Hello - It is really great to be here. I am usually on the ‘other side of the glass’ as a performer, just getting into recording my voice or instruments myself. on Audacity. I have a very simple home studio set up where I hope to read books as a narrator. I am using a decent shotgun microphone plugged in by XLR to a ZOOM H4n. I am on Mac OS 10.5.8 which I shall be updating soon I hope.
My question is: How to I have to set-up Audacity to see the usb connection from the ZOOM? It doesn’t shoe up on the desktop…I don’t easily see it in Audacity. The ‘preferences’ doesn’t light up. I have tried cmd + , and cmd , and it does select.
Any suggestions regarding how to smoothly use the ZOOM as an audio interface between the mic and the computer into Audacity?
How much control will I have from audacity into the interface? Will I have to physically control the ZOOM i.e start stop, settings or is any of that doable directly from the MAC?
If you connect the Zoom to the Mac first, then when the Mac has recognised it, launch Audacity, the mic should show up as a USB recording device in the device toolbar.
However, I probably wouldn’t bother doing that.
The Zoom H4 is totally silent. Is your Mac totally silent or does it have a fan?
Also, it will probably be much easier to position your mic for optimal recording (mic placement is very important for good recording) if it is not tethered by a USB lead to your computer.
I have a Zoom H2, which I sometimes use to record - I use it as a standalone device and record everything, then take the flash card out and stick it in my computer and drag the files over to the hard drive for editing. Works a treat and I don’t need to drag my computer into the (very quiet) room where I record.
I agree completely. I connect my H4 to the computer via the USB and transfer the sound files over that way. There’s a Zoom setting where you make the card files available for USB transfer. Otherwise I use my H4 for field recording, miles away from my computer.
Since you’re using an external microphone, you can easily watch the sound meters on the H4 and make sure you’re not under volume (awkward) or over volume (fatal).
And yes, that’s what your board op was doing on the other side of the glass. That job didn’t go away. My H4 has a volume switch which is one of the shortcomings of this version. Your H4n may have an actual volume control (much better).