Zoom H5 error

AntonHunter

I've had some weirdness with my Zoom H5. I  recorded a couple of our gigs last weekend, loaded the files from one of them into Reaper and a bit of it is marked ERROR - some investigation shows around 14 seconds is just missing (we filmed it too, so have things to compare it with). Playing the audio, you can hear the join just about, but yeah, when comparing it to the camera audio, the H5 just seems to pause recording and jump ahead. Still gives one continous audio file, just it's around 14 seconds shorter than it should be!

Anyone ever encountered that before? Any suggestions what might be the culprit...?

BillDL

It could be that the SD storage card has developed some bad areas and the device has had to try and do some error correction and carry on.

The first thing I would do is replace the card with a new one and ensure that the firmware on the device is fully updated.  Other than that it will just be a case of doing a lot of recording to see if it happens again.

AntonHunter

Cheers Bill, that makes sense. I guess there's a limited lifetime to SD cards, I'll get another one!

BillDL

The lifetime is generally quoted as tens or hundreds of of thousands of "writes" to the card before it can start showing errors, so most people using a digital camera may never experience problems with a card.  Assuming the card does comply with the estimated number of "writes", in real life there are changes in temperature, repeated handling, and sometimes bending, that can shorten the life of a card and start showing strange errors.  The good thing is that storage cards are now pretty cheap compared with 10 or 15 years ago.

DavidR

Never had that with my Zoom H4 after several years usage both at home and have several made some hours long recordings of gigs. 

Buy some new SD cards would be my solution too. Not forgetting that Zooms require the correct generation of SD to operate.

AntonHunter

Argh! It happened again tonight with a new (month or two old) SD card! 45 seconds of one of the tunes just disappeared (I can tell as I've got a back-up stereo recording on another device).

Frustrating! I'm going to check what Zoom have to say about the SD card maybe...

BillDL

I would certainly see what Zoom have to suggest.  I assume that the device buffers the audio stream in some kind of RAM memory while it is writing to the storage card. If the storage card is unable to handle the write speed to it or if the RAM memory in the device is faulty it might cause issues like you have experienced.  Is there a setting anywhere in the menu anywhere that allows you to increase or decrease the amount of data that is buffered?

DavidR

What sampling rate are you recording on? Would changing it make a difference?

For long files like gigs and concerts, and because SD cards are finite, I usually record on .mp3 but 44.1kHz for putting home recording of pieces onto SoundCloud because it seems to translate well into .wav files.

Still never had problem you are having. Do you still have the large users manual for the H5? Any answers in there?

P.S. 44.1kHz is the sampling rate for 'CD standard recording' but the files are much bigger than mp3. SoundCloud will label your tracks as 'HD' if you download as .wav. I can hear the difference personally but if you ever want to email audio files .mp3 is more convenient because the files are so much smaller. Generally mp3 is adequate for everyday listening back but is not adequate for fine recording for albums or professional or archival work.

Hope that helps but it may not!

AntonHunter

All good advice. I was on 48k / 24 bit last night as that's what the videographer wants when I've mixed the audio. But I've noticed it at other settings on .wav. I've not tried MP3 because I'm wanting to get the files into my DAW for mixing afterwards etc.

I'll investigate a buffer size too, I've not seen one but haven't looked directly