26Feb Zoom h4n memory card load times and the slow boot problem
A number of you have sent me emails about incredibly slow boot times when using the Zoom h4n. Instead of replying to the question multiple times, I thought it might be easier to address it here.
The Zoom h4n is a pretty decent field recorder for the price, but it doesn’t seem to play well with large capacity memory cards. I haven’t had this problem on the Tascam DR-60d or any of my other field recorders for that matter. The problem seems to be limited to the Zoom h4n.
The slow boot time isn’t a huge issue, as long as you stick to cards in the 4GB to 8GB range boot times stay under 1 min which isn’t horrible. That’s also enough space to get you through an average day of recording. Not sure what causes the Zoom h4n to have this problem, but as long as you are aware of it, you can avoid the 3 or 4 min wait times larger cards can cost you. In this case it looks like larger cards aren’t the answer.
March 4th, 2014 at 7:29 pm
Zoom H4n is the best recorder money can buy. None of the Tascam recorders (although they are cheaper) is any match to the mighty H4n recorder. The plusses outweigh the minuses
October 18th, 2015 at 9:54 pm
Couldn’t agree more on quality, but I do create .wav files for the best-ever quality without the “segmented quality” sometimes that happens with MP3 recordings. BUT- my main question is, why doesn’t the internal memory remember date and time of recording ? I shut off camcorders and still cameras all the time, when not in use, but when booted up again to use, the date and accurate clock time is always remembered from the initial setting when the unit is setup. I also noted that when you were talking about boot times, you use the “Stamina” setting, as I do, to get longer battery life. Is there a possibility if that were turned off that boot times would be quicker? – – and maybe even remember dates and clock time any better ?
Thanks for your input.
Bob
January 19th, 2016 at 1:01 am
the h4n doesn’t have internal memory. and speaking on the boot time im using a lexar 32 gb and my boot time is 42 secs. my issue with the h4n i cant find an answer to is why it lost the last few minutes of my recording over the weekend grrr. lol