Looking to record some acoustic covers out and about. I know quite a few singer/songwriters enjoy using the H2 by Zoom, though, I am aware of video microphones too. Any advice/thoughts are welcome.

Budget : 200$ (more or less)
Goal : Achieve the best sound possible without suffering in post.

By video microphones, do you mean those shotgun microphones that mount on your video camera? Or the video capable Zooms?

I have two of the Zoom Q2n's and I really like them. The X-Y stereo mics are on a par with other Zoom mics, which is to say I think they are very good for capturing the "sound in the space". Clean and natural with good reach. I think it lends itself very nicely to polishing up in Post.

4k video and 24/96 audio, but you can lower these resolutions to save disk space if you need to. A bunch of lighting presets, including a decent low-light setting. The camera FOV has 5 settings (from normal to very wide). There's a button for each function, so menu-diving is greatly reduced.

As you might have already guessed, I really love these things. They are tiny, they will fit in the accessory compartment of your guitar case. I get 2-4 hours runtime depending on the type of battery, but you could also run it off of USB. It's $199, but you have to get a micro SD card separately.

Dave Weckl

Thanks for the help good sir. I saw that too, though considered an H2n or H4Essential since I have a camera I can run. 4k video at that price is pretty crazy though.

I always think of these Zooms as audio recorders with video "tossed in" as a bonus. Now a 'real' camera will probably beat it, but I have to say, the quality is pretty darn good considering. Image-wise, the Q2n is a pretty wide FOV, even on its "tele" setting. (The Zoom doesn't zoom! ) OTOH, it is very compact, so if you wanted to travel light...

I posted this video below in another thread. This guy uses an H2 for the audio in a lot of his videos. IMO, it sounds surprisingly good. They have a Dead Cat on the mic part for the wind.




The nice thing about the H4 (and up) models is that they can take XLRs, provide phantom power and so on. So you could record remotely with your studio mics, plus the internals. I have an H6 and it not only has 4 XLRs but even has a module that pops in to the 'internal' mic slot to give you 2 more XLR preamps instead.