Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum My first recording with the Zoom Q3

Thanks for the warm welcome! I looked at some of your youtube videos and you play beautifully, and I'm so impressed that you're self-taught. I'm attempting to self-reteach myself the violin right now..and it's difficult to work without a teacher. I took a look around this forum and the adult beginners section seems to have the friendliest people [the Pianist's corner is too serious for me...although I'm not exactly an adult beginner since I've been at it since childhood and I'm almost finished uni now.] Anyway...back on topic. I'll try to upload something on Youtube tomorrow then the lighting is better. I'm having so much fun with my Q3.

We think so, too.



That's okay; this forum is for restarters, too, and there are regular contributors here who have literally decades of playing experience. "Adult Beginner" is more of a state of mind (i.e., we tend not to have professional aspirations) than an accurate description.

Looking forward to seeing your videos. You may want to check out our Recital Call for Submissions and submit your piece there... that would certainly be a way of starting up in AB forum with a bang.

p.s. thank you for the very kind words on my playing. I'm self-taught on piano but took 7 years of accordion lessons as a child, which was a tremendous help.

p.p.s. My son is taking violin in his school orchestra. Devilishly difficult instrument. I can't imagine self-teaching on that. And after hearing how my son sounds on it, I wouldn't want to.

I had to at this one.

I had (1) year of violin lessons when I was in the 5th grade and I don't know how my family resisted putting me up for adoption. My dog would not even stay in the same room when I was practicing "America the Beautiful"...it was awful!

Hi everyone - new to this forum
I'm from Liverpool and use a Yamaha Clavinova 405
I got the Zoom Q3 this week and have only had chance to do a few quick demos with it.

I can honestly say it's changed my way of recording. In fairness I'd only been using a digital camera to record video for youtube. And I had never planned on recording my stuff but it soon became obvious that I needed a better recorder. As it turns out, when I decided to look around I stumbled across Zoom and it seemed all my prayers were answered.

As I say, only experimented with it a couple of times since I received it this week and I am really impressed. It's really given me the spur to start recording again - because I ain't done anything for months.

When I first started violin, I remember my parents would tell me NOT to practice! Thankfully, I'm past that beginner stage and most people would probably enjoy my playing now.

Anyway, there's the test video that I put on youtube for you to see my Q3 in action. Note that the first "test" chord I played came out distorted.


Feel free to leave comments and tips about the Q3 or my playing.

Frozenicicles
That was most excellent! I noticed that you do not have a submission in our recital. Perhaps you still can before the deadline, and if not, maybe consider the next one?
I think your piano has a wonderful tone, by the way.

Welcome to the forum, timbo051! When I got my Zoom H4, I felt like you that my prayers had been answered! I'm really kicking myself for not buying stock in the company. Glad you're enjoying your Q3.

frozenicicles: All I can say is Incredible performance!

Carl and Monica: Thanks for your kind words! I've studied with teachers for over 10 years, but I hated piano and practicing for most of them. However, when I finally made up my mind to put my foot down and quit, I found that I actually liked it and decided to continue! Funny how life works. :P Unfortunately, I don't have any pieces that are polished enough for performance at the moment. What you saw was one tenth of the whole piece, and I'm still being months away from completion. It was really just to demonstrate my shiny new camera. I'll work on polishing a movement of my Mozart sonata for the next recital, though!

My piano does have an excellent tone and touch for an upright. But...I'm still envious of all of you who have grands! I tried out a Fazioli at a local dealer and it was AMAZING. Maybe in the future when I'm no longer a poor student with limited space and funds, although the Fazioli will still likely be an unrealistic option.

Timbo: The Zoom is really leaps and bounds better than anything I tried before. I was using an mp3 player. I kept on thinking that there must be something wrong with my playing because no dynamics were coming out, but now I know it's the recorder and not me.

Popped in here to add that I have low cut filter turned to on, and I'm recording the audio as PCM 48khz (I have no idea what that means though). These settings result in NO white noise. Here's an edited version of the same recording as above (audio only). I didn't do anything in audacity other than edit out the beginning and convert it to mp3 format. http://www.box.net/shared/53gbiblyiu

Can anyone explain what the audio settings mean? The one that I'm using right now is working great, though!

Here, enjoy :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCM

Time to buy on behalf of Santa!
It seems like everyone has had a little time to get familiar with the Q3.
What is the consensus? If video is not a concern and if the small price difference between the H4 and the Q3 is not an issue, which has the best sound quality and is the difference noticable? Are there features with one that are not available on the other, that impact the ability to get the best sound quality?
Thanks
Julius

If your primary interest is not video, I'd recommend the H4N. When I compare my H4 recordings of the same piece to the audio from the Q3, I like my H4 better, and it's noticeably better. Also, the H4N has the capability of using external higher quality microphones if you decide to really get fancy, which the Q3 does not.

(Caveat: I have not yet fooled around with the low cut filter stuff that frozenicicles reported about 3 posts earlier results in no white noise on his Q3 recordings. If that works, I might change my recommendation.)

That being said, once you see how easy it is to work with the video files and upload them, you might change your mind about not being very interested in the video.

I'm not a he, but maybe you couldn't see enough of me in my video to determine that. Anyway, I agree with Monica about the H4n probably being better for audio. The Q3 doesn't have the flexibility that H4n does, but I wanted something that had video to watch my posture so it works well for me. I'm working on improving my performance technique.

oops! Sorry about that, frozenicicles...

No worries! My cautiousness against internet stalkers made me choose a gender-neutral screen name.

Monica,

Thanks for posting your experiences with the Q3. I'm still struggling with whether to get the H2, the H4n, or the Q3. Sometimes I feel that the supposedly supreme audio of the H4n is best, sometimes the simpler, cheaper H2 might suffice, and sometimes I think that even the standard video with the Q3 might be helpful.

As you progress in your experience, it would be intereting to see the results and conclusions. Keep those YouTubes coming!

Hop

You're welcome, Hop. I should also say that I am much happier with the audio on the Q3 after following frozenicicle's excellent advice about turning the low cut filter on. (The default is apparently "off"). Doing that really cut down on the hiss I was getting with the Q3. The most recent video on my YouTube channel ("Wisdom of Snow") was recorded with the filter on. You may or may not be able to detect any difference between it and my earlier Q3 videos, but I could hear it on the headphones.

So, now I would say the Q3 comes awfully close to the H4 in terms of audio quality. I still like the H4 just a little bit better, but that could be due to my being able to place it in a better position for recording as opposed to the Q3, where visual angle needs complicates things. So, if you wanted something that would allow you to do video, too, the Q3 is a no-brainer. If you're concentrating on being able to make recordings you would burn to CD where audio quality is the premium, I'd go with the H4N, just to have the ability to use better external mics. If it's a tossup between the H2 and the Q3, I'd go with the Q3 just because having the video capability is very cool and doesn't cost all that much more.

Help! I hope one of you zoomophiles will be able to help me. I have no previous recording experience but for what it's worth, I have read most of the 41!!! Piano World pages relating to the H4. Thank you to all who contributed to that thread as I now understand a lot more. But.....I created an audio/video file, opened it through my computer, renamed it and tried to open file in Audacity to "edit-select all" and "effect normalize" I keep getting a message saying that "Audacity.exe has stopped working". After searching for an answer to this online, someone suggested a hard drive issue and to defrag. But that is all up to date. I also have lots of storage space, so that is not the problem either. Any ideas? Another question....if I want to record music/video to be transferred to a DVD, would I use the 24 bit 48k setting? Kind of a short instructional manual with the Q3. What's with that? Thanks Dot for your help so far.
Nora

I think you need to separate the audio from the video in order to edit it with Audacity. You can do that with the Zoom Handyshare tool that comes with the Q3...open up the video to edit it and then click save as audio, and you can choose to save it to your computer or your recorder. Then you need to splice the audio back together with the video once you've edited it.

That worked! And that was such a quick response. Thank you. I haven't tried to splice it back together yet...hopefully there will be no hair pulling on that.