- Equipped with a set of built-in high-sensitivity stereo condenser mics
- Capture sound effects, speeches and dialog with excellent clarity
- Connect two R24s via USB for 16 tracks of simultaneous recording
- Record Scratch tracks and overdub voiceovers in post-production
- Onboard phantom power with high-quality mic preamps and vocal effects
I did a lot of research before ordering the R24. I've owned other multi-track recorders, but this one looked different because of the amazing combination of features. Here's the break-down:
The Good:
+ Excellent sound quality.
+ 24 tracks of audio. More than any home studio needs.
+ Portable, battery power option, and built-in mics.
+ Eight inputs for recording.
+ Good value. This is more recording power then Elvis or the Beatles ever had and it's available for a price the average musician can afford.
The Bad:
Effects: Every type of overdrive and distortion sounds like the same digital garbage. Not even passable.
Dynamics: The recorder is very sensitive and unfortunately the noise reduction feature is useless. You will not be able to record single-coil guitars without a dedication NR (noise reduction) pedal. EQ and pan are tedious to use without a single dedicated knob.
Small display: Given the number of menus you have to go through, the tiny screen is torture. My 10-year-old iPod has a larger screen with more intuitive menu (and it's in color).
Built-in drums: The R24 (as opposed to the R16) is advertised as having a built-in drum machine. It does not have a built-in drum machine. What it has is a built-in set of electronic rhythm patterns and a USB stick with a bunch of samples. In order to use any of these to create actual drum tracks for actual songs, you must record one pattern at a time to independent tracks and then sequence them. One track per pattern. I cannot even imagine how much time, how many sleepless nights, how many pots of coffee, and how many tracks it would take to piece together an actual song with a realistic variety of drum patterns. The patterns also cannot have insert effects, dynamics, or EQ applied to them so-while they sound marginal-you cannot do anything to make them sound better.
Overall, I'm unhappy with the R24, but no company is making what I *really* want. Ideally, I'd like an 8-24 track digital recorder with dedicated pan, three-band EQ with dedicated knobs (and at least a sweepable/parametric mid), a dedicated fader for each track, ability to run off battery power, SD or CF recording media (no CD or hard drive), and dynamics for each track (noise reduction, compressor, and limiter). I could live without effects or a built-in drum machine. Zoom, Fostex, Tascam, Yamaha, Alesis? Are you listening?
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I've been using the R24 for a few months and these are my impressions. First a few bad points that come to mind...
The onboard amp simulations are "good", but I wouldn't say "incredible". I'd consider them "average" for digital modeling of this sort. Guitar Rig, IMO, is better for that sort of thing.
The effects are only available in 44100 Hz operation (CD quality). To me, that's not a major downfall, but for people who like to record at higher rates it might be (though there's no way human ears can hear the difference so I consider it a little silly).
You can only use one insert effect at a time (but you can add chorus/delay, reverb, etc, to that insert effect as well).
There is no external effects send/return loop. So if you have good quality post-signal recording effects that you like to use (compressor or whatever) you won't be able to "plug them in" to the R24 as post-signal external effects... though this can be partially worked around.
As a DAW control surface you can't use the drum pads to control plug-in drum software. The control surface works very well as far as the faders and stop, start, etc functions are concerned, but you can't control plug-in drum functions via a midi controller at the same time. This isn't the end of the world because you don't need to be mixing other channels when you're programming drums, but it would be much more convenient if the R24's drum pads could just be used as a midi control surface for the drums.
Apparently there's a 1.3ms latency introduced when recording tracks while playing back other recorded tracks. As anyone familiar with digital recording knows, all digital devices have some latency involved and you CANNOT detect anything as low as 1.3ms with the human ear... but if you re-amp the same track 10 times in a row you might start to notice it (why anyone would do that I have no idea). I have no personal experience with this 1.3ms latency myself and can't notice it or confirm it... I read about it on the internet and have to take their word for it.
Now the good points.
Apparently, you can remedy the 1.3ms latency thing by doing a simple "trick" after you record the track. Again, I wouldn't know because I have no need to do it.
The DAW controller feature of the Zoom R24 is based on the industry standard Mackie Control architecture, which doesn't support drum pads... that's why the R24 can't do it. For Zoom to include midi drum pad control when operating the R24 as a control surface would probably require a complete rework of Mackie Control, which isn't likely or maybe even feasible. So perhaps it's a little unreasonable to expect the R24 to have this feature. If you want that type of thing, use a separate MIDI controller when you track drums (which is a bit of a nuisance because you have to reset the midi I/O in your DAW, but that's life).
Using the R24 as a DAW interface through the USB connection bypasses your computer's soundcard so you don't need to have a good soundcard in your computer (the R24 acts as the soundcard and your monitor speakers connect to the R24 to hear sounds from the PC).
The R24 has a tonne of on-board effects, so you might not miss not having an external effects loop but if you have good quality recording effects that you like to use you won't be able to use them while recording the track while the other tracks are playing. You can, however, loop the track by itself through your effect(s) afterwards by going through the main ouput and back into another track and use your external effect(s) that way (this is where that 1.3ms latency I mentioned above comes up after doing this a bunch of times). Personally, I find the R24's effects cover the bases here, so I don't need to do this but if you do, keep this in mind you can use external effects on recorded tracks, but it requires re-tracking.
The effects are fairly flexible and give you a good level of control over each effect's critical parameters. I said the amp-sim effects were "good" but not "incredible", in reality the R24 gives you lots of control over each effect, so "incredible" might be tunable if you're good at that sort of thing. You can control the gain of the amp simulations, the cabinet simulations, 6-bands of EQ, etc. So a lot of that is up to you. For instance, the compressor modules give you control over attack, sense, threshold, release, delay, etc. There are a lot of effects available. Considering that the R24 is giving you literally hundreds of recording quality effects on-board what is essentially meant to be "just" a 24-track recorder this is really incredible.
Overall, the R24 is an incredible product for the price. It gives you the ability to record 8 tracks simultaneously (two with phantom power) a vast selection of quality highly tweakable effects, built-in tuners and metronome, is light and portable and can record high-quality recordings as a stand-alone unit, it also works very conveniently as a DAW interface and control surface if you want to lay the tracks down in your computer. I haven't used it much as a sampler, so I'm not really familiar with that functionality. It does come with drum samples and sampling functionality, but I use other hardware and software for that so I haven't explored this in the R24 much.
I'm very happy with this product for my uses. I use it to record directly to the R24 (using my studio's other gear or sometimes the on-board modeling) and use the R24's effects and mastering effects. I also use it as an interface and control surface for my PC as a DAW. There are some "flaws" that I'd like to see improved (an external effects loop, the ability to use more than one insert effect at a time, midi control of drum software by the R24's drum pads, etc), but overall these shortcomings are forgivable and are to be expected in any product (no product is perfect). Considering the capabilities, flexibility and recording quality that the R24 has in one package for such a low price I think it's nearly impossible to beat looking at it that way it deserves 5/5 stars. There's no single unit on the market, in this price range or really any other, that does all the things that the R24 does. If you have a home studio and want one unit to cover a lot of bases well, then this is probably the machine for you.
Read Best Reviews of Zoom R24 Digital Multitrack Recorder Here
Well, the title says a lot. I liked the first one so much, I bought another. My focus on this recorder is just that to record. I have no plans to mix on this machine, so my review does not pertain to the many mixer or effects featues. (Although from other reviews I have read, they are great). It does an excellent job of recording.
Pros
Lightweight very portable.
Uses batteries or adapter.
Manual is very well written by someone with an excellent command of the English language.
Excellent value.
Cons
No MIDI whatsoever that I could figure out. One review I had read, hinted that it has some type of MIDI capabilities, but I couldn't find any. This is unimportant to me, but to some, it may be.
Only 1 dedicated direct input for guitar. It would be nice to have at least 2, but of course you can record by microphone up to 7 more.
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First of all, let me say that over the years I have been recording music on various equipment. I started off with a Fostex 4-track cassette recorder, then a Tascam 8-track cassette recorder, a Sony Mini-disc Multi-tracker, then finally a Roland VS-890.
The problem I had with the Roland was the Disk Drive (FAILED), an illogical recording format, and layers upon layers of menus and submenus. But now I have the ZOOM R24.
The Zoom R24 is simply the best recorder I have ever used. There is no hard drive to crash, all your tracks are stored on SDHC cards, which is very very reliable. The sound quality is fantastic, the "flow" of the recording process on the R24 is very logical and streamlined, easy to understand and remember. The effects are up to the standard of other ZOOM products, and you've got mastering effects as well as a seperate stereo Master track in addition to the 24 standard tracks. All the goodies are there, manual or auto punch-in/out, A-B repeat, lots of room for "virtual" tracks, although on the R24 they are called "takes" and you can record as many of them as you want, then choose whichever ones you like the most because they are all saved as files in each project.
Not to mention, a fully functional drum machine, sampler and looper with an included 500 MB of professional drum loops and 1 GB of drum sounds on the R24 itself. Admittedly, I have not taken advantage of the drum loops as of yet, but just knowing that they are available makes me happy.
The R24 is also an interface/controller for your DAW program, if you have one. If you don't, ZOOM ships the R24 with a copy of Cubase so that you can take advantage of this as well. As for me, I'm not into computer-based multi-tracking right now. Maybe someday I'll load the Cubase and use the R24 with it, it will be nice to have that option.
THE CONS: A couple things need mentioning. First of all, the R24 does NOT have MIDI in/out/thru. So if you want to use it as a stand alone recorder and synch your MIDI tracks with it, youre out of luck. HOWEVER, if you will be using the R24 with your DAW program on your computer, you won't have to worry about that, just let your DAW do the MIDI work. Also, the R24 does NOT have digital/optical/coaxial inputs or outputs. This could be problematic for some folks, but not for me. HOWEVER, remember that your recordings are saved to SDHC cards and if you have a DAW program, you can dump your tracks from the R24 to your computer and keep it digital, if you like that sort of thing.
All in all, this is one fantastic device 24 tracks of pure recording power. Plus, it also has two built-in condenser mics, which is perfect for scratch-padding or on-the-fly ideas. I love this thing and will plan on using it extensively for a very long time.
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This product, combined with good external preamps, provides a great cheap solution for very good multitrack sound. When used alone to produce pure audio, it's fine! But it unfortunately has a significant timing drift that makes it problematic to sync with other devices (e.g., to use R24 audio with video, or with audio recorded simultaneously by another device). I hope Zoom can address this issue soon!
Update after extensive testing: I've downgraded the review two a grudging 2 stars... On five separate occasions, while everything seemed normal DURING recording, when playing back or transferring into a computer it has turned out that some of the tracks started recording only white noise partway through the session. This makes the machine useless for my purposes (long-form recording of live events). Again, I really hope Zoom will address this... bt I'm not getting any response from customer support...!
Further update... Zoom has acknowledged the problem, and is working on a fix.... my fingers are crossed...
