Hi, I'm moving over here from the piano forum, because this is now more about (my) music and about recording music than about brands of pianos. Visit the original H4 thread for previous info H4 thread .

I plugged the H4 into our band's mixer last Sunday and recorded 48 tunes in 4 hours. I turned it off/on between each song to make editing easier later on. The complete set consumed 1.85G on a 2G chip, and worked flawlessly. It takes about 15 minutes to transfer this amount of music from the H4 to PC using the USB cable.

Lessons learned:

1. The best mixer setup for a live performance isn't the best setup for recording. Next time, I'll try a sub-mix setup just for the recorder.

2. The piano and vocals come through fine, but all the guitar players are going to be disappointed by their lack of presence (volume). And, the bass player didn't come through at all. I'm sure this is a mix problem, tho, and not the fault of the H4.

3. For $299, this is cheap easy analog to digital fun!

4. These recordings are *completely* raw, no editing, I'm not singing, but yes I'm the piano player.

Here's how it sounds (I'll *boost* the guitars next time); remember this is *live* in a very rowdy place!; and these are the last two tunes in a four hour set, one for belly rubbing and one for show.

Next to last: Satin Sheets

Last song of the night: Last Dance

Cheers! --G

Yup, I bet the guitarists hate that recording. Nice piano playing, though. I think I know what I'm getting for Christmas. No, not a guitar player, the H4.

--Dennis

Sounds great, ragtime! The piano, especially. I was amazed at how little background crowd noise I could hear.

Thanks. :3hearts: I get so much grief from the guitar players.

Yup, the H4 is definitely a great recording tool (and did I mention its value as a practice tool also?). I'm happy I got it rather than the M-Audio Microtrack or the Edirol R-09...

Wouldn't it be great to be able to record separate tracks for each instrument, the vocal, and the crowd, and then mix them together later at your leisure? The next best thing would be to do as you said, and have a separate recording mixer for the H4 onsite.

Even so, you still have two tracks to play with. So you could have everyone on the left channel except the guitarists, or except the vocals and have a little bit of flexibility later.

Bob

That's why I'm still using my old Tascam DA78 8-track. I think I'd want a minimum of 4 concurrent tracks of recording before I put it out to pasture. A company named Sound Devices is the only game in town that I know of right now for 4-track flash recording... but very expensive and also includes a hard disk I think can be disabled.

Howard

Yep, good ideas. But, I haven't found this combination yet: (1) reasonable cost, (2) for my band I need 8 mono and 2 stereo channels minimum, (3) enough recording medium for 4 hours of music, and (4) simple enough to manage that I can record and still be a player in the band.

I have a huge mixer board for the live gig, and it seemed worth a shot to just capture the stereo output mix. All of the above criteria are met, but clearly I need adjustment on the mix (something, you already know, that could be wonderfully done after the gig if I could have recorded all the channels separately!).

I *do* have a Roland VS digital recorder/mixer -- but it (and I'd guess any other multi-track) is really tough to plug into a live gig. You've got as much setup time on the recorder as you do on conventional mixer, and no good way to get a stereo output to the gig's speakers (run all the inputs to both the recorder AND the gig mixer?). The Roland is bulky to transport, tough to start/stop, and only gets a couple of tunes without changing disks.

Well, I'm still experimenting and open to suggestion. Thanks. --G

I'll give some thought to separate mono mixes as you've suggested (some right, some left). I'd lose the Roland's stereo piano. Perhaps worth it though for post-gig adjustment. . ., blending the two, adding an "effect" to create a stereo presence. . .

Been also mulling over the Edirol R-4 which has a built-in 40 gig hd. Looks like a natural for adding high res audio to video. Wonder how good the converters are and how loudly the hd chirps.

Howard

I've never had anything except the highest respect for Roland equipment (Edirol). The R-4 looks like a class act -- although seemingly marketed more to the conference and public speaking crowd than to musicians (?). At $1200, it's in a different league from the Zoom; it's up there with the Tascam 2488, Korg D3200, and Alesis 24HDXR. When I win the lottery maybe!

Cheers! --G