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2 hours ago, Winter said:

Really? Make yourself a favour, be objective. While being totally usable, is totally unfair saying that they are in the same category. I have used/heard extensively all them for both music and dialog recording, and they didn't sound the same by any means. It's not an opinion, it's a fact, and when you get in a studio with real monitor system you will notice it immediately. I would love to buy a 1000 $ recorder that equals a 5000 $ one, but this machine doesn't exist yet.

 I like to make the argument that location situations and other circumstances are of a way higher influence on our 'sound quality' than the preamp. I;m about 99% wireless these days so the preamp and the tiny mic buried under clothes are messing up the sound quality too much to be concerned about a subtle difference in a preamp design, for our line of work.

 

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7 hours ago, IronFilm said:

And we can probably agree the F8 is in the that same broad category with the rest, in that it has top notch pre amps.

 

If you want to argue that the F8 preamps are good value for $, people will probably agree. If you want to argue that the F8 is good overall value for $, it is debatable. But those preamps are not in the league of the 600 series, and nowhere near the 700 series. If you objectively think they are on par then (and I'll misquote someone else around here), you need to lower your day rate. 

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3 hours ago, Winter said:

Really? Make yourself a favour, be objective. While being totally usable, is totally unfair saying that they are in the same category. I have used/heard extensively all them for both music and dialog recording, and they didn't sound the same by any means. It's not an opinion, it's a fact, and when you get in a studio with real monitor system you will notice it immediately. I would love to buy a 1000 $ recorder that equals a 5000 $ one, but this machine doesn't exist yet.


There are people who'd argue that MixPre3 pre amps would sound as good as those in the Sound Devices 6 series. 
And any minuscule differences there might remain? You won't be able to tell by the time you get to the end of the finished product. 

 

42 minutes ago, Vincent R. said:

 I like to make the argument that location situations and other circumstances are of a way higher influence on our 'sound quality' than the preamp. I;m about 99% wireless these days so the preamp and the tiny mic buried under clothes are messing up the sound quality too much to be concerned about a subtle difference in a preamp design, for our line of work.

 

Exactly. I'd argue for the vast bulk of the work done then the differences between pre amps between many of these recorders are just lost as rounding errors next to the bigger influences upon the practical final result. 

33 minutes ago, thenannymoh said:

you need to lower your day rate. 

Is rare indeed to see on jwsoundgroup arguing for lower rates!  😅

Instead I'd believe no matter if you're using the F4 or a 633, if you can get the job done, then you should be targeting the same rates. Not lower!

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22 minutes ago, IronFilm said:


There are people who'd argue that MixPre3 pre amps would sound as good as those in the Sound Devices 6 series. 
And any minuscule differences there might remain? You won't be able to tell by the time you get to the end of the finished product. 


😅

 

There are people who think the Earth is flat. Since I've spent thousand of hours with both in the last year (633/mixpre6) I can firmly say that they have to be tone deaf.

The difference you call minuscule is definitely not and get even bigger once you're at post stage and try to de-noise, equalize and compress.

Don't misunderstand my assumption, the F8 (and the mixpre for that matter) are lovely machines, cheap and nice, but don't let be fooled by marketing and reviews (made by who?), they are not as good as other and much expensive option, specially the analog side. Maybe somebody can't tell a difference between them, but the difference is still there in terms of harmonic richness, frequency extension, transient response, tone fidelity and dynamics. Said so, I'll be happily use an F8 right now, no problem, but I will never think this is on par with a 688 sound-quality wise.

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9 minutes ago, Winter said:

There are people who think the Earth is flat. Since I've spent thousand of hours with both in the last year (633/mixpre6) I can firmly say that they have to be tone deaf.

The difference you call minuscule is definitely not and get even bigger once you're at post stage and try to de-noise, equalize and compress.

Don't misunderstand my assumption, the F8 (and the mixpre for that matter) are lovely machines, cheap and nice, but don't let be fooled by marketing and reviews (made by who?), they are not as good as other and much expensive option, specially the analog side. Maybe somebody can't tell a difference between them, but the difference is still there in terms of harmonic richness, frequency extension, transient response, tone fidelity and dynamics. Said so, I'll be happily use an F8 right now, no problem, but I will never think this is on par with a 688 sound-quality wise.

Share your testing files here, especially interested in tour extended testing with " de-noise, equalize and compress" situations.

12 minutes ago, Winter said:

but don't let be fooled by marketing and reviews (made by who?)

 Eric Toline, on a previous page did testing, He has quite the track record doesn't he? I didn't hear yet about Winter 😉

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1 minute ago, Vincent R. said:

Share your testing files here, especially interested in tour extended testing with " de-noise, equalize and compress" situations.

I cannot share raw clips of my jobs since either I have no right to do it (mostly advert.) or they are already mixed (tv shows) and of course I haven't performed any a/b test in any real job.

Also I do not have them physically on my hard drives since once I give them to the client or agency I format the cards and do not have any back-up. Anyway, big differences are pretty clear in any of the clips posted above, the sound in them speaks for himself.

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1 minute ago, Winter said:

I cannot share raw clips of my jobs since either I have no right to do it (mostly advert.) or they are already mixed (tv shows) and of course I haven't performed any a/b test in any real job.

Also I do not have them physically on my hard drives since once I give them to the client or agency I format the cards and do not have any back-up. Anyway, big differences are pretty clear in any of the clips posted above, the sound in them speaks for himself.

So you are saying your clients informed you that the F8 didn't hold up in post production regarding " de-noise, equalize and compress"?

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3 minutes ago, Vincent R. said:

So you are saying your clients informed you that the F8 didn't hold up in post production regarding " de-noise, equalize and compress"?

I'm non saying that it doesn't work, I'm just saying that the you have to work harder to not mess up the sound. And please, let me say again that I will likely work with an F8, because is a really clever machine, but the sound you get from a better recorder is...better. How big the difference? This is strictly subjective. But difference in tone are there, you can easily spot them in any of the above clips.

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20 minutes ago, Winter said:

I'm non saying that it doesn't work, I'm just saying that the you have to work harder to not mess up the sound. And please, let me say again that I will likely work with an F8, because is a really clever machine, but the sound you get from a better recorder is...better. How big the difference? This is strictly subjective. But difference in tone are there, you can easily spot them in any of the above clips.

Yeah there are differences. But not as much that post production all of the sudden has to book another day to alter the sound or whatever, if at all. Like I said before, we are on a daily basis working with sound influencing factors, put them over airwaves and companders and tiny microphones under t shirts and worse wardrobe, and all of the sudden people are getting all boutique about differences in preamps.... You know the music forum gearslutz? Loads of people are concerned with their fancy best preamps but the fact of the matter is that the latest Adele record was put down with a cheap focusrite usb box and a Rode microphone. 

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3 minutes ago, Vincent R. said:

and all of the sudden people are getting all boutique about differences in preamps.... You know the music forum gearslutz? Loads of people are concerned with their fancy best preamps but the fact of the matter is that the latest Adele record was put down with cheap focusrite sub box and a Rode microphone. 

Well, we were talking about preamps and how similar they are; I strongly disagree with this assumption.

Do you say that they are less important than a proper wardrobe on talents? I cannot agree more of course, but maybe this is another topic.

 

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2 minutes ago, Winter said:

Well, we were talking about preamps and how similar they are; I strongly disagree with this assumption.

Do you say that they are less important than a proper wardrobe on talents? I cannot agree more of course, but maybe this is another topic.

 

Yeah I agree a discussion about differences in preamps is not interesting at all, as long as they are low noise (which they all are) and provide enough gain and quality (which they all do). Then indeed the EFFECTIVE differences are negligible and definitely not something to worry about or giving post production headaches.

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I just wish someone would post a comparison video with actually meaningful recordings. A voice recorded at 30cm in a fairly quiet room speaking at normal levles is totally worthless for comparing preamps and, obviously, A-D converters. 

Why is there no shouting, no whispering, no engaging the limiters, no moving far away from the mic, no really noisy location, no really quiet locations? As it is those two videos at best show some form of frequency comparison, but that’s not all what makes a good pre good. 

Curtis Judd wants to demo the noise floor, which I appreciate, but then he says there’s lots of background noise, so how can we judge the noise floor. 

Sorry, but those two videos demonstrate nothing. 

 

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21 minutes ago, IronFilm said:


Because if you're engaging the limiters then you're primarily testing the limiters rather than the preamps. Which is an entirely different discussion. 

 

Well, not really: it is quite reasonable to consider a limiter - at least an analogue one - as part of the preamp circuit. Indeed the manufacturers often do. Constantin's wider point about more rigorous and real world comparisons is, of course, entirely valid. 

 

Cheers,

 

Roland

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17 minutes ago, IronFilm said:


Because if you're engaging the limiters then you're primarily testing the limiters rather than the preamps. Which is an entirely different discussion. 

 

That’s a pretty feeble point, we are also testing the A-D converters, it’s all a part of the input chain and if we are discussing the sound of a machine (which this preamp discussion is really about) we also need to hear the limiters. It’s part of this very discussion 

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Now it just sounds like you're redefining the question to suit the argument about the "inferiority" of the F series pre amps.

Limiters is a separate discussion, just like discussing the timecode stability, or battery life, is a separate discussion. I'm not saying however they're not worthwhile points to discuss though about the F8n, just that it can muddy the waters if you're mixing them up together rather than being clear in what you're discussing specifically. 

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Sweet news for "F8 original" owners, the F8n app will work with the F8 as well! (hopefully this mean app bug fixes, as it has been a long time since the iOS app had an updated! Plus general usability improvements)

 

"The F8 will be compatible with the F8n app which will include some updates!"

 

Follow the link for the original source info from Zoom themselves:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtIfSGcm4fk&lc=z22div4yopvwvlyoc04t1aokg4stwhpuyygordywqnhdbk0h00410.1528212173721520

 

 
 
 
 

 

 

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2 hours ago, Dalton Patterson said:

 

Links? Sources? Please? I believe it, but would like proof to confirm. 

Sound on sound (paper magazine) interview with the producer. They recorded the song (Rolling in the deep I believe?) as a demo at the home of the producer, just everything everywhere, guitar in living room, drums in kitchen etc. Even Adele made stamping noises on a wooden box or something. After that they tried to re-record it about everywhere in the world in top studios, but eventually they used the original recordings.

 

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4 minutes ago, Dalton Patterson said:

@Vincent R. Thanks man!

Yeah i might romanticised it a bit, but my point was that eventually it doesn't really matter any more after a certain point of quality, don't focus to much on the tech details of a certain brand vs an other, Therefore I always bring up Adele singing in a cheap ass Rode tube microphone 😉

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Or The Boss's "Nebraska" album...   But our implicit responsibility is to provide hifi audio recordings unless instructed otherwise.  The choice of how to get there is yours.  Which machine do you like interacting with, that makes sense within your economics?  I'd like to be interacting with a Cantar on a regular basis, but.....so I interact with a 633.   A with-it soundie can make any of the current lower-end machines work great. 

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4 hours ago, IronFilm said:

Now it just sounds like you're redefining the question to suit the argument about the "inferiority" of the F series pre amps.

Limiters is a separate discussion, just like discussing the timecode stability, or battery life, is a separate discussion. I'm not saying however they're not worthwhile points to discuss though about the F8n, just that it can muddy the waters if you're mixing them up together rather than being clear in what you're discussing specifically. 

 

Well, if you think that Timecode stability will affect how the machine sounds, then yes it should be included in this discussion (in a general discussion about the Zoom F8n)

Apart from that I personally believe that a limiter's sound is very much part of the overall sound of a machine. I am not saying that to diminish the F8, but because that's how I believe it is. I also made other comments about what I am missing from those comparisons, so I can still not judge the F8's sound.

Overall I do however agree with the notion that the sound of the preamp may not be very important anymore today, because the preamp is now in the transmitter. That is mostly true. Although when I am OMB'ing I still sometimes have an analogue mic going in. But the A-D converter and the limiter (yes, the limiter) are still important parts in this chain, unless you only have digital wireless. 

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Dialog, when the viewers are supposed to feel like they are in the room is best served with a transparent, natural sound.

 

Music recording is a different world altogether, IMO. Here, natural, transparent and matched stereo pairs usually end up sounding “boring”. Distortion, flutter, phasing, over-compression, general weirdness, usually makes for a more interesting sound.

 

Pre-amp quality in these low end machines is just one out of many reasons I personally would not use them for location work.

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