MusiciansBuy User Reviews

not a tech person but the instructions are not user friendly. simple steps to record would be nice. the unit has every thing i want but to access simplicity for use is a task. any input for easy use would help. great product but help me to make it user friendly. thanks bob

This MIC is Professional and Loyal.I live in a 2br apartment and record in my bedroom...and the quality is intriguing. it lets u choose your filter level and its low noise ability is priceless.i made hits in my room. look out for Redemption. you must buy this....low price and sound like or better than the pros.guaranteed

Recommended to friends

Good sound and good overall value. The problem is the memory. The description claims you can record 12 songs or more. Well I can't. With a 1 GB card you get 1 working partition of aprox 488MB and a FAT of aprox 508MB. Recording a song on 5 or 6 tracks with several takes can easily eat up half the available memmory. Cleaning a track does not restore memory. Be prepared to constantly backup and erase your music or purchase a 8 or 16GB Flash card.

I took my machine back for a refund. What I realy need a machine with individual track outputs. Didn't understand the SUB outs on this machine. Loved working with the workstation over my computer. I will consider getting the unit again after further research.

I loved it for all of two months. Now it's in for repairs since end of February and won't be returned until sometime in April according to repair center. Not too happy!!!

For the price you can't beat this. If you're running protools with an 002 or 003 (consumer ). This can expand your recording capabilities by getting 16 tracks. You have to get the optical i o card which is @ $200, but it's an easy install and hook up. You can get your drums sounding like the pro studio's. Throw up to 16 mics on your drums room and hear the difference. The preamps are solid, for the money it's hard to beat this.

I was hesitant to buy a Zoom product after a not so good experience with a guitar effects unit bought in the 80's - but now I am totally impressed! The features sold me: 8 tracks simultaneous recording nice mixer layout with a clean and logical arrangement of inputs, faders, level meters, and other controls built in effects and rhythm machine plus the ability to act as a controller for the included Cubase LE. Plus the abiity to burn the CD onboard. Where else will you find all that at this price? The layout is simple but smart, easy to work with for the most part. Some of the button sequences you need to press are not so obvious (do I use the Project Utility key, or Edit, or is it one of the multi-purpose drum pad keys???) and the manual could be better written, but the most common functions are easy to figure out and to work with. I like the input jacks that can accept either a balanced XLR mic cable or a Hi-Z guitar cable - a smart touch that makes the input section less cluttered while increasing the utility. My old Zoom pedal was plastic and cheaply made this recorder is solidly built and the buttons and faders have a sturdy feel to them. A few buttons were a bit sticky when I first started using it, but after I used them for a couple days they worked fine - I guess they just needed a little loosening up. The parameter knobs don't have as rugged a feel to them as the other controls, but they work OK. The sound is great. Very little noise. The effects are outstanding (though a few of them are gimmicky). Most of the presets are very good and useful as is, but they all can be tweaked. I have never really been satisfied with digital amp models but the ones here are pretty decent and cover a good range of sounds. The reverb is outstanding - there is a Budokan preset that is really convincing. And the rhythm machine is great and again very flexible, including the ability to assign your own sounds to the pads. I also like their FAST (Formula Assisted Song Translator) method of programming the rhythms: (1+2)x4 means play patterns 1 and 2 and repeat this 4 times - simple and saves lots of work when you program a rhythm track. In summary, this is a smartly thought out, feature-packed, and well built digital multitrack that I think is an incredible value! I am an engineer by training, and this is a well-designed and manufactured piece of equipment. I have had it less than a week, so maybe I will find the flaws later, but right now I am in home recording heaven.

I wanted to express my appreciation of Musician's Buy for another great deal. This Zoom MTR is everything I expected and more. I did not want to spend a lot of time trying to learn how to operate a recorder. This unit is very user friendly and has an intuitive interface. You will definitely need to read the manual several times to learn about all of the intricate features but it won't take long before you are burning CD's of your newly recorded songs. I recorded three decent songs within the first week. The drum and bass tracks are surpisingly realistic and add a lot of bottom end when played on my stereo. You will probably need to learn how to write your own drum patterns to get the fills you need and that will take some time. I have also plugged a bass directly into the Hi-Z input with great results. I went through an EH LPB-2ube preamp that sounded great but I think the internal bass amp simulators would sound just fine. I have tried the guitar amp simulators and they sound OK but I still like the miked sound of my vintage Fender amps better. You won't be disappointed with this unit. The build quality seems very good and the layout looks better to my eye than the Boss or Tascam units. It comes with Cubase which I have not tried to use because I wanted to keep it simple for now because this unit will do everything I need without a computer. I just have a Shure SM57 and a Rode NT-1A condenser mike and I can do everything I need except record a live band or full drum set. The other reason I went with the 16 track unit is you can record up to 8 tracks simultaneously if you need to. This unit is loaded so you won't be disappointed. I am an amateur at recording but for the home studio, this unit has all I need.

Underneath the hood, the Yamaha N12 is a 12-input analog mixer, combined with 16-channel digitized Firewire I O and control panel integration with Cubase LE. It has 8 XLR mic inputs and 2 stereo line inputs, plus RCA stereo aux inputs. The 8 XLR channels have built-in compressors, useful for preventing clipping on the Firewire outs. From the manual, the channels appear to be individually digitized after the input pad, compressor, and eq sections, just before the faders. As an analog PA mixer, the N12 is severely limited by having only a single stereo mixing bus, along with a dedicated internal effects loop and a single monitor bus. Aside from its useful input compressors, the Yamaha N12 falls short in capabilities to the 14-input Phonic Helix Board 18 Firewire mixer.