kidding me?
* costs $400 or less, so buying that 2nd unit for 16 simultaneous tracks down the line might actually be affordable? wow
* records to the beloved SD, from lowly 1 GB up to 32 GB? awesome
* functions as an audio interface and control surface like the Tascam US-428 did? sure!
* functions as a standalone mixer if you want it? OK!
* has all the convenient features, effects, drum machine, etc of my beloved MRS-8? HEIDI HO! LET'S GO!

Feature-wise, the R16 promises to be the best of all worlds. I just hope it's sturdy enough to not break (the MRS-8 has stood the test of time so far), and that the sound quality is as fantastic as its little brother.

I think I have talked myself into buying it. Can I interest you in a slightly used lawnmower?

Over and out

apple-o

#6 – 8:46 AM August 5, 2009

Did a little more homework - it looks like they left out the drum/bass machine the MRS-8 had (it still has a metronome & guitar tuner). While not a deal breaker, it kind of complicates things - with the MRS-8 you could record & mix down a completed song with just the unit, now you need either an external drum machine (not so portable) or a drummer (preferable for rock music). Looks like I'll be looking up drum machine apps for my iPhone...

Just Observing

#7 – 7:12 PM September 4, 2009

Geez APPLE-O . Trying to figure out whether your post is about the R16 or YOU? I guess if you start at the "So the R16 is here, and it " we can get past your diary.