Explore the Zoom H Essentials line with Marty, Michael, and Chris. They discuss features of Zoom H1, H4, and H6 recorders, comparing sizes, buttons, and functionalities. Highlights include user-friendly designs, external microphone connectivity, and upcoming capsule options for H6. Best for students, Zoom H1e is recommended. Visit unmute.show for more information.
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Hey, everyone. Marty here. And today we’re bringing you a little something different. We’re going to be talking about the new h essentials. So with me I have Michael Babcock. Say hello, Michael.
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Hello, Michael.
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And we also have Chris with us. Hey, Chris, how are you doing?
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Hey, great. How are you doing?
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Good, thank you. So we have in our hands, between all of us here, an H one as well as an H four. We currently do not have an h six in our presence, but I think that one of us will be getting a demo at some point in the near future. And when that happens, we can bring more information about that as we get it in our hands. But for now, we have the H one and the H four. So Michael, why don’t you kick us off and talk about the H one and your thoughts and all that good stuff.
00:52.450 –> 03:08.370
Okay, so what Marty is talking about is zoom. The digital voice recording company, not zoom Communications, released a new line of their essential voice recorders, the zoom h one, the zoom h four, and the zoom h six. The zoom H one is probably about four ish, maybe three inches tall. I call it a very tall triangle because it has two microphones on the top that kind of cross. And these come to a point. And these are the stereo microphones. On the front face is a screen that provides visual information. Under that is four buttons going across underneath the screen. And then you have another five buttons under those four buttons, the middle button being your record. On the right edge of the device is a menu button that you can press to access the menu. You also have the micro SD card slot directly below that and the USB typec port directly above it. One cool thing about the Zoom H one E and the other essential products is that you can power the device with AAA batteries or you can use a USBC power port to power the device as well. Above the USBC port is a line in 8th inch jack. It’s a female 8th inch jack and you can plug devices into this to be able to capture the recording. Opposite of that, on the left edge is the headphone or line out 8th inch jack. Below that is the volume knob and then below that is the powerlock slider that you can use to turn the device on. One of the cool features about the essential line of products is that these devices come up talking. So as a blind user I don’t have to opt into text to speech or the ability to get audible feedback from the device. I turn it on and I have to turn it off. I turn the device on and I have to turn the speech off if I don’t want access to it. Chris, what would you say is the biggest difference between the four and the one? And how would you describe the four?
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Yeah, so I would say that the four is a little more chunky, just a little bit, a little thicker, a little bit taller, a little bit wider. But it still fits really nicely in the palm of your hand and it does have the same microphone positioning at the top. The buttons are placed a little bit differently. As well as the power button, there is a Bluetooth little port for the Bluetooth transmitter that you could plug in there. Do you have one of those on the H one essential? I don’t think you do. So that’s a big difference because then you can use the H four essential with the app and control the recorder via the app for that purpose. There are some different buttons for arming the channels at the bottom row of the unit. Let’s see. Yeah, the headphone jacks are on the opposite side. There’s just some different placement of the units and some different features for sure. And a little mixer button on the top front panel. So those are the things that I can think of immediately that are obviously different.
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I would say something else that’s obviously different about the H one h four, and the H six is on the H one. There are no XLR ports. So you can either use it as a handheld device with the built in microphones, or you can use it as an interface, which you can then use the USBC port to plug into the computer and then you can run it as a microphone through the computer as an interface, or you can use it as a standalone device. One cool thing is that I will say is when you’re using it as an interface on an iOS device like an iPad or an iPhone, you now can be in a cloud recording like zoom application or any of those things. And while you’re recording there, the problem that you have on iOS device normally is that you only get one source of audio. So that means you’re only able to record into zoom or any of the other cloud platforms. But when you’re using the H One as an interface, then you can record at the same time locally to the device, which is huge because then you get the highest quality of recording while you’re still in a Zoom meeting or any of the other cloud recording programs. So that’s a really cool feature.
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I forgot to say the menu button, the scroll wheel for the menu is my favorite feature so far because I’ve just had it a week so I’m still getting to know the H Four essential, but I love the little menu scroll wheel on the right hand side of the machine. Kind of reminds me of scroll wheels on old time braille displays where you just click through the options and you press the little enter button that’s located by the scroll wheel on the right hand side to make your choices. So that’s pretty cool, too.
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Definitely.
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So, Marty, I think we’re going to, unless you guys have much more, probably wrap it up shortly. But I’m curious, and if you already mentioned it, we’ll edit this question out. Did you let people know about an immediate audible difference they’ll hear with the H four E versus the H one E?
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Yes. So on the H one, when you turn on the device, once you have it all set up, it gives you some information right out of the gate. It gives you how much recording time you have left. So let’s say you have 46 hours available. It will tell you that. If you’re in mono or stereo mode, it will tell you that. It will tell you how much battery you have left. So if your battery is full, it will tell you that the battery is full. So you get a bunch of information on the H one when you turn it on, that’s the first thing that you hear on the h four. You do not get that. It basically tells you that you’re on, and I think it tells you the battery, and that’s about all. So I’m not sure if that’s a bug, if that’s going to come in a firmware update, or if there’s any other issue. We do have a note into zoom, and hopefully they’ll be able to reply back with either a fix to it or a fix that’s coming for it or something like that. But that’s a really important feature that’d be great to have on all the devices across the board when you turn them on.
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I was also going to mention, too, if anybody’s ordering these things, do they still sell a regular h four? Is that’s an actual name of a device, correct?
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Yeah, I think it’s h four n, if I recall. Right. So I’m thinking of a different device.
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Go ahead. Yes, I was just going to say it’s really good to make sure if anybody’s ordering these things that you look for the word essential attached to that name, because that’s what we’re talking about. And these are the accessible line of products.
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Definitely. One other thing I will say is on the H four, it is a bit of a bigger device than the H one. And I would say it’s probably about twice the size in width and probably about twice the size in thickness. Height is just about the same. I don’t see a whole lot of difference in height. They’re pretty close. But I will say that the H four feels really good in your hand to hold onto it. It feels like you can grip it. It doesn’t feel like it’s going to fall out of your hand. It has these really cool rubber bumps on the back, which makes it quiet when you put it down on the table. It’s not plastic hitting the table, it’s the rubber bumpers on the back, so it doesn’t slide and it doesn’t really make any noise when you put it down. Of course, you don’t want to slam it, but it feels really good in that way. Another thing that’s a really cool feature is on the back there is a tripod screw hole mount, and you can’t put this on a tripod if you want to use the microphones that are built into the device. And this is on the H one, the H four and the H six. So if you want to use the built in microphones, you can mount this onto a tripod and that way you can speak into the microphones that are built onto the device without having any handling noise. If you have it on a tripod and you’re using it hooked up to your computer or standalone, either way, it will save you from having any kind of hand noise like if you were instead of using it in your hand. So I think that’s a really cool feature also.
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It is because those microphones that are built in are really sensitive. So it definitely picks up you sliding it around in your hand, even feeling for the buttons. So that’s a good thing to be able to do.
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Definitely.
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So if you’re interested in one of these essential products, because it is very essential, you have one in your pocket. See what I did there? Where can I find Chris and Marty?
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Well, at guys is selling them now. You can get all three of these devices. So I would check there. You can either go on their website or give them a call. And that’s the first place I would start at.
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You can also get them from Sweetwater, Amazon, like several other places. Oh, I think we forgot something very important and I’m going to toss this to Chris. Chris, do these devices have built in memory?
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No, they don’t. I don’t think.
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No, they do not. Kind of important. So when you buy one of these you need a micro SD card up to 1 TB, but if you don’t have one, all you’re going to get is SD card, not present or something of that nature, right?
10:59.348 –> 11:08.702
Correct. You can also get these on Zoom’s website too, and so that’s another place to get them. Sweet.
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I thought you were kind of baiting me to say the at guys. That’s why I didn’t say the other stuff.
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No, I was just in general wondering where you can get them.
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Could I resay that?
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No, you’re good. We’re going to run with it. Any other feedback? Comments? Go buy one. They’re essential.
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We didn’t really talk about external microphones and the XLR ports on this.
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I’m sorry that I didn’t mention that. That was so obvious, but I was looking for my advice. I didn’t want to make noise with my chair and I’m like, oh, thanks for reminding me. Of course the XLR ports are there.
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For those who don’t know what XLR ports are, they are ports that are on the bottom of the H four as well as the H six, not on the H one. And they allow you to plug in your external microphone. So if you have external microphones that you really like to use and you want to use those, you can definitely convert this into an interface, plug it into the computer and plug in your XLR microphones. And you’ve got two on the H four on the bottom. You’ve got four on the h six. And another feature of the H six, which is really cool, is you can remove the microphones off the top. And there’s going to be capsules that are going to be available at the end of the year, I believe. And those are going to give you some other options. They’re going to have a shotgun, microphones that you can add to it. There’s going to be XLR ports that you can add to the top of it. So if you really need six XLR ports, you can remove the microphones and get two XLR capsules. And between the four at the bottom and the two capsules at the top, you can have six XLR ports. Among a few other things they’re going to have. So keep an eye out for the end of the year to see what capsules are going to have available for the H six. On the H one and the H four. You cannot remove them. They are stationary and they do not come off. So no XLR ports on the H one and on the H four you do have two at the bottom.
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Well thank you Marty and Chris for talking about the zoom essential line of products. And I will say the most popular one that I have heard of people talking the most about is the H one e because of the price point. You can’t go wrong with that price point. It’s small enough to just slip into a bag or a pocket and if you need to use it, especially if you’re a student, you can just pull it out, start the recording and then deal with it later. And it gives you some great feedback, both auditory and tactile because you can o when the button is pushed. So if anyone has any additional questions or feedback about the zoom essential lineup products, feel free to send us an email feedback at Unmute show and for.
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