After several days of using my Zoom successfully with the power adaptor, I forgot to plug it in and ran the batteries dead. When I plugged it back in, the Zoom would no longer recognize the 128MB SD card. I tried the card in my computer (which has slots) and it was unrecognizable. The card was damaged somehow (by the battery failure?). Has anyone encountered this problem?

At that point, I went out and bought a 2GB SD card. With it, I now get "Card error". It's a different problem that with the 128MB card. I can make recordings on the 2gig card but after about 3 takes, I get the "card error" message. At that point the Zoom can't use the card again until it is re-formatted. So, at this point I don't know if I have a defective 2GB card or if the Zoom is somehow causing these problems. I replaced the batteries so that's not the issue.

I am going to return the 2GB card and get a more expensive 1GB card thinking maybe the 2GB card was too slow for the Zoom. Quite the mystery. For now I have no Zoom. Any thoughts? Anyone else run into this?

Very weird. I've had the batteries run out on me before with no ill effects on the cards. I would've said your other error was caused by a bad card (there have been other very similar reports on the Zoom mega-thread, where it's turned out to be the card). But the fact that you had two problems would make me wonder if there's something wrong with your unit and maybe you should return it under warranty.

I guess I would try another card and see if that does the trick.

Thanks Monica. Yes, that was my concern as well. However, I just returned the 2GB card and replaced it with a 1GB card for the same price and it seems to work fine. This appears to mean that Secure Digital memory cards are not all created equal. Higher price per GB actually means higher quality.

I have no idea what trashed the first card. Maybe I didn't turn the unit off before removing it? Who knows if that would even matter with dead batteries? Oh well. Problem solved.

Hi Monica,
I have downloaded the Audacity ... but after a
running comentary on how to edit files ... that is after gulping a stiff brandy (purely medicinal of course) ... I now feel brave enough to take an advanced course in astro-physics !! ... perhaps I must ask my grandchildren to help me push the right buttons ... but I suppose us older types must just learn to take things more slowly.

Thanks for the Audacity steer ... will tell you when I can do all the wonderful editing things which the computer boffin demonstrated.

LOL, btb!

Or you can do what I do, which is ignore 95% of the editing capabilities and just use it to normalize, edit out the dead space at the beginning and end, and convert to mp3.

p.s. Actually, one side benefit to me being technological clueless is that it has made me honest in my recordings. The few times I have attempted to edit out a blooper, I've mucked the recording up so badly I just end up saying "forget it" and leaving the blooper in.

Now, that's interesting. I didn't know you could remove mistakes with Audacity. If you edited out a mistake, what would you put in it's place? Or would there just be a fraction of a second of silence, less noticeable than the mistake?

None of the above. It simply removes that part of the digital file, so the sound goes straight through with no pause. That's what makes it a bit tricky, because unless what's going on before and after you make the cut makes a good transition, it can sound sort of jerky.

Try recording a piece for fun and playing around with the editing features. I never could figure out most of it.

Regarding the card, somewhere in the Zoom manual, there is a list of approved memory cards. I made it a point to only purchase a card that was specifically on that list (i.e. not just something by the same company, but the specific model.) Starting Over, if you know what what your original two cards were, would you mind checking to see if they are on that list. If they're not, then that might explain the problem you had. If they were on the list, and you still had those problems, well, then it will remain a mystery...

On the subject of editing, I haven't done this recently, but when recording something that was fairly long, I have done the following. I was playing through the piece, almost to the end, and I made an unforgiveable mistake. Instead of just re-playing that mistake, I backed up a few measures (actually one whole section, to a spot that was very easy to start from) and replayed, through the spot where the mistake was and then on to the end. When I edited, I cut off the mistake, and cut out the replayed section, so that I used my original playing up to the mistake, and then the rest of my replaying. That way, the "sound profile" was unchanged, and it was a fairly seemless editing job.

If you are playing, and make a mistake and replay, the lingering "sound-footprint" that you have at the time of the mistake is much richer than what you get when you replay. Does this make sense? I feel like I don't have the proper terminology to explain it.

Say you've got a left hand full of chords. Well, even after you've finished measures one and two and are near the end of the third measure, there is a lot of sound information lingering in the air from the first and second measure. In other words, the sound you get by playing measures 1 through 3 is very different (and much fuller) than what you get from playing only measure 3.

So if you're planning on editing (erasing a mistake and putting the before and after parts together) you want to keep that in mind and have some re-play strategies in mind before you sit down to play.

I tend not to do this anymore, because the precision required in editing is tiresome. Also, I find that if I sit down to play assuming I can do this kind of editing if needed, then my playing is in general not as good, somewhat uninspired and tense. I find that I get the best results when I assume I'm going to keep recording entire tracks until I get a good one, and when I allow myself the relaxed schedule of recording over several days or weeks, thus there's no pressure and I can kind of play without having to even think about "what if I make a mistake." Since I know that I'll just do another take if needed, I can play without fear. Does that make sense?

Sorry, kind of drifted into more philosphical aspects of recording...

I can't find a list of approved SD cards in my manual. Maybe it's there but I don't see it. The card that was destroyed when the batteries ran out was the one that came with the Zoom. The 2GB card that exhibited the "Card Error" was purchased at Walmart for $48. I don't remember the brand. I exchanged it for a 1GB SanDisk card which was $47. Obviously, the price difference matters. The SanDisk SD card works. The cheap one didn't.

) You can select three different frequencies levels: 44.1kHz, 48kHz or 96kHz. what information can I put here to help people understand the differences in these frequencies and which one they want for their purposes?

SHiro - I would word this:

"You can select one of three different sampling rates: 44.1kHz, 48kHz, or 96kHz. The higher the sampling rate the higher the fidelity because the higher frequency content of the signal can be accurately reproduced. The trade-off is that the higher the sampling rate the larger the file since a greater number of samples are collected.