Zoom R16 Digital Studio with 16GB SDHC Card

I thought very carefully before laying out £319 on this little beauty. The trouble with buying something new, meaning a new product to the market, is that it hasn't been truly tested. Anyway I 'bit the bullet' and ordered it.

At first I just wanted to open the box and start playing without looking at the manual (so like a man I can hear the women saying) and because I am new to multitrack recorders, I gave in and picked up the book. The instructions were (mostly) clear and easy (easy-ish) to follow and I was up and running after just a few minutes.

I've had it now for just over a week and to be honest, I am liking it more and more. I did have a few problems loading Cubase LE4, but after I realised that the mistake was entirely mine, Cubase was up and running on my laptop. Again I needed to look into the instructions, this time not the manual that came with it, but seperate instructions that are to be found on the disc containing the driver for the R16. Once I had sorted all that out, magic!

On the plus side: Small, but not too small, portable, works on 6 AA batteries that seem to last for ages, loads of effects (although I will probably never use them as the effects on LE4 are amazing), clear screen, 8 tracks recordable at once (although I would never use 8 at a time), works well with LE4 as a controller, silent operation, records onto SDHC cards which have greatly come down in price recently, on board mikes if necessary and it looks good too.

On the minus side: Can be fiddly to use/get used to, the preamps are OK, but only OK (I use an external preamp for recording voice, an ART Tube MP, which is brilliant with it). Apart from that, no other niggles really.

I am not very experienced when it comes to multitracks and I need to learn the basics, but using the Zoom R16 can be quite straight forward SO LONG AS YOU READ THE MANUALS - why do we men do that? I have read the manual that comes in the box and the disc based instructions which I printed out, both many times now, and I am itching to put all my new knowledge to good use.

When I first looked at the possibility of buying a multitrack recorder quite a few years ago, it was a cassette tape version with 4 track recording. This unit is so far removed from that first 'Portastudio' that you cannot even begin to compare the two. For a little over £300 you get:

1 A 16 track digital recorder
2 8 inputs including Hi-Z for guitar and 48v phantom power (on 2 channels)
3 A portable silent recorder using batteries and SDHC cards
4 An interface to connect microphones etc direct to computer
5 A DAW software controller complete with Cubase LE4
6 Hundreds of effects built in

There must be more, but I have only had this unit for 10 days.

Bottom line then - this is simply AMAZING, it's not perfect, it won't take the place of professional equipment, but believe me, it comes close. If you are reading this, then I assume you are interested in buying it - so go ahead, buy it and enjoy it.

Having looked for a 16 track recorder and realised that unless you spend £1000s you can't get anything to record 16 tracks at the same time I looked into this one. It records 8 tracks at a time, but at the press of a button you can play back the original 8 and record an additional 8 to tracks 9-16. (Be aware some so called 16 track recorders only record 2-4 tracks simultaneously, this does 8 and that's better than most) Only used it a few times so far and was surprised at how easy it is to operate. After the first time out of the box I decided to record a few test files, add vocal effects and lay down a couple of keyboard tracks to see how it worked. Within no time I'd recorded and mixed a track and actually decided to play and sing over it with additional instruments with my church band the same week. I never intended it for this purpose, but as it's a controller, recorder, mixing desk all in one playing back, over dubbing and using it in a live situation is so easy it make a good addition. I'll be using it like this again when I'm missing band members to help out for holiday cover! As a recorder it's excellent quality, easy to use and fairly intuitive. If you're used to setting up EQ on a standard desk with loads of dials you may at first wonder how to control everything, but with 5 mins practice you'll see that each channel/track is independently controllable by simply clicking the EQ button, then scrolling down the 5 channel EQ changing it with the control wheel. It'll even keep these settings if you wish once you add a new recording so you don't need to keep setting it up. I've not even got as far as using the supplied Cubase software as the on board mixing is so good. Looking forward to giving it a try soon when we record a new CD next week. I could write so much more about how good it is, easy to use, great value for money, but the best thing I can say is `Just buy it, it's great'. You won't be disappointed!

Best thing since ever. Fast, light, extremely well thought-out. My rolands and tascams are not even close - they are getting sold asap. Love the individual volume meters per channel, faders fine, 24-bit recording. I love saving to USB stick straight off the unit or put the SD card into my laptop's card reading slot and mix straight from there. These guys give a great deal with a big SD card - take it.

Positives: great stereo separation, what-you-hear-what-you-get in mixing down, you know what I mean, runs off 6 AA batteries, 2 buit-in mics are good for recording rehearsals and drum overheads, can have 8 compressors on 8 simultaneously recording tracks so it doesn't clip, can record itself (main out into a track in), digital bounce, import wave files from your computer and it will play them as a track in your project, FX can be printed to "tape" or used for monitoring only, works as a USB sound card, metronome can be sent either from the main out or from headphones only - volume control knob on headphones, finally!

Negatives: pre-amps are slightly better than your regular sound card's and require pre-amps for any demo work - no problem for me, I just record off the inserts of a proper mixer or use ART Tubes, FX are not that great and very brittle sounding, so use for inspiration only, no MIDI sync, no outside FX can be used - no AUX in/out, properly needs 2700 Mah disposable batteries or will run out on you without warning (i.e. if you leave it to record a gig for 30 minutes and find it died after the first 10 'cause you forgot to put good batteries in) - all minor stuff, really, this unit really is a game-changer.