Christmas is heading our way with unstoppable determination, but I feel like mine came last week :-). I will go through here what will be the heart of my home recording set up, Zoom R16.
First things first, credit where credit is due, I purchased mine in dear old Dublin in the good old Goodwins music shop. I mentioned them before, and probably will in the future as well. Every musician in Europe knows of the German super store Thomann, they have been a music shop for a long time, but they came about six or seven years ago and took over the market. They had a great website while most other shops were still only thinking about it. They bought everything in large quantities, often they have bigger stock of particular product than the suppliers have. So they became the cheapest place in Europe to buy musical equipment, and as the delivery was free if you spent over certain amount, it was a good deal. But times are changing. The Goodwins music shop on Capel Street sold me the Zoom R16 cheaper than the Thomann:-). Now that is what I like. Also again their customer service was just brilliant. I went in the morning and the Zoom was out of stock. They ordered it straight away and got to pick it up the same afternoon.
I have here in front of me a brand new R16 still in its box. I open the box and my first impression is the size of the unit. It is roughly about the size of a laptop. It is well built, I must say. I think the only worry I would have would be the actual faders, if I was to transport it without a proper case (and with the size of the unit, I can see me bringing it with me quite often). It comes with a power supply, but can also be powered with AA batteries or in interface mode it can be powered by the USB cable. There is a dissent length USB cable and a 1G memory card. Also you get Cubase LE 5 with it, very capable recording software. I have worked a lot with Cubase in the past, so I'm pretty sure this one will be put to use. The set up and syncing of Cubase and the Zoom took a while, and the registration of the Cubase took me a few goes, nothing like bit of patience and persistence would not sort out ;-)
The basic operations of the unit are well explained in the manual and easy to learn. In fact, I was up doing a test recording in less than half an hour. The unit has two built in microphones, eight microphone inputs, two with phantom power. I am sure in the next month or so, I will be testing this little bad boy to its limits, and I will keep coming back to it as we move along. But I am really impressed, the quick test recording gave me a rough idea of the microphone preamps, and I really liked what I heard. I mean, it is not an Avalon or Neve, but it is better than lot of dedicated mic pre units I have tried for more money than what I paid for this whole unit. All of the controls have nice feel to them and I am really looking forward to getting down to some real work with this unit.
In next weeks blog I will still go through my initial impression of the AKG Perception 220 condenser microphone, and that will be the last of the reviews before we will actually get in to some serious recording.
As you know I have mentioned on the side few times about the Christmas single. Here is bit more info. The track is and Acoustic version of one of the album tracks “Glory to the world”. It will be available at iTunes and all the major online retailers as a download only and will be coming out on the 8th of December. Closer to it I will set up all the links on my website. The lyrics are bit tongue in cheek, but hopefully it'll stop you to think for a while before maxing out your credit card this Christmas :-)
Also as we have been rehearsing the songs for the album, there have been more tracks than we want on the actual album. As a result I will put out a free download EP as soon as we have the tracks ready, at the moment looks like January. You will be able to get your hands on the EP by signing up to my Email list and if you already have, you will be the first to get it :-). Then of course we have the Album coming out later in the spring, and this will be available as a physical CD as well.
For now, thanks for dropping by. Leave comments and I will talk to you all more next week :-)
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