Zoom R16 Multitrack SD Recorder Controller and Interface

• Digital recorder with 16-track playback and 8-track simultaneous recording utilizing Secure Digital (SD) memory
• 16/24-bit/44.1kHz linear PCM recording in WAV format
• Built-in stereo condenser microphones
• Includes 1GB SD card and supports cards up to 32GB SDHC
• Allows simultaneous recording on up to 8 tracks

This thing is awesome.

But let's start with the bad, before we get to the good. The Bad:

The preamp quality is not that great. I want to be careful not to over-state this too much: they are certainly not BAD preamps, and they are certainly competitive with other preamps that can be bought eight at a whack for $300, but they are not fast-response, high-headroom, ultra-clean studio preamps. They are more like the preamps on a decent portastudio (duh). They have a bit of a tendency to flab out on DI bass tracks, and can turn a bit crunchy/hashy at the top with difficult program material such as cymbals or detailed condensers. Backing off the input gain and recording at lower levels helps but does not completely solve these issues. And ribbon mics are pretty much right out: there's just not enough clean gain to drive low-output mics while preserving sound quality. But they are perfectly adequate for midrangey, high-output dynamic live mics, such as Shure SM57s and 58s, and considering the price point and what you're buying, they are actually quite capable: VASTLY better than the 1/8" mic/line input on a typical consumer soundcard, and comparable with a typical budget/prosumer mixer or live console.

Phantom power on only two channels. I imagine this is a limitation of using USB/battery power, and it's frankly kind of amazing that they can deliver 48V at all. But it is still a limitation. If you want to use this box for full-blown studio recording, for this reason and the above, you'll probably want to have some outboard preamps or a mixing console or some such (soundcraft makes some inexpensive mixers with pretty good preamps).

Zero midi anything. I'm not sure if this is a "bad", so much as just something to be aware of. Inclusion of a simple GM synth or drum machine, or even the ability to record MIDI would have expanded the usefulness of this box, but also would have added a lot of complexity to the little menu-based LCD interface. Overall I think it was a better decision to leave it out, and keep the device easier to use, but it's worth being aware of: if you want to record midi instruments with this box, you will be recording the output as audio.

Usability/latency problems as a computer audio interface. I found this box to be unsatisfying as a laptop audio interface using early 2010 drivers. USB audio interfaces can be iffy compared with firewire or PCI, and this was no exception. I experienced intermittent problems with crackly audio, dropouts and skips, and had to frequently adjust latency settings and/or restart the hardware. Such problems were intermittent, but even occasional meltdowns can make such a device almost unusable. It's easier to simply record standalone to the Zoom R16 and then dump the files into computer via USB for editing and mixing in your favorite DAW software. Bear in mind that every computer is a bit different, so YMMV, and future firmware or driver updates may help the situation. But for now I cannot recommend it as a primary multitrack audio interface for computer-based recording (although I certainly recommend it as a portable multitrack recorder that can integrate with a computer setup).

So much for the bad. The good:

IT RUNS ON FRIGGEN BATTERIES. If you are new to recording, it may not be clear what a revolutionary thing this is, to have a complete, legitimate recording studio that you can leave on the coffee table or stick in a backpack and take a full project from recording, through mixing, with effects, and run the whole thing on six AA batteries. Battery-powered recorders are obviously not new, but this box is genuinely a fully-capable recording studio that achieves the magic number of 8 simultaneous inputs, with effects and mixing. And battery life is actually quite good. The more tracks and more processing and effects you're using, the faster they deplete, but even at full load you're changing batteries maybe every two hours, more than enough time to re-charge a spare set of rechargeables.

SD storage. Using SD cards as the storage medium means cheap and easy storage, but even better, no fans, no motors, no whirring/clicking hard disk... this box is *silent*. It also means that it records like tape: there is no saving, no file-management... just hit record or play, turn power on and off whenever you want-no worries, and no inspiration-killing hassle.

Ease of use is really good. Textand menu-based LCD windows can be a nightmare to deal with, as anyone who was recording in the early days of digital knows. But if you're familiar with multi-track recording generally, this device is easy to use right out of the box. Reading the (pretty good) manual is not required to start recording and mixing, but it does reveal a LOT of deep functionality. If you are new to recording, this is a pretty easy way to get started: it doesn't have the graphical point-and-click simplicity of a computer-based interface, but it also skips over all the issues of latencies, drivers, file-management, and various computer-related headaches. The R16's true 8-input recording and 16-track playback allow it to skip/simplify internal routing, bussing, etc, making it very straightforward to use: every physical channel is a track, and there is a bank up/down key to determine whether you're working with tracks 1-8, or 9-16. Couldn't be simpler. Each channel has a play/mute/record toggle button with a color-changing LED to tell you what state it's in, and the transport controls work just like a tape machine. The menus for effects, project selection, track swapping, etc are all straightforward and well-thought-out, with clearly-labelled buttons for each menu. Connections are extremely simple and obvious. Each channel has a gain/trim knob and a mix fader with a 4-LED meter that automatically switches from record level to playback level depending on the track status, and channels with switchable input status use separate physical switches to flip between phantom power on/off, built-in vs external mics, or instrument/mic inputs. Easy-peasy, with no obscure or hidden settings or parameters to drive you nuts.

The built-in mics are an outstanding feature. They are your basic electret omni mics, which means they are quiet, accurate, and have good dynamic response with both lowand high-volume material. Just flip the switch and set them to record and you can track all your rehearsals, live shows, living-room practice, whatever. You can make full multitrack demos using just this box and a pair of headphones.

Built-in effects are comprehensive, quite good, and very well-thought out. The presets are very usefully-constructed for a box of this type, designed to minimize menu-based tweaking. The main "default" effects configuration is set up for semi-automatic per-channel eq/compression, a master reverb/delay with per-track send, and a full suite of guitar and bass effects on the hi-Z "guitar channel". Digging into the menus further allows you to assign any effect to any track, to change whether insert effects are "hard-coded" onto the incoming audio, or just applied as a bus effect (for example, if you wanted to hear the effect during tracking and playback, but keep the underlying audio "clean" for later processing in a computer DAW or whatever). There are also a host of nifty extras including preamp modellers, guitar and bass amp emulators, wah/modulation/etc "special effects", acoustic guitar and bass simulators, and so on. Not 10 years ago, this box would have been worth the price as a single-channel multi-effects processor alone. Some of the settings are a little weird, and I'd much rather do a full mixdown using hardware processors or computer plugins than using menu-based text inputs, but the effects are all real-time, and you can hear your changes as you make them, so it's certainly possible to do a full record with this box alone, and effects quality is comparable to other digital hardware processors.

Overall sound quality is quite good. Even factoring in the preamp reservations above, 15 years ago you could have spent 10 or 15 thousand dollars EASILY and still not had the sound quality and capability of this little box (plus you would have needed 20 electrical outlets and a room to store it all in, not to mention hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of racks and cables). It probably won't replace your RME interface or Apogee converters, and it certainly won't replace a collection of API and Telefunken mic preamps, and you'll probably want to hang onto to your UAD card if you have one, but good luck sticking all that in a laptop bag and taking it to the beach.

This plus something like a Tivoli Audio iSongBook (or even a pair of headphones) makes a complete, battery-powered multitrack studio that fits in a backpack or laptop bag, with room left over to hold spare batteries plus a couple of mic cables and SM57s, if you want them. Laptop-based mobile DAWs have always seemed like an awesome idea, but in practice things like boot times, dongles, limited mobile interface options, mixing and control via mousepad, short battery life, self-noise, computer-related reliability and stability issues, etc have always tended to keep it a good "idea" as opposed to a truly mobile "on your lap" studio. This is perfect and easy to take on the road, record in the tour bus, in the rehearsal space, in the hotel room, at a picnic table, a house party, wherever.

Buy Zoom R16 Multitrack SD Recorder Controller and Interface Now

This thing is awesome.

But let's start with the bad, before we get to the good. The Bad:

The preamp quality is not that great. I want to be careful not to over-state this too much: they are certainly not BAD preamps, and they are certainly competitive with other preamps that can be bought eight at a whack for $300, but they are not fast-response, high-headroom, ultra-clean studio preamps. They are more like the preamps on a decent portastudio (duh). They have a bit of a tendency to flab out on DI bass tracks, and can turn a bit crunchy/hashy at the top with difficult program material such as cymbals or detailed condensers. Backing off the input gain and recording at lower levels helps but does not completely solve these issues. And ribbon mics are pretty much right out: there's just not enough clean gain to drive low-output mics while preserving sound quality. But they are perfectly adequate for midrangey, high-output dynamic live mics, such as Shure SM57s and 58s, and considering the price point and what you're buying, they are actually quite capable: VASTLY better than the 1/8" mic/line input on a typical consumer soundcard, and comparable with a typical budget/prosumer mixer or live console.

Phantom power on only two channels. I imagine this is a limitation of using USB/battery power, and it's frankly kind of amazing that they can deliver 48V at all. But it is still a limitation. If you want to use this box for full-blown studio recording, for this reason and the above, you'll probably want to have some outboard preamps or a mixing console or some such (soundcraft makes some inexpensive mixers with pretty good preamps).

Zero midi anything. I'm not sure if this is a "bad", so much as just something to be aware of. Inclusion of a simple GM synth or drum machine, or even the ability to record MIDI would have expanded the usefulness of this box, but also would have added a lot of complexity to the little menu-based LCD interface. Overall I think it was a better decision to leave it out, and keep the device easier to use, but it's worth being aware of: if you want to record midi instruments with this box, you will be recording the output as audio.

Usability/latency problems as a computer audio interface. I found this box to be unsatisfying as a laptop audio interface using early 2010 drivers. USB audio interfaces can be iffy compared with firewire or PCI, and this was no exception. I experienced intermittent problems with crackly audio, dropouts and skips, and had to frequently adjust latency settings and/or restart the hardware. Such problems were intermittent, but even occasional meltdowns can make such a device almost unusable. It's easier to simply record standalone to the Zoom R16 and then dump the files into computer via USB for editing and mixing in your favorite DAW software. Bear in mind that every computer is a bit different, so YMMV, and future firmware or driver updates may help the situation. But for now I cannot recommend it as a primary multitrack audio interface for computer-based recording (although I certainly recommend it as a portable multitrack recorder that can integrate with a computer setup).

So much for the bad. The good:

IT RUNS ON FRIGGEN BATTERIES. If you are new to recoding, it may not be clear what a revolutionary thing this is, to have a complete recording that you can leave on the coffee table or stick in a backpack and take a full project from recording, through mixing, with effects, and run the whole thing on six AA batteries. Battery-powered recorders are obviously not new, but this box is genuinely a full-capable recording studio that achieve the magic 8 simultaneous inputs, with effects and mixing. And battery life is actually quite good. The more tracks and more processing and effects you're using, the faster they deplete, but even at full load you're changing batteries maybe every two hours, more than enough time to re-charge a spare set of rechargeables.

SD storage. Using SD cards as the storage medium means cheap and easy storage, but even better, no fans, no motors, no whirring/clicking hard disk... this box is *silent*. It also means that it records like tape: there is no saving, no file-management... just hit record or play, turn power on and off whenever you want-no worries, and no inspiration-killing hassle.

Ease of use is really good. Textand menu-based LCD windows can be a nightmare to deal with, as anyone who was recording in the early days of digital knows. But if you're familiar with multi-track recording generally, this device is easy to use right out of the box. Reading the (pretty good) manual is not required to start recording and mixing, but it does reveal a LOT of deep functionality. If you are new to recording, this is a pretty easy way to get started: it doesn't have the graphical point-and-click simplicity of a computer-based interface, but it also skips over all the issues of latencies, drivers, file-management, and various computer-related headaches. The R16's true 8-input recording and 16-track playback allow it to skip/simplify internal routing, bussing, etc, making it very straightforward to use: every physical channel is a track, and there is a bank up/down key to determine whether you're working with tracks 1-8, or 9-16. Couldn't be simpler. Each channel has a play/mute/record toggle button with a color-changing LED to tell you what state it's in, and the transport controls work just like a tape machine. The menus for effects, project selection, track swapping, etc are all straightforward and well-thought-out, with clearly-labelled buttons for each menu. Connections are extremely simple and obvious. Each channel has a gain/trim control and a mix fader with a 4-LED meter that automatically switches from record level to playback level depending on the track status, and channels with switchable input status use separate physical switches to flip between phantom power on/off, built-in vs external mics, or instrument/mic inputs. Easy peasy, with no obscure or hidden settings or parameters to drive you nuts.

The built-in mics are an outstanding feature. They are your basic electret omni mics, which means they are quiet, accurate, and have good dynamic response with both lowand high-volume material. Just flip the switch and set them to record and you can track all your rehearsals, live shows, living-room practice, whatever. You can make full multitrack demos using just this box and a pair of headphones.

Built-in effects are comprehensive, quite good, and very well-thought out. The presets are very usefully-constructed for a box of this type, designed to minimize menu-based tweaking. The main "default" effects configuration is set up for semi-automatic per-channel eq/compression, a master reverb/delay with per-track send, and a full suite of guitar and bass effects on the hi-Z "guitar channel". Digging into the menus further allows you to assign any effect to any track, to change whether insert effects are "hard-coded" onto the incoming audio, or just applied as a bus effect (for example, if you wanted to hear the effect during tracking and playback, but keep the underlying audio "clean" for later processing in a computer DAW or whatever). There are also a host of nifty extras including preamp modellers, guitar and bass amp emulators, wah/modulation/etc "special effects", acoustic guitar and bass simulators, and so on. Not 10 years ago, this box would have been worth the price as a single-channel multi-effects processor alone. Some of the settings are a little weird, and I'd much rather do a full mixdown using hardware processors or computer plugins than using menu-based text inputs, but the effects are all real-time, and you can hear your changes as you make them, so it's certainly possible to do a full record with this box alone, and effects quality is comparable to other digital hardware processors.

Overall sound quality is quite good. Even factoring in the preamp reservations above, 15 years ago you could have spent 10 or 15 thousand dollars EASILY and still not had the sound quality and capability of this little box (plus you would have needed 20 electrical outlets and a room to store it all in, not to mention hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of racks and cables). It probably won't replace your RME interface or Apogee converters, and it certainly won't replace a collection of API and Telefunken mic preamps, and you'll probably want to hang onto to your UAD card if you have one, but good luck sticking all that in a laptop bag and taking it to the beach.

This plus something like a Tivoli Audio iSongBook (or even a pair of headphones) makes a complete, battery-powered multitrack studio that fits in a backpack or laptop bag, with room left over to hold spare batteries plus a couple of mic cables and SM57s, if you want them. Laptop-based mobile DAWs have always seemed like an awesome idea, but in practice things like boot times, dongles, limited mobile interface options, mixing and control via mousepad, short battery life, self-noise, computer-related reliability and stability issues, etc have always tended to keep it a good "idea" as opposed to a truly mobile "on your lap" studio. This is perfect and easy to take on the road, record in the tour bus, in the rehearsal space, in the hotel room, at a picnic table, a house party, wherever.

Read Best Reviews of Zoom R16 Multitrack SD Recorder Controller and Interface Here

I've had my R16 only a few hours and I'm already in love. If I sound like an idiot at some point, it's probably because I'm a n00b to home recording... I'm using a 16GB Transcend Class 6 SDHC card.

I'm a little bit nerdy so I read some of the owners manual before UPS dropped it off. I was able to get up and running with a single mic in about 15 minutes (including adding an effect to the track since I'm a terrible singer). After that, I recorded a few 4 input tracks using two stereo pairs and just did a quick record-to-master.

The menus aren't perfect by far (I was stumped on how to delete one of my horrid vocal test tracks) but the manual is quite good and comprehensive. I opened the PDF manual, searched for "delete" and was able to kill the offensive tracks a few minutes later.

Now, I understand the flexibility offered by using a PC/DAW but it's just so much easier to use this thing. It took me at least 4 hours to get my tascam interface (US1641) set up and recording to my PC. I felt like an idiot. I DID plug this in briefly and verified that Cubase picks it up nicely as an interface. I also noted that the latest driver from tascam gets WAY better latency readings than the ASIO4ALL driver.

My biggest complaint so far is the silly 8 character limit for project names. I also despise that after each character you enter, the menu takes you back to capital "A" and you have to spin the dial back. It's weirdly inconvenient; I'd really like to stay in the same position in the "letter wheel" (which is something like the series "A-Za-z0-9~-)").

The sound of the mix-down was pretty good for the time taken, no mastering effects, no EQ. I'm using it tomorrow to record our band practice and looking forward to it.

Oh, just an FYI the AC adapter *IS* included in the box. I didn't see it in the description anywhere and was stoked I didn't have to pay $24 to buy the stupid power adapter.

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So I was bummed to find that they released something called the R24 just a month or so after I bought the R16, which added features like 8 more tracks and a drum machine/sampler that I ABSOLUTELY WANTED on the R16. However, I still want to review this, particularly as it can be had on sale for $350 or so while the R24 is $500, which IS a significant amount of money to amateur people trying to make music, which is who this is really for.

I looked for months to try and find something like the R16, something that seemed to have all the features I'd need to record my band's music and get them going. When I found it I was skeptical, because it seemed weird that there would be one device that could record with external mics AND internal mics, and allow you to mix, edit, and master the audio, AND even include built-in effects. I didn't believe that anything would be that layman-friendly. But the R16 really is.

After a day or so of reading the manual, I finally figured everything out. It takes a while to get the hang of using the wheel and knowing which menu holds what, but once you do, you can do SO MUCH with this little thing. So damn much it's amazing. You can add an infinite number of effects if you learn how to bounce the tracks; you can swap them so that you can fully utilize all 16 tracks; you can edit everything and EQ everything and pan and fade and then do a final master .WAV, right on the device. In fact you can make professional-sounding songs without an external mic and without hooking it up to the computer until you're done. I had never even known what multitrack recording was before I got the R16, but I learned very easily how to record everything and get the exact sounds I want within just a light month of working with my band using the R16, and it sounds like I have been doing studio stuff for a couple years.

And it even runs on batteries! It's lightweight, and jam-packed, and as far as I can tell there's no problem with hooking up mics (no buzzing or hissing or anything despite what I've heard--with either dynamic or condenser). It's so amazing that I consider it more valuable than my $400 guitar, $300 amp, $300 pedals, $375 microphones, or anything else I own, including my computer or cellphone. I never thought I could get any of my band's songs recorded and have them not have that crappy, thin MySpace-band-sound that makes me hate listening to other local bands, or that I could do everything myself and not have to ask anyone with audio expertise, but it has so many features that are "easy to learn, hard to master" that I firmly believe anyone who cares enough to write songs can make them and make them sound like they were recorded in a professional studio by someone with years of experience in just a month.

Of course it does have its problems. In particular, if you get heavy into multitracking, the metronome WILL piss you off--in that, if you change tempos in a song, say from 120 to 80 for a chorus, and then select a time when you want to start recording this new part of the song, then when you start recording with a metronome pre-count set to the new tempo, it will go 1, 2, 3, 4, ...awkward pause..., 1, 2, 3, 4. It sets that tempo for the entire SONG, so instead of counting at 80 STARTING AT, say, two minutes into a song, which may be when the tempo changes IN THE SONG YOU WROTE, it will start recording at the closest multiple of 1/80 beats per minute to whatever time you selected, and this makes it literally impossible to record some songs with the built-in metronome, basically unless they are multiples of one another, like 60 BPM to 120 BPM or such. If you don't incorporate tempo changes then it won't be an issue, but if you do any kind of music (and it's not just prog rock) where it changes significantly, you will pull your hair out trying to do things right. I called tech support and the guy indicated that it was not freezing or anything, so I calculated it out by taking the inverse of the tempo and multiplying that by how many beats into the song I wanted to start recording at and figured out that the metronome does exactly what I have described here. Not a deal-breaker, but keep it in mind.

Additionally, it has been known to freeze at the "Wait..." screen that pops up when you hit stop while recording, and never come back until I remove all power sources. It sometimes deletes the audio files I was recording, and sometimes just unassigns them from the tracks, which is piss-off annoying but at least doesn't make me want to cry. And some of the effects completely suck, but some are brilliant, especially the drum compression ones and acoustic guitar ones, which make it sound ABSOLUTELY amazing and basically work right off the bat with your recordings. I guess my only other complaint is that it's all plastic, which makes it feel flimsy and breakable even though it helps keep it lightweight. It keeps it from being the tank it could be.

But generally, if you want to start recording music and have it sound damn, DAMN good, and you have $350 to spare, invest in this before anything else. I don't know if the R24 is better but if there's a chance it has problems because of new features then this is a more reliable product. What I do know is that I've gotten to know how to squeeze out all kinds of sounds and effects and uses from this thing and it's worth its weight in gold, and I don't know about the DAW stuff or hooking multiple R16s up together but if you need something to do that then maybe you need it from a company known for making computer-interface kind of stuff. For JUST recording audio, and JUST mastering it (and you don't even need a fancy computer program), you need this, and anything else is a luxury. I absolutely recommend it for people wanting to break into recording, but not for any kind of professional (but really, would they expect a $350 all-in-one device to help them?).

Also recommended: 8 GB SDHD card MAKE SURE IT'S LIKE CLASS 6 and not really slow so you don't have problems (preferably 16-32GB if you don't want to worry about space), and ATH-M50 headphones which are fairly cheap and are AMAZING for mastering, recording (my drummer can't hear himself drum except through the headphones!), and listening to music (especially Pink Floyd!).

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I searched around the Internet for reviews about the R16 that spoke to it's capability as a DAW recording Interface and I didn't find a lot, so here are my impressions after buying it:

The R16 achieves similar track counts and CPU loads as my previous Phonic Helix Firewire Interface. So that means you can load it up pretty heavily with tracks, virtual instruments and still achieve at least 5-10 MS latency, depending on your computer. I find the latency/performance is fine for recording virtual instruments live and not killing your processor. I have a year and a half old core duo laptop with Vista 64 and a slow hard drive and the R16 performs admirably. It is a little slower than Firewire, but in the neighborhood. I use Sonar 8.5 Producer edition.

As for audio quality, it is good. My Phonic Helix has a little more definition/clarity than the R16, but not a ton. The R16 is maybe 5-10% worse than the Phonic. Mind you, the Phonic is not a great audio interface, but when it comes to its converters, the Phonic compares favorably to my previous M Audio PCI based OmniStudio, which had quite good audio quality for a semi-pro or home studio. The R16's preamps are MUCH better than my Phonic, however, so the net result is much better recorded tracks because I get much better clarity from the R16's preamps. Again, there are much better preamps and audio interfaces out there for more money. The context here is home studio on a budget.

Where I find the biggest value in the R16 is in it's integration with the DAW and the ability to easily sketch song ideas on the R16 and the move them to the DAW for the heavy lifting. It makes song writing and pre production amazingly convenient and easy. Also, my work flow has changed based on the R16. I can now throw stereo mixes of basic tracks from my DAW onto the R16 and record additional overdub tracks on the R16. No need to start up the computer. When I have a moment, I can quickly fire up the R16 and work. It's much easier to lay down guitar bass and vocals on the R16 and then drag them back to the DAW for processing and editing and mastering later.

Not only does this save time, but it eliminates that creativity killer that a DAW can be. You're feeling the inspiration, you start up your computer, wait around, get your tracks, effects, inputs all set up, and then there's a glitch. You trouble shoot, fix, tweak, etc. Now you're a half hour into it with no tracks, and the inspiration has passed.

The effects sends of the R16 make it easy to get basic reverbs and delays on tracks like vocals, guitars etc, without having to commit them to the recording. The effects are OK but not great. You can even place amp sims, etc on the track output so you can record complete dry tracks and reamp them in your DAW with Amplitube, Guitar Rig, etc. The built in amp sims/effects are pretty weak, so don't expect much there.

The controller is nice. Not real flexible, but like the rest of the unit, Zoom did a great job of keeping things simple and making what features are there amazingly easy and relevant to a hybrid DAW/standalone recording unit.

Now I just hope Zoom takes the R16 hybrid recording environment concept and steps it up a notch. After experiencing how effective and convenient the R16 is, I would pay double for a unit with killer preamps, top notch converters, better amp models/effects, more controller functionality, etc.

The R24 looks nice, but after having had another zoom HD recorder that included drums, midi and loops, I found myself never using them because they are so much easier to work with in the DAW. Even creating basic patterns for sketching songs is too cumbersome. If you have a DAW, the R24 may be overkill.

I could go on forever about what a great product concept the R16 is with it's hybrid approach to recording. It really changed the way I write and record music!