Zoom R8 Reviews

ZOOM R8

The zoom R8 was exactly what I needed..easy to use..sound is great .. to be ablecto capture those moments quickly and in great quality really helps

Having great fun with this 8 track

Easy to understand instructions - and pretty much plug in and play !!

Overall, excellent

The machine itself is cool. It's intuitive with a little messing around, but there's one major kicker. It comes with a full version of Cubase Le12, which can't find the drivers as an audio interface. The sound from playback will only come through the surface pro and not through my studio monitors or headphones. It can be used as a midi controller, which is cool, but i'd rather have my reference monitors than manual faders.

Overall, the unit itself is well worth the money, but lads, if your giving something with it for free, make sure it works.

Deadly little thing!

Reminded me of the old Tascam 4 tracks. Neat, tidy design. Very functional and onboard effects pretty good. The built-in drum machine, once you get used to it, is very handy.

I recorded an entire lockdown album on this- admittedly using a Pod XT Pro for effects but very happy with the results.

Intuitive

Poorly intuitive and need to read the instructions.

I still haven't found a way to transfer the recording to a computer,

It’s all there

As a singer songwriter playing acoustic stuff this is really just the job . Simple and good quality.

Makes music out of you!

Excellent little recorder that does it all and very well. It completely replaced my computer daw, I now use it very rarely if I want to manipulate quickly the already recorded tracks. The manual is quite a reading but after finishing it, I had a complete song in a couple of hours just from a simple idea. And when I say complete song I mean it had everything, guitar tracks, bass, drums, vocals, backing vocals and it was all Mastered! My bandmates were stoned! I also use it to record my bands rehearsals, it does it with the usual excellent Zoom quality, of course not so specialized as a Zoom H6 we have! A disadvantage I found is when you want to cut n paste and manipulate a track, its much more difficult than from a daw and the turning wheel takes forever to go from the start to the end of the song, and there is no shortcut! But unlike other similar products, this one records everything in wav format, so you can immediately export them and use them as you like.

All an all is a fantastic product that really inspires me to write music and share it with my band! I totally love it!

Great multi-tool

The fact that it can both serve as control surface and external audio interface for your DAW or just be a stand-alone multi-track recorder is really what makes this a great tool for me. Sometimes I just want to record stuff and I don't care to be near a computer or think too much about it. With the R8 I just power it and start recording, it makes me a lot more productive than having to fire up a DAW, hook up cables, pre-amps and stuff — by the time I'm done with all that all inspiration and creativity has left my body.

Most basic operations are pretty straight-forward but some things are well hidden behind several obscure layers of menus—especially when it comes to sampling/sequencing and such. UX-wise this certainly isn't a master piece but it's adequate.

The quality of the built-in effects is about what you'd expect, but I don't really see why it needs any effects at all. I figure most people that use this will be doing post-processing in a DAW anyway in which case they probably already have their favorite effects and presets there.

You CAN do some rudimentary sampling/sequencing with it, but I personally only use it as a fancy metronome and then do real beats later. If that's an important factor for you, then I think you should look for a different device because it's not where the focus of this one lies.

Great recording device

I was frustrated with recording into pro tools and watching the screen as I played (very distracting for me) , then jumping into editing and mixing too early in the process so I got this device solely to record my tracks and ingest later into DAW for mix/edit. It is perfect for that role. The machine is very easy to use, weighs very little and there are tons of features built in that I will probably never use but many others will, such as using it as a control surface and the rhythm tracks etc. I mostly use a small preamp and compressor on the way in but I have also found that recording directly in works well when I want to put some sketch ideas down very quickly.

Lovely bit of kit

Take it with me all over the place and use it in the home studio as a sketch pad for ideas. Works fine with 'Audition' - in build condensers are better than I expected.

I bought it to replace my old BOSS BR80

It is a bigger unit, but has real faders. The BR80 has been a good piece of gear for me during several years, but all handle with a little dial wearing upon de years of true usage. Zoom R8 looks like more tough. Better capabilities for rhythms and better sound. Better input jacks and good ambience mics. Enough for effets but less than the BR80. You loose the eBand? it depends? load wavs on the SD card and use the loop loader and you are ready to go and record along with. It is also a good sound PC interface with better bit rate than that of BR80. All in all I am satisfied with the purchase. I take it to my studio, to my rehearsal and to my living room. With batteries, with a smartphone charger, connected to the PC or to the supply power block. I load loops and pads. It rocks definitely rocks!

Bye Bye Tape, Welcome Digital

In terms of size, this little thing looks identical to the Fostex 4-track cassette recorder I once had. But it is at least 6 times lighter. The resemblance end there, because this recorder packs the power and ability that many professional studios in the time of that Fostex never had.

The manual and YouTube are enough to get the first recording within 15 minutes, after which the process becomes intuitive: arming new tracks, creating rhythm tracks, bouncing, processing, mixing, mastering. The in-built microphone may not have the highest fidelity, but it makes laying down an idea on the run a breeze.

The Zoom R8 is well worth the 299 Euros it cost.

the best in this range

I was following this product since a long time and I wanted to buy a compact studio. Suddenly the price dropped like 40 percent and I purchased. I think it is the best for this money, if you want to get an alternative it cost almost double, some does not offer the build in guitar effects. Well I like it, even though it is a good plastic enclosure somehow it feels a bit like degraded. It could have been more solid but this does not mean that it has a bad enclosure, it is just the strange feeling what I get. All in all it is very good device for home use amateur guys, the sound is good, coming with cubase LE. lots of features, thumbs up. Now I can learn to make actual song, a lot of details, intro, loops, solo, rhythms and so on and it is not complicated to learn the functions. I would suggest it to my friends..

Nécessite du temps

Acheté pour enregistrer à la maison, j'ai totalement dévié son utilisation et ne l'utilise plus que pour les effets voix inclus.

Même si la prise en main est vraiment instinctive, une utilisation optimale et complète demande du temps et nécessite (à mon avis) un switch (non livré avec) pour enclencher de manière précise un enregistrement et le stopper si on veut faire des boucles.

Les pads de percussion me paraissent être plus un gadget qu'une réelle plus value étant donné qu'il est livré avec un logiciel cubase (ne changez pas de PC sinon vous perdez son droit d'utilisation...) qui permet d'insérer et de construire des rythmes.

La diversité de effets (guitare, voix, basse) est très intéressante. Il est néanmoins dommage de ne pas pouvoir mettre des effets différents sur les 2 input (si vous branchez 2 micros voix, vous devrez choisir celui qui recevra l'effet).

L'arrimage du zoom à l'ordinateur via le logiciel cubase requiert un master en informatique (il ne suffit pas de le brancher pour que cela marche, il faut modifier les paramètres de l'ordinateur...).

A noter que lors de sa livraison, je n'ai pas reçu le bon câble d'alimentation et ai donc du en trouver un autre.

Easy to use, reliable

I've been using this one for three months now, and I've been holding my review to have a better perspective of it. Now I'm ready, and let me just preface everything my saying that I'm very satisfied, and I would absolutely recommended if you need to have an easy to draft ideas on the go (as long as you don't mind humming songs in public areas, as let's say, a train), or having a USB recording interface which you can actually use without the need of a computer.

So I guess the best thing about this tiny little device is how versatile it can be.

Originally I was supposed to use the Zoom R8 to have stereo backing tracks ( prerecorded electronic percussions and backing vocals) and be able to perform live, whilst having the ability to sending the CLICK to our drummer.

Much to my surprise, the R8 can be set to "audio Interface mode". This turned out to be an amazing option, because when we're rehearsing I'm easily able to layer/add new elements to they tracks by integrating the performance with Logic X (my DAW of choice).

Signal processing is very fast on the R8 is very fast, both for stand-alone playback, dubbing, FX, and it's also true for the Audio Interface mode. Hitting on the "low latency" button on Logic allows me to easily and effortlessly record new ideas.

Light and portable good quality home recorder

The Zoom R8 is a fantastic piece of recording equipment. It is very user friendly. I usually use it at home to record alongside a condenser microphone. It comes with Cubase also (which takes a bit of getting used to but you can even use the R8 without Cubase). You can even master your tracks on the R8 which really is a really useful function. It is small and light which makes it very very portable and it takes batteries. I have even used it to record music outdoors for atmosphere. The built in mics are extremely good quality and produce a nice clear overall sound It is a very useful piece of equipment for home recording.

Zoom R8

Amazing little unit, perfect for when your jamming away and come up with a catchy riff and was to record it for future us, like a notepad.

Annoying that transferring the drum track to Cubase is not easy as its not stored as a wav file but that's easily overcome when you work out how to bounce drum track down to audio track.

I borrowed my friends R8 for a month and as soon as he wanted it back I just has to order one as I hated being without it.

I think for a more pro approach to structured recording (ie multilayerd tracks and full band recordings I'd rather use a dedicated audio interface direct to Cubase but for notepad work this is perfect.

Amazing!

This piece of equipment has vastly improved my life! I can record whatever I want when I want, use it as an interface or DAW controller, even a sampler. Great!

Bang for the buck that doesn't feel cheap.

While I was shopping for new audio interface and external DAW controller for my project studio and a sound recorder for my field work I stumbled upon this device... and it obviously has it all.

The build of the device itself is very solid, the buttons, knobs and faders are responsive.

As an audio interface it does its job perfectly, I used it in Windows 7 and Windows 8 x64 with no issues at all. Latency is not a problem, even on a heavy loaded projects. I'm using it in both studio and on stage.

I also use it as a DAW controller with Sonar X2 Producer and it does everything you'd expect it to do. R8's driver installation package has a special option for installing a Sonar plug-in for easy integration. What I miss in this department is mute button for each channel (the buttons above faders seem to work for "solo" only).

For me, it really shines as a portable recorder. I use it mostly to record voice-overs on various locations, recording with a RODE NTG2 and SAMSON Q7. The phantom power switch comes handy. The interface is easy to understand, workflow is very smooth.

Although it's battery powered, it obviously wouldn't be handy for generic field recording due to its desktop nature.

The drum pads, though nice quality and playable, are a bit too small for my taste and I found the built in guitar effects medicore at best.

For the price, a device loaded with so many features is just amazing. It's so flexible that I soon realized I'm taking it almost everywhere the sound is concerned.

Portable 8 tracks and Interface

The zoom R8 is perfect to use as a very portable recording device, it easily fits in a guitar case or a bag. You can record on the go with the in-built mics that actually do a very good job, given the big number of pre-amp effects and plugging a guitar or bass. I often use it as a usb interface when recording on a computer and it has been very reliable as such... all in all, its my favorite recording device for its wide range of possibilities. I would recommend it for guitar practice / jam along device, 8 tracks portable device and usb interface...a great product!