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(I’ve been getting a lot of letters about my H2 recordings, and asking how I make them sound so damn great. I decided to answer one here, so we could share the info.)

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Hi Michael,

I’m a recent Zoom H2 owner (well, I guess we all are). I listened to your CloneTheHomeless podcast #50 after it was linked on the O’Reilly site, and then to #51 (which I got completely sucked into, to the point where I probably will listen to parts 2 to 4 even though I’m not really a podcast listener).

I’m really impressed with the audio quality you’re getting, and wondered if you could share your technique with me, i.e., what gain level you’re using, if you adjust beyond setting the L-M-H setting, and how far from the person speaking you’re holding the mic. Are you moving the H2 from you to DJ in #50? You both sound very clear…

I didn’t hear lot of handling noise in the casts, are you doing anything special to reduce that? I had thought that you could make a simple shock mount using PVC pipe (similar to this), though it would be less comfortable to hold.

Anyway, thanks for anything you’re willing to share, and thanks for the casts.

Alan Fairley (aka nolonemo)

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Hi Alan,

Hey man. Thanks!

So, I recorded all those casts with the gain on the High setting (of low/med/high), and the internal levels at 100 (out of possible 127). We didn’t use a shock mount, DJ and I took turns gently but firmly holding the H2 (on the included “lollypop” stick) in front of us while we walked, but didn’t pass it each time one spoke. We may have intuitively pointed it a bit to each other as we did, but I don’t remember doing that. We held it at about boob level between both of us, maybe pointing the front up at our mouths at a slight angle, about a foot from our mouths. This was with the front mics, the 90 degree ones. The Becky cast, since it was three people, was done with the back mics (the 180 degree ones).

When we had it on the table with Becky, and when we were walking with her, it was about two feet from everyone’s mouths. When it was on the table, we used the included table stand (as we call it the “H2D2 tripod”, lol).

I meant to put a folded up T-shirt under the H2 as a shock mount, but forgot. It didn’t matter much, I think the H2 engineers must have done a good job of internally shock mounting the on-board mics. Yay them!

I’ll try the T-shirt thing when I record the panel I’m on at the Pod Expo on Sept 29. (My first wedding anniversary! Yay! Debra Jean and I are going for four nights, to celebrate our love.)

I recorded both the Clone the Homeless H2 casts using the H2’s CD quality setting (44.1 k, 16-bit stereo WAV) using a 4-gig SD card. I didn’t do any chopping or editing to remove ums and ahs (which I DO do when we record at home in the studio using the good mics and the computer). I just ran it through the Levelator and then added the usual podcast intros and outros. Then encoded to 128 k stereo MP3 using AudioCatalyst.

I think that’s it. If you have more questions, post ‘em here and I’ll answer.

Rock on,

Michael W. Dean, King of all DIY media.

This entry was posted by Michael W. Dean on Thursday, September 20th, 2007 at 9:23 pm and is filed under Gear porn, MWD's Cool Stuff, Stink Fight. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.