Looking at portable recorders... recommendations?

Hey gang!!!

Currently, I'm in the process of doing a bunch of upgrades both to my house (finally will have a proper studio room/man cave!!) and my recording gear. I've been using a Presonus Inspire with my desktop mac for awhile now, but I'm wanting to be able to record drums, do some location recording, and make the occasional buck making demoes for my buddies' bands. The thought here is to have a recorder that I can take with me (no computer) and when I get back to the home studio, be able to dump what I've recorded into my DAW, and mix it there (I'm using Logic Express ATM). 8 channels in is a minimum for me, as well as connectivity to my Mac.

Some of the machines I've been looking at:
Zoom R24
Zoom R16
Korg D3200 (used)

All have USB-2 and save the tracks as WAV files, so no issues there... I personally have used the Korg before, and with junk mics, was able to get a good sound... trouble is, they don't sell them anymore new, otherwise it would be a no-brainer...

The 2 Zooms seem interesting, I'd prefer the R24 (slightly better bandwidth, more tracks) I also like the idea of SD cards to record on-has anyone here used either of these, and what's the sound quality like? I don't particularly care about the effects, since I'll be doing the mixing in Logic, but the old garbage in>garbage out applies here, and you can't make a dirty signal clean goes as well...

Also, any other suggestions/experiences/recommendations? I'm all ears, and while I have a little bit of time to do this, I kinda would like to git'r'done in the next month or so...

Thanks in advance!!!

Franc Robert

I have an R16, I don't use it all that much as I use PTools as the regular platform.

What I can tell you is that for the money it's great...I come from a workstation and small recorder background, I decided on the R16 for 3 primary reasons, SD card, wav files and 8 tracks/record at a time.

We have recorded some live tracks, Drums and Bass and I must say that the pre-amps are not bad, not offensive, sure there are better but the unit is very workable. I have moved the R16 wav files into a Pro Tools session with zero issues and to me this is huge. In the past I worked with recorders that had proprietary files and here I sit with all sorts of tracks saved on CD's that are useless because those recorders are long gone. Boss, Yamaha etc...

I don't know what the full differences are between the R16 and R24 but I suspect they are both pretty good for the $$$. I have never worked with a Korg .


No issues with the R16 here other than it is an odd operating system and a very small window. Not difficult just not as intuitive as one might have hoped. Once you get past the initial familiarization it's no big deal like anything else. A very strange thinking person must have wrote the operational software. I suspect that a new user with previous exposure will have very little issues but a new user with NO previous experience , it may take them some time to get used to the operating procedure. The manual is fine by the way...

good luck

t

Glad to hear no probs with the R16, thanks!

Leaning towards the R24, it does 24 bit recording, has 6 phantom power switches, and of course 24 available tracks... if PT can pickup those wav files from your R16, I don't think I'll have any problems with Logic...

I guess Sweetwater is going to get a call from me here soon...

Franc Robert

I don't have those big Zooms, but their little H-4 is incredible.