Zoom R8 Portable Multi-track Recorder

Zoom R8 Portable 8 Track Recorder

The Zoom brand has come a long way over the years becoming one of the big brands, but their idea of keeping things small continues, and the portable R8 multi-track recorder certainly excels in this regard.

The R8 takes many of the design features of the bigger R24 and squeezes the entire recorder and control surface into a compact 257(W) x 190(D) x 51(H) mm package that is easy to take to rehearsal, gigs, friends place - wherever you need to go to capture the music.

In addition to 8-track playback and 2-track simultaneous recording using SD memory cards, the R8 is a digital multi-track recorder, an audio interface, a control surface and a pad sampler.

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With a sampler that has of 24 built-in voices, the R8’s built-in drum sounds can be triggered using 8 pads and 3 bank keys to assign sounds to each track and create loops. You can also use the drum machine to create original backing beats, or simply as a metronome.

The R8 comes standard with a 2GB SD card and supports up to 32GB SDHC cards for a maximum of 100 track hours. Using SD media for recording not only makes the R8 lighter and more portable, it also ensures increased reliability with no concern for a crashing hard drive.

Take your R8 into your studio and record additional tracks using its USB audio interface. Then when you’re ready to mix, use the R8’s control surface capabilities to manage each function of your favorite DAW software. Incorporate any of the 150 guitar and studio effects to enhance your recording and use the pro-quality mastering effects to complete that studio sound.

Overall my judgement is that this is a tidy little package, but if I did have to criticize I would say that they could have included more similtaneous recording inputs than just 2 - AD converters are cheap these days and it seems a waste to limit to 2 tracks of input.

But with that gripe over it's not a bad package with a list price of $524.99 but selling for $299 at online retailers like zZounds.

For full specifications go to zoom.co.jp/products/r8/spec

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