Zoom PS04 Palmtop Personal Digital Multitrack Recorder

Comments about Zoom PS04 Palmtop Personal Digital Multitrack Recorder:

I have owned it for a year and it took a little time to learn. Hard to find smart media cards!!!!

Comments about Zoom PS04 Palmtop Personal Digital Multitrack Recorder:

"This little box is truly amazing -- just a few years ago, you would have needed to go to an expensive studio to get the quality this lil' box can produce. Whether you're a home-studio-er moving up to digital from a mulittrack cassette unit, a live taper (ala the good ol' Deadhead tapers!), or a traveling musician looking for a highly portable, high quality ""idea scratch pad"", this is the unit. The built-in effects are fantastic (both Insert effects and a Send/Return loop are provided) and the drum/bass machine -- while a tad difficult to program -- has great sounds and capabilities. The 44KS/s, 16-bit ADs/DAs (with 20-bit internal processing) makes the sound truly ""CD Quality"" (some audiophiles may dispute this, but the simple fact is the human ear canNOT tell ANY difference beyond these specs. True, you loose ~ 1/2 bit of resolution with each ""bounce"", but unless you're going to have a HUGE number of sub-mixes, this should not be a problem.) While operation of the unit is reasonably straight-forward, it's small size forces the multiplexing of functionality of many of the controls. The menu-driven operating system makes ""getting to"" these functions fairly easy, but be advised that some of the more advanced functions are only accessable by going through several levels of menu screens. There are a number of features/capabilities that Zoom COULD have included (at very low cost) that would have driven this guy to a five-PLUS stars rating. For example, there is no AC power adapter included. Batteries work okay, but if they die in the middle of your best take, well, you get the idea! BE AWARE if you elect to use your own AC adapter; the box uses a bizarre ""center negative"" polarity on the AC adapter jack -- get this wrong and you WILL fry this puppy! Another shortcoming is the size/record time of the supplied 32MB SmartMedia card. You can get a 128MB card on-line for about $20 -- a worthy investment. Similarly, the lask of a USB port makes it necessary to have SmartMedia read/write capability if you want to back up and/or edit your files on a PC or create/burn a CD of your final mix. Again, a SmartMedia reader/writer can be purchased for $25-$30, but built-in USB would have been a VERY useful feature. In any case, download the free File Manager tool from Zoom's website -- not only does this utility allow you to save/load audio and drum/bass pattern files to/from the PS-04, but also allows conversion of the unit's AUD files to the more familiar and usable WAV file format. Also available through a link on the Zoom site is a Pattern Editor utility for the drum/bass sequencer. Since the drum/bass function is a little tedious to use on the unit itself, this small (but NOT free!) utility is VERY handy. The quality of the PCM-sampled drum and bass sounds contained in the unit itself are outstanding, as are many of the built-in patterns; the Pattern Editor utility simply makes creating/editing your own patterns significantly easier/faster. MIDI in/out is another ""missing"" feature; if Zoom had included MIDI, the drum/bass pattern programming would have been less of an issue. I also would have liked to have seen a XLR input -- I currently get around this by using a TubePac preamp w/ a CS-1000 mic; the TubePac is actually BIGGER than the PS-04! I haven't used the PS-04's built-in mic, but I've read other reviews that have indicated that the quality's not bad. A padded carrying case would have been another nice option; I kept the padded box it came in for transporting the unit. I also own a Roland VS-840gx and a Fostex MR-8. Frankly, unless I need to record MORE than two tracks simultaneously, I'll be using the PS-04 exclusively. The effects in the PS-04 are BETTER than EITHER of those units (on the Roland box, I was able to hear the Zip disk ""spin up"" during a particularly soft acoustic guitar passage -- bummer!) For the money, the PS-04 is a feature-packed, excellent quality lil' box."

Comments about Zoom PS04 Palmtop Personal Digital Multitrack Recorder:

"This is such a fun little unit, as long as you don't go crazy trying to make a living with it. It's great for mapping out song ideas and recording very basic demos. The built in drums and bass are an added bonus and pretty good sounding. Just make sure you get a smart card reader and maybe a bigger card if you plan on using this a lot. Take it everywhere and just have fun."

Comments about Zoom PS04 Palmtop Personal Digital Multitrack Recorder:

"My last 4-track, which cost over $400, basically had record/play/&stop. I can't believe that this has over 350 programmable rhythms/bass and also guitar/vocal/mastering effects built in for $[...]. Great job Zoom!!"