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Zoom H6 External Audio Recorder Review

By Team HardwareZone - 3 Jul 2014

Zoom H6 External Audio Recorder Review

This article is contributed by Leon Kiong.

Introduction and Design

The Zoom H6 is the latest iteration of its Handy Recorder series and a direct successor and upgrade over the extremely popular Zoom H4n. We were lucky to get our hands on a H6 to try it firsthand. Let’s dive straight in to see if it’s a worthy successor to the H4n.

The H6 measures at 78.9 x 60.2 x 45.2mm, with an XY microphone capsule attached. While slightly larger and bulkier than the H4n, its rubberized plastic body and curved edges handled much better, especially in hand-held recording situations.

The Zoom H6 (left), alongside its predecessor, the Zoom H4n (right).


Whereas the H4n features two XLR/TRS inputs for integrating your own microphones, the H6 boasts four. All the important controls are right at your fingertips: physical gain control and -20dB pad selector for the four XLR inputs are located conveniently above the transport.  Do take note that the XLR inputs do not lock, hence there might be a possibility of losing connection should a cord wiggle loose from the XLR/TRS input.

Two XLR/TRS inputs on either side of the H6 (left, right panel), with gain and pad controls sitting on the top of the H6 (center panel).

Channel selection and playback buttons conveniently located in the middle of the unit.

The mid-section of the H6 has all the usual suspects including record enable buttons for all six possible inputs (L/R for microphone capsules, 1-4 for XLR/TRS inputs), Stop, Play/Pause, Record, Rewind and Forward buttons. The rubber casing surrounding the Record button is a nice design feature that prevents accidental recording in the event your finger brushes past the button.

 

Features and Usability

A slanted LCD display, which sits at the bottom of the unit.

The lower section of the H6 sports an LCD screen inclined at an angle that allows you to monitor all six input channels, providing customizable feature sets for each individual channel. Here’s where the H6 truly shines in comparison over the H4n, providing the user with low cut filter (8 positions between 80- and 237Hz), compressor/limiter and phantom power for each individual channel, as opposed to the H4n’s universal settings which applies across all channels.

Powering on the unit,  we were pleasantly surprised by H6’s close to instant boot up time. This is definitely an improvement over the H4n, whose excellent recording performance was constantly marred by its extremely slow boot up time.

The H6 records a variety of WAV and MP3 formats, including the broadcast recording staple, 24-bit/48kHz WAV.

The H6 records to SD, SDHC, and SDXC cards up to 128GB in capacity. Recordable file formats include WAV (44.1KHz/16-bit to 96KHz/24bit) and MP3 (48 to 320Kbps).
Once you’ve set your recording format, you’ll get a readout on the bottom of the display showing what format you selected, as well as the estimated recording time left on your SD card. That’s a nice touch in interface design as the provision of such information came in handy during recording sessions.

Mounting on a DSLR

A word of caution for videographers pairing the Zoom H6 to DSLRs: When horse-mounted onto a DSLR, with the camera set to eye-level, we found it quite difficult to read the LCD monitor despite it’s slanted angle design. Moreover, access and visibility to the various controls and buttons on top of the H6 is extremely limited during your actual video/camera shoot.

The Zoom H6 horseshoe mounted on top of a DSLR is not an ideal recording setup, ergonomically speaking.

 

Interchangeable Microphone Modules

Zoom H6 + Interchangeable microphone modules = endless recording setup possibilities

Taking a leaf out of DSLRs with their interchangeable lens systems, the Zoom H6 comes equipped with the ability to attach different microphone modules directly to the top of the recorder.

The H6 comes with two default microphone modules (XY and Mid-Side microphone), with two optional dual XLR/TRS combo and Shotgun microphone modules available as separate purchases as well.

The standard Zoom XY capsule. Bigger. Better. Wider (in terms of stereoscopic image).

The various microphone modules generally perform well. We were particularly interested in the XY capsule’s large diaphragm size (touted as the largest on any portable recorder at 14.6mm). We set up a Sennheiser EW 112 PG3 wireless microphone and EW 135-p G2 Handheld wireless microphone to the H6’s XLR inputs and compared it with the XY array microphone.  Although the microphones sounded different, the XY array microphone module did not suffer by comparison and managed to capture low-end frequencies in a way many other budget handheld recorders in the market fail to do.

The Mid-Side microphone capsule provides a great alternative to the XY microphone capsule for an even wider stereoscopic image capture.

The Mid-Side microphone array’s overall sound is similar to that of the XY, both in terms of quality and dynamic range. It is, by nature of its design, a little less tight and more expansive, and seemed to handle lower frequencies more comfortably. What’s really cool about the Mid-Side microphone is that you can adjust the width of the stereo image before you record by adjusting the levels of the side mics.

The Shotgun microphone module: Ideal for field reporting and interview setups.

The optional Shotgun microphone module’s highly directional audio capture design makes it a necessity to those doing field reporting. Unfortunately, when using the Zoom H6 handheld, for example, during quick interviews, handling noise might be recorded depending on how you handle the recorder. Also, due to the shotgun microphone’s narrow pickup pattern, you will have to be pretty close to the source to get good audio, otherwise the audio capture will sound distant.

The dual XLR/TRS combo attachment enables the H6 to record up to a total of 6 inputs.

Of the 4 microphone attachments, we find the dual XLR/TRS combo attachment module the most impressive and versatile. It basically provides two additional XLR/TRS inputs to the H6. Imagine being able to hook the Zoom H6 to mixers with/or 6 different input sources! For recording bands to complex video productions, the audio capture combination and possibilities are endless. If we were to be a tad picky in our review of this module, we’d be lamenting over the fact that, unlike the XLR/TRS inputs on the H6’s body, the XLR/TRS inputs on this combo attachment does not have phantom power.

 

Concluding Comments

What stood out for us about the Zoom H6 was its versatility and how easily it could be employed for a variety of applications. The swappable microphone capsule system shows it can be an ideal recording device in field reporting, ENG (electronic news gathering) type scenarios, while bands doing live or studio recording can definitely benefit from its six XLR/TRS input setup (Zoom H6 with the XLR/TRS input capsule). While the Zoom H6 has been in the market for a while now, the video crew at HardwareZone has been putting it through its paces for the last few months overall several shoots to really assess its real world worthiness; we're glad to see it delivers.

As a testament to its capabilities as the next generation audio recording device, the Zoom H6 had scored awards such as the Technical Excellence & Creativity award for Outstanding Technical Achievement (Recording Devices) and the Musikmesse International Press Award 2014 (Field Recorders).

Overall, the Zoom H6 represents great value for money for its flexibility in terms of recording options. Existing H4n users should definitely give the H6 a shot, while film-makers, field reporters, musicians and audio professionals should find the H6 useful in their day to day recording setups.

The default Zoom H6 set comes with a carrying case, H6 body, XY and Mid-Side microphone capsules, USB cable and windscreen protector. 

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