As some of you might know I regularly enter contests at the KVR Music Cafe. Another regular there is a guy called Echo Voodoo.

I noticed how he was using a Zoom H2 to record vocals and since I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of these recordings, I asked him how he liked this little device…

Zoom H2 Handy Recorder - my impressions (by Echo Voodoo)

As a musical hobbiest and home recordist, I had been looking for a portable, easy-to-use, high-quality recorder for quite a while. I had been using a Sony Hi-MD minidisc recorder with an external microphone for about a year, but wasn’t entirely happy with either the sound quality or the portability.

Then, in September 2007, Zoom released their H2 Handy Recorder, and all of my personal portable recording needs were answered.

The Zoom H2 is a compact digital recorder with 4 built-in microphones. It runs on 2 AA batteries, and it’s small enough that it actually fits into my pocket comfortably. It’s fast and easy to use - from the time you flick the power switch until you’re recording audio is under 10 seconds.

You can plug an external microphone into the unit through the 1/8″ jack, but I’ve never done that. The internal mics are excellent. As soon as I started using the H2 for recording vocals, I received compliments on the improved sound quality compared to my previous songs. It can record in 24 bit/96 kHz WAV if you want, or to MP3, though I only use it to record 16bit/44.1kHz WAV myself.

The 4 microphones are arranged with 2 facing front and 2 facing back. The front mics are fixed in a 90 degree directivity angle, and the back mics are fixed at 120 degrees. You can record either front, back, or both at the same time. If recording with both front and back, you can either record to stereo, or have it record seperate stereo tracks for both front and back at the same time so that you have a 360 degree recording.

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One of Native Instruments’ latest KORE SOUNDPACKS is FM8 Transient Attacks, a KORE sound library featuring cutting-edge FM8 sounds for modern electronic music production, ranging from dirty electro basses to otherworldly FM grime at the touch of the Morph pad.

For those not familiar with the KORE product range, the software part of KORE includes six Native Instruments sound engines (REAKTOR, MASSIVE, ABSYNTH, FM8, KONTAKT and GUITAR RIG) and provides ready-to-play sounds that can be easily browsed and tweaked from the interface. KORE SoundPacks are expansion packs for KORE products such as KORE 2 and the free KORE Player.

As its name suggests, FM8 Transient Attacks delivers new sounds using the FM8 audio engine.

The product page reads:

the sounds of FM8 TRANSIENT ATTACKS have been meticulously crafted to deliver extremely diverse yet exceptionally playable FM bass, leads, percussion, arpeggiated sounds and more. Taking advantage of the parameter-driven nature of FM synthesis, the morphing functions of FM8 and KORE have been extensively incorporated into the sound design, allowing everything from instant sound adjustment to radical transitions and giving you a total of 1,600 sound variations.

FM8 Transient Attacks comes with 200 exclusive KoreSounds (not available in FM8 or KORE 2 factory libraries) and each sound has 8 variations.

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FabFilter has recently released Volcano 2, a versatile filter effect plug-in.

The product Volcano product page reads:

FabFilter Volcano has proven to be one of the few plug-ins that offer convincing high quality digital filtering with unique analog character. With tons of new features, modulation options and a highly improved user interface, the new Volcano 2 is absolute top of its class!

So what does Volcano 2 have to offer?

• 4 multi-mode stereo filters (each with low-pass, high-pass, and band-pass responses with 12, 24 and 48 dB/octave slopes) and 11 different high-quality filter characteristics that define the unique sound and overdrive of the filter.
• Flexible routing allows you to route the four available filters in almost any way you can think of.
• Extensive modulation options for XLFO, Envelope Generator, Envelope Follower and the MIDI source, and drag-and-drop modulation with the 24-slot modulation matrix.
• Innovative “what-you-use-is-what-you-see” interface, and interactive filter display.

Just to name a few things…

Getting started

The first time you open Volcano 2, you may find its many options a little intimidating. With its various shades of red, and cone shaped filter slopes it’s actually not that hard to imagine a landscape of erupted volcanoes. Looks beautiful to me!

Anyway, as with other FabFilter products I’ve worked with, the GUI is very clear and intuitive and FabFilter’s interactive help hints will get you on your way in no time.

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MoReVoX is well known for its impulse reverbs. Some of Sabino Cannone’s IRs are even featured in Digidesign’s TL Space.

Besides impulse reverbs, MoReVoX also offers some drum sample libraries. The recently released Elektromorph 2 is a library featuring loads of original drum sounds.

The product page reads:

Divided into Massive Path Sounds and Creative Path Sounds, MoReVoX ELEKTROMORPH 2 has been recorded with unique top quality signal paths to create individual sound coloring, then hyper-edited in both analog and digital domains.

The “Massive Path Sounds” are the more or less natural sounding recording, while the “Creative Path Sounds” have a more processed sound. Think deep, hard, punchy, fat and wide sounds. Dirty tube distortion, ultra compression, stuff like that.

Each path has 15 kicks, 20 snares, 3 tom racks and 3 sidesticks. Both paths include 36 cymbals each (hi-hat, crash, ride, splash etc.)

Elektromorph 2 comes in Drumagog, Drum Rehab and Battery 3 formats but since I don’t own any of these, I used the Battery kits in Kontakt 3.

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