NICE!!! I used to have an H2 years ago and used it for 1000's of hours of music and eventually, I left it hanging somewhere we played and it never made it back to me. Since then, I've been scoping another one. I was looking at the H4 or Sony's version of that one. Very cool. You can record anything with these. So simple. Excited to hear some samples!

I have an H4n that's about 10 years old, haven't used it in a few years. I got it out recently - had to buy somethings that were lost - but been too busy (lazy) to use it. Been very pleased with it.

I’ve heard overwhelmingly positive things about the various Zoom recorders. I used to have a different model that did a great job. In college, when the 8-piece Renaissance choir in which I sang gave performances, they used a Zoom. I don’t remember if it was the H1 or H2, but it did a great job.

Using mp3 formatting seems to defeat the purpose of the recorder, though. Why not make use of its capabilities with WAV?

I have both the original H4 and the H4n, and have recorded hundreds of hours with both of them, but I don't know if I've ever used the built in mics. I've mostly used them to record the ouput of a mixer of some kind. One nice thing about the H4 is the two XLR inputs with phantom power. It can record both the XLR inputs AND the built in mics, for later mixing, which opens up a lot of possibilities for live recording - a band with the built in mics with two extra mics to "spotlight" vocals or weaker instruments. Or a mixer output with the XLR inputs and the built ins for audience.
The Zoom line is a little different now, but I don't know what changes have been made.
There are quite a few YouTube videos recorded with various Zooms. Check out the Onlies, or a lot of Elle and Toni.

You can record to WAV. Then you need to transfer it to MP3 through a DAW. Otherwise, it gives the feature of recording right to MP3 for easy transfer!

Easy transfer and poor audio quality - I think that's the point Rich was trying to make.
Listening to spotify or whatever on iPhones, people don't really care about audio quality so much anymore.
One thing about mp3 - every time you open the file to edit anything (not just to listen) it has to be decoded and encoded again, and each time it gets more lossy.
You don't need a DAW to convert .wav to .mp3. There are plenty of audio converter apps that can do it quickly and easily, and I think the Zooms can do it internally too, which I think is what Al meant.

I only just started to use a Zoom product, as I said Tascam is what I was using for years, as it had a better rep for product quality. But so far the Zoom H1 is proving pretty reliable. I am def not a techie to say what format is better or why.

My understanding of it is that it’s all based on sampling rates. An analog recording produces a smooth wave pattern, as the recording equipment captures sound continuously. With digital recording, a sample is taken every so often to build an approximated wave pattern, more like a bar graph that looks like a curve if you draw a line over its top. The higher the sampling rate, the closer the digital recording comes to the analog. With a high enough sampling rate, it becomes impossible for the ear to distinguish the analog from the digital.

The mp3 format is popular because it takes up less storage space than other formats. It’s easy to fit a gigantic iTunes library on a hard drive if it’s in a compressed format. But to get the convenience of easy storage, you have to make a huge sacrifice by lowering the sampling rate. Formats like WAV have much higher sampling rates, so you get a much smoother wave. Because of the higher sampling rate, there is more data to store and files are considerably larger. People will sometimes suggest that you use mp3 for voice recordings that are essentially notes or for music that isn’t of personal significance, but that you use higher quality formats for the music to which you really want to listen regularly (if you have limited storage space).

Despite all the advances in digital recording technology, many of which have made recording much more accessible and user friendly for the average person, the simplicity and tonal quality of analog recording remains the highest ideal, and it’s no wonder that vinyl has resurged in popularity and well made old turntables are treasured by both the generations who originally bought them and the younger ones who are now discovering vinyl.

Rich -- I'm an audiophile who compulsively listened to Classical and other genres of music for many years before actually picking up a musical instrument (apart from childhood piano lessons, that is). In any case, fidelity of sonic reproduction is highly, perhaps even neurotically important to me.

Anyway, I gotta tell ya that the digital audio industry hasn't exactly been asleep at the wheel. While it is true that my finest LPs can still outshine what can I can wrest from my various digital sources, my latest digital reproduction gear provides me with convincingly lovely sound quality. The music I now get from my CD player and the streaming sources Qobuz and Idagio are a treat to listen to.

I’m not trying to put digital technology down, and I think WAV is an impressive format. I do think vinyl is still the gold standard, but digital technology is getting remarkably close.

My father, who spent hours a day listening to CDs every day while writing his reviews, used to talk quite a lot about the effect of listening to CDs for a long time. He said that there was a certain gap in sound quality that became more noticeable with extended listening, and that it made it difficult to continue listening after a certain point, in a way that didn’t occur with vinyl.

The history of the CD is interesting. It was not necessarily the best quality option available at the time of its inception, but there was a problem because there were too many competing formats at the time. Herbert von Karajan realized this and put intense pressure on the music industry to commit to the CD, and as a result, the CD became the standard for new music releases across all genres and the industry avoided a catastrophe of decision paralysis. The CD proved to be a versatile form and it was quite popular. One of its premier selling points was that the jewel case could accommodate a more extensive booklet that would allow the purchaser to have more exhaustive liner notes than were available on the back of an LP or a cassette tape. Over time, the idea of the informative booklet faded and it became more common to see either lyrics for songs or basic track listing info. In some cases the liner just became a simple sheet of paper. Now that streaming has taken over for digital listening, CDs have lost their lustre for many audiophiles.

A friend of my father who owned a record company was such an avid collector that he filled his entire house up with shelves for his CD collection. Eventually he and his wife moved into an apartment and just used the house for CD storage. I wonder if he’s still maintaining the collection. Once you’ve committed that much to building a collection, it’s hard to give it up.

My father and I used to go to thrift stores looking for violin records. We were quite lucky that there was a collector in the area whose estate was distributed among the stores and we found his records for years. We’d buy them and bring them home. The pristine ones would be digitized to get an even better sound than you’d get on the regular CD version. It was fun to compare. But playing the vinyl on a great turntable with a great amp,
graphic equalizer, and set of speakers, was a real feast.