I have the H4 and use it all the time for backup. I also use it when all I need is audio and it does a fantastic job. I just wish it didn't feel so cheap.

j razz

I've been recording audio double system for the past 18 years. Has saved my ass on more than one occasion. I've used a Sony Pro-DAT portable until I wore it out. I then replaced the ca. $3000 back-breaker with a lightweight $300 Zoom H4 and haven't looked back. Only complaint I have about it is the lack of a real-time clock. Facing a load of files all timestamped 9/16/2005 12:00 AM is frustrating.

Thanks to all - I just ordered it.

Cliff Etzel - Solo Video Journalist
bluprojekt | SoloVJ.com

Probably too late to tell you this now but the units made by Nagra are pretty much standard fare for journalists. There's another even more expensive unit made in Germany that gets used a lot down here but I don't recall the name and can't find a link to it and I've never seen them for retail sale. Given the price that's understandable.

I doubt most people would pick the difference between the sound from the Nagra and the Zoom units. Anyone would immediately pick the difference is build quality and survivability.

Bob.

There was a time when the Nagra was the only player in town, and deservedly so. Today you can buy yourself several units that will provide excellent audio to be used in redundant and backup situations and still have money left over for a Starbucks latte grande, for what you would spend for a Nagra.

Personally I think the new Olympus is far superior to the Zoom spec-wise. Worth considering: Olympus LS10

The journalist's standard audio recorder back in the 60s and 70s was the "Uher 4000 Report", the Nagra recorders were far too expensive for that sort of work, although, the Nagras were all over the film world as the de facto standard field recorder. The Uher 4000 was a mono recorder using 5" reels and recorded at four different speeds; 15/16ips, 1 7/8ips, 3 3/4ips, 7 1/2ips. (The was a stereo version of the 4000.)

Here's a YouTube video of one in action: (I don't know how it feels about playing that particular song.)

I was referring to what is in current use. Indeed the original Nagra tape recorders were very expensive, from memory more than a family car. They still fetch over $1,000 at auction for units in good nick and are still in use. More than I can say for most family cars of the same vintage :)

The current Nagra Ares-M and Ares-P is pretty popular for radio, they seem to have sold a lot of them to broadcasters such as the BBC. Our local national broadcaster is using something even more expensive.
The North Hall at NAB is an interesting place that gets ignored, I was amazed to find Revox are still in business. Not surprising I guess, I just sold one of my Revox R2R decks that I'd bought 4 years ago for as much as I paid for it.
I nearly bought a Nagra Ares-M at a very good price ($750) at NAB last year. Instead I bought something from Ikan, big mistake!
Most popular recorder for film location audio today is the Cantar X. A marvel of engineering and complexity.

Bob.

Yes, the Cantar-X is an astonishingly well engineered piece of gear.

http://www.aaton.com/products/sound/cantar/index.php

Mega-sized image here:

http://www.aaton.com/images/cantar_octobre_face3_web10.jpg

This stuff is out of my league.

I prefer keeping it simple

Cliff Etzel - Solo Video Journalist
bluprojekt | SoloVJ.com

Wondering if adding an audio recorder to my gear is advisable for those times when I need b-roll type audio only content to place on the timeline when editing projects. I'm guessing things like ambient audio of nature, street sounds, backup to etc.

It seems to me all the videographers I know use a digital recorder of some type. You said b-roll, but most are using it for primary audio since the sound quality and flexibility is much higher than on-camera options. Of course there are hundreds of ways to set up sound capture.

I think you said you already ordered, but I would still read some of the comparison reviews. I couldn't find the really good one I had read that also had sound clips to use for comparison, but here is another review.

http://forums.oreilly.com/content/Audio-Community/20/Portable-Digital-Recorders/

Generally the best of that type recorder at a decent price point currently is the Sony PCM-D50. It's still about $500 though + windscreen + case.

Another endorsement for the H2 here.

On relatively long shoots, the H2 recorded audio gradually gets out of synch with the camera-recorded audio -- but that's easy to fix in Vegas.

One one 2-1/2 hour musical show, we had an audio feed from the soundboard coming into a camera, but the board only had the individual singer mics; they didn't micf the orchestra (assumed the audience would hear it just fine "ambiently").
We put a little H2 down front right over the orchestra pit, and got great recording of the orchestra without audience noise. Laid the H2 audio in with the singers-track during post-production, and the result was rather beautiful.

Any audio recorder that's not locked to a master clock will drift, even two identical cameras will drift / run at slightly different rates.

My Edirol R4 and EX1 are less than 1 frame out over 1 hour. That's not an endorsement of either, just a lucky marriage.

If you're mixing sound from different mics recorded into different devices ideally you need to maintain sample accurate clocking and that's no trivial task. I didn't think this mattered much until my last shoot where I had my own stereo mic, a mono feed from the desk and the camera's stereo mic. I got it all sounding pretty good all things considered. So I opened the final mix in SF9 and checked it with the mono compatibility meter and it was more incompatible than compatible, not good. So I inverted one channel and that was better. Saved that as a Take back into Vegas. Both takes sound OK in stereo although the original still sounded the best. Clicking the Mono Mixdown icon, they both sound tragic, depending which way up one channel is differing parts of the spectrum just vanish.

Bob.