Buying a Zoom R16

As you might have already read in this post, I am a great fan of Zoom products in general. I would never say they are perfect, but let's be honest, there is no such thing as perfect, when it comes to home recording devices. At best, perfect means the least compromise you will need to make when settling with a model of your choice.

 

official Zoom R16 video from Samsontech

I have settled with the Zoom R16. After searching around on the net for quite a while, and having owned / tried a few Zoom, Tascam, Korg and Fostex portable multitrack recorders, I felt pretty safe and sure pressing the "Add to basket" button yesterday night at Europe's most well-known online music webshop. So, why the Zoom R16?

The Zoom R16 (in theory) ticks most of the boxes when it comes to budget home recording. Let's see a list of the features that are the most appealing to me:

• 8 tracks simultaneous recording
• 24 bit recording
• built in mics, same as the ones you will find in a Zoom H2 (wow)
• can be used as a DAW interface
• sends 8 independent channels over USB to any multitracking software
• up to 96khz sampling when used as an audio interface
• records on SD card, up to 32 GB
• utilizing Secure Digital (SD) memory
• battery operation (no humming bird :-)
• USB host function
• 8 XLR / jack combo inputs
• phantom power (but on 2 tracks only)
• Mackie control emulation 
• runs on battery for 5-6 hours

Good stuff, but will probably not use that much:

• 100 built-in studio effects
• mastering effects
• multi-band compressor
• Steinberg Cubase LE 4

For more official info, check the official websites here and here. On the second site, you can have a listen to an example recording of a live session using Samson mics and the Zoom R16. First of all, it is an average mix at best, but more importantly, the singer is really out of tune here and there. Not a wise choice for showing the capabilities of the Zoom R16.

So, if Klaus is fast in preparing my shipment, I shall be able to start testing the Zoom R16 this weekend, to see if it ticks all the boxes in reality as well, and not just in theory. Fingers crossed.