Zoom PS-04

This was my first experience of recording equipment and I've had no problems using it. I'm familiar with pcs but that's about it, so I was expecting some difficulty. I used the manual for specific instructions but I found it easier to learn by experience. The best thing is to mess around with it. The buttons double and triple up with functions so Zoom have been very resourceful with the limited space. The up and down controls are deceptive. You may have physically pushed the volume control up but sometimes the machine doesn't pick it up so you have to push it down and up again.

There is a scroll dial to find exact points in a track, so you can find where you want to edit down to the second. Because it's such a hands-on machine, the buttons are noisy and the mic will pick them up. This doesn't bother me, as I like the roughness, but if you're looking for a professional, clean sound you might have problems.

The Smart Media card is something I overlooked when I bought this. I didn't realise they were so ancient. The 32mb card included will give you 16 minutes of Hi Fi quality and 32 mins of long play. This is very short and it is almost impossible to get a bigger card, the maximum being 128mb. It ruins the extreme portablilty of the machine, as you need to have a PC on hand to store the files.

Be careful: if you delete a track, you are automatically brought back to the previous track, not a root menu. So be careful not to record over the track you are brought back to.

Sound:

I use the mic and the input with a Fender Strat. I just plug in and listen through earphones while recording. The mic is excellent and very sensitive, and there are tons of effects. If you have a good lead, you should get a good clean sound from the guitar. You can choose a "dirty" line effect if you want. I had problems with the send effect, it doesn't work sometimes, but the mic, guitar, master, line and dual effects are far reaching. The guitar effects are from soft to really hard, but you can't record the mic while using a guitar effect. This bothers me because I don't like over-dubbing vocals. I think you lose the spontaneity.

Some of the distorted guitar effects are too strong. You have turn the volume down really really low.

Very reliable. It runs for ages on 4 AA batteries. You can order an adapter online.
It's so portable, you can take it outside and record the passing traffic or make your own effects. It's the small media card that ruins this.

Can't comment on the gig use. It's a bedroom toy for me. It's a great way to play away for your own enjoyment late at night. Using headphones, no one else can hear you.

I emailed with a question about recording a drum pattern and they replied quickly with a no-bullsh!t short answer that did the job.

Never got an upgrade. No idea what it entails or if it's available.

Not sure what type of music I play, but I like lo-fi sounds, thick guitar and good vocals. Suits me.
I'd definitely buy it again.
Love the compactness, the no-frills. The software provided is really basic. Just volume changes and track panning.
Hate the smart media card, the fact you can only record mic+guitar when there is no effect on the guitar.
Helps me make music. I've used Garageband which makes it really easy to get a smoothness to the track, so you might sound better than you do live. This isn't really possible with the PS-04 as it's not a very visual machine (screen is very basic) but you get a very honest sounding result.

you must use the owner's manual, or all is lost. unfortunately, it is 125 pages that aren't very well organized. the canned rhythms and the goofy bass aren't very useful for real recordings. the proprietary format is a pain in the ass and the out-dated technology of an sm type smartmedia card are serious disadvantages. i would go with a boss recorder and leave this one alone. i am returning this and that is the route i plan to take. try getting a 128 mb smartmedia sm card and you are looking at paying seventy five bucks. an usb ported card reader will run you another fifty, or so. do the math. it doesn't make it very appealing.

i have ran this into a roland cube 15 on clean and an old gibson ga-5t. you can't tweek the levels on the effects, or amp models so it is only going to sound like it sounds... which is not great. the bass track is cheesy and a complete waste of a recording track. you aren't going to like it.

if it were stolen, i would kick myself for not returning it and getting my money back beforehand. buy something with touch sensitive drum machine pads, and fully programmable. you would be shocked at how useless the rhythm samples are.

Good sound? It is easy get "a" sound from it.......editing is normal difficulty and the manual is explicative.The dial knob is too much fast but....change the sound live and you mistake easy.....the knob change sound as you touch...it's better if zoom put in two up-down buttom. So 7 for easy editiong and 3 for live use. So 5. For the sequncer in it....don't use! Build own song is very hard and the memory at full capacity finish early.
A help at sequencer limit is a thirdy part program for pc....why zoom not include it in pack?....too bad!

i have said it is easy get "a" sound....not a good sound! Not try to sned the output of this very plastic box at a tube amp! It destroy the amp sound, you don't recognize more your amp. Only with headphone you can hear a decent sound. But alsy in this condition you get basically only two sound: funky 80' sound and a sort of metal sound. The classic amp... muddy or metallic.
More...reverb is isolate from the other effects...only in generally patch.
A little classic pedal is galaxy better.

If i don't attach it is better.
I sure gig without it.

Support for yhe lack of any sequencer editing program is .... zoom save 5 or maybe 10 bucks from the price and you get a useless sequencer.
Give me the misure of professionality of Zoom .... sell and forget the user.

I have said all. I have sold the box and play guitar, amp and maybe a little pedal. Stop. I don't want this little box destroy the sound of my strat and my tube amp. Stay away.

Well, we are talking about a very small unit, the size of an ancient cassette Walkman. So, some of the numerous features (quite an amazing number, by the way) are hidden inside menus. There is just so many knobs and buttons they could lay on the unit faceplate.

But the "getting strated" part of the instruction manual makes you rather quickly an old-hand at recording with the unit. When time comes to ping-pong tracks, mastering your recordings, using V-Takes, adding effects, changing pitch or tempo, etc... the specific sections are also well laid-out and easy to understand. (Based on your knowledge of the basics). So, don't jump the gun. Start from page one untill you get a good feel of the way the beast behaves.

I will still give a score of 7 because using multi-level menus with a limited number of direct controls will always be a pain in the back-side, no matter how. But in light of the obvious physical limitation that they had to face, they couldn't had done a better job.

Quite intuitive, once you know your way around the phylosophy behind the controls.

Never forget that you have a decent pocketable studio capable of delivering surprising quality demos. Team that with a diminutive electric guitar (? neck in a body just big enough to hold a pickup, two knobs and a hard-tail bridge)or a 24 keys modern and versatile keyboard and of course, a good laptop computer, and you are out to write, play and produce anything out of a small breifcase in a hotel room. The good buit-in mike will take care of the signing quite surprisingly.

Being battery operated on readily avaliable AA alkalines is a definite plus. And the battery life is quite okay too. I would still recommend using the AC adapter whenever possible.

There are but 3 severe drawbacks. The sampling rate and frequency limit the recordings to 15KHz. But then again. When is the last time you passed an audiogram? You'd be surprised to learn that you no longer can hear beyound 16 if not 12K. This is life. And bear in mind that 15KHz is the bandpass of commercial FM radio. Do you still enjoy listening to an old Boston or Led Zep tune while driving in your car?

Of course, the worst problem with this unit is the choice of solid-state recording media. At the maximum (128MB) there is room for tens of minutes of recording but as soon as you start laying track after tracks, you realise that this machine is only good to edit a single song. But this is where the laptop computer comes-in handy.

And finally, there is no USB connection. This nice toys will never see your computer. You do things in it and record them on the memory card, and then, take the memory card to your computer to finish the job. They will never see one another and for me, this is a little bit "toyish". Any serious musician's tool should be fully computer interfacable. But again, what do you get for $200?

And don't forget, it's got a programmable drummer and bass player that are not Krupa and Mingus, but actually very good. There are several ways to "instruct" them about your project and they play what you tell them in the key you want them to. Very good indeed.

Hey! It is just as good as any multi-effect around. I mean those not featuring one 12AX7 or two, of course. But, solid state for solid state, digital for digital, it is up the par. In other words, distortions are not always convincing but time domain and modulation effects are worth using. The presets, as on many other multi-effect units are not always tweaked to one's liking. This is also life...

But, I must admit that I mounted an original blues on this machine and, using the (quite good)buit-in mike, I picked a ready-made voicing that made me sound like Robert Plant. The same goes for presets guitar effects. Not always perfect, but truly interresting.

The nice part is that if you plan on using it as a "cheap" studio solution, you can't go wrong, but if you want to save even more bucks, the thing can be used as a mere in-line effect. Yes, this could be your multi-effect box. There would be no pedal board nore midi-out, but it would do the job while hiding a handy recorder in the back store.

It is, frankly, a limited budget young musician's power tool. Yes, I mean it, and I don't care about Mr. "I play a '58 LesPaul and a '62 Strat into a Blackface rare thing and I don't believe into anything less than 96KHz, 32 bits and one zillion times oversampling."

This is indeed a great sounding and versatile toy for the money. Hey, we are comparing $200 to $20000. Let's get real somewhere...

As far drums and bass are concerned, the slap-bass is the pits, but more conventionnal playing style is quite convincing. Drums are not the real thing, but as it is the case for me, in songs, where singing is up front, the drumming is good.

I haven't opened it and it looks to me, in regard of the price and amazing power offered, like a "one-chip job". What could go wrong with it? I don't know.

Mine has worked fine for 6 months now.

Never had to deal with Zoom. Their site has all the software upgrades and info one could need. They seem like a serious company.

In a nutshell. If you are just starting or even strating over again, if you need all the modern effects plus some range of clean and overdrive sounds (digital sounds, I understand, and you should too)and the nice commodity to play and sing while having a fully programmable dummer and bass player, for the money, nothing comes close to it.

As has already been said, this is a compact device and there is a learning curve in terms of getting started - I had the advantage that I traded up from a PS-02, so the concepts were familiar, but even first timers will pick it up pretty quickly.

I haven't experimented with tweaking the guitar effects yet, mainly because there are 3 or 4 which sound awesome straight out of the box.. I have a Vox Tonelab, and for me the presets are better on the PS-04, through headphones at least. I had a Boss BR-8 for a while, and was very disappointed with the quality of the effects and the virtually non-existent drum models - the PS-04 has everything you need to record good quality demos, providing you're patient. Converted to MP3s and played back through a good system, the sound quality is excellent. Ignore the wimpy demo song it comes with, you'll be able to do much better than that.. oh, and the bass track is pretty much a waste of time.

I haven't had it that long, so this is based more on my 2 years with the PS-02, but generally pretty reliable. I had a couple of issues with corrupted Smart Media cards with the PS-02, and had to download the software from the Zoom site (which is a very helpful resource), but other than that, good. As said elsewhere, this is not something that you want to chuck around, it will break if you try hard enough..

The website is extremely helpful, I've never needed to contact the company directly.

I play rock/blues/jazz and find the PS-04 useful for all styles - the interfacing can be a little frustrating at times, but it does what you need it to do and let's not forget that this little beauty costs relatively little, can run off batteries and fits in your pocket... My old Boss BR-8 gathered dust, this gets used most days.. I love it, and if I lost it I would certainly replace it. An absolute bargain.

Once the manual is read a few times it is ok to find your way around the unit. It is a steep learning curve, and it does take a fair bit of effort to get a nice sound out of it, but it is possible.

Editing patches is roughly the same as any kind of pedal or whatever, most of the sounds are pretty good with a little tweaking.

The drums are o_k. You can add a little reverb or delay to the drums but it involves putting them onto a track.

The bass is useless really. Get a bass if you want to sound good.

However, all the menu surfing with the little buttons and wheels gets a little tiring after a while.

I generally just play straight through the unit, sometimes putting it on the end of a mic stand and recording through the in-built mic.

The amp models on it are pretty good. I don't own a multi-effects pedal so I can't compare to anything like that, but the sounds were all generally useable. Modulation effects were ok, I generally didn't use them that much. Delays are a little lacking, but useful. Similar situation with the Reverb on it.

However, digital recording is really good and handy, and ceratin proceedures can be taken to reuce the noise that occurs. The ZNR or whatever is really good.

It always works really well, although I haven't exactly been using it every day. It is light, but that's the idea.

The thing that was most annoying about the PS-04 was the lack of accessories that came with it. It chews through batteries, so i forked out $35 for a power adaptor.

I also bought a mic stand adaptor which ended up being really useful. This was also $30 for a bit of plastic.

That shoudn't really be in the customer support, but I didn't really deal with ZOOM directly.

The main problem with the PS-04 is that it's an in-between recorder. Sure, you can record a simple demo with it, but with all the effects, drum machine blah blah blah that rarely happens. So the idea is to record a good demo, but the PS-04 lacks the quality to pull off a semi-nice/professional result. It also requires lots of time and patience, so I often scrapped the song after 3-4 tracks, or halfway through programming the drums.

However for $399 it was a pretty good introduction to recording, digital especially.

If/when I sell it, I reckon I will buy a analog tape machine, because having the PS-04 made me realise that I only wanted a sketch-pad so to speak, not a sketch-pad with bells and whistles.

I'm able to get really good sounds out of it on my strat. I was impressed with that. Editing patches is fairly straight forward. So far, I have found the manual to be VERY good. This little thing is a palm-top studio and it MEANS it, so expect to have a learning curve. But once you get the basics down, its a snap and you can then truly use it as a portable device. I record vocals thur the built in condeser mic while in my Hyundai Accent on the way to work! I create the drum/bass track during lunch at starbucks. It really is an awsome, awsome way to get music back into your schedule.

I only use my Strat with it. No amp. I just plug straight in. The unit is very quite and clean. Most of the guitar effects are usable right out of the box. I use mine mainly for blues music, so I just drop the volume knob of the guitar back a bit and I can turn any distorted setting into something I can work with. There are several clean, dirty and heavy distorted patches that are really nice, right out of the box. I just work with those. So there's a whole slew of editing that I have yet to get into....amp models, cabinet types, etc.
Its versitile and just loaded with goodies. I'll give it an 8 cuz its $199 bucks. Put it this way...its $199 effects are pristine and quiet.

Its lightweight and you prolly wouldnt want to drop it. If it fell off the coffee table onto my carpeted floor while I was recording guitar, it would be fine. Drop it at the mall onto the cement...might break it. Think of it as a PDA or palmtop computer. If you have a tendencey to drop shit like a retard?...you might want to re-think your purchase of anything delicate. :)
I'll rate it an 8 only because its not a brick.

never delt with them.

I play blues on this mostly. I'd buy it again, even if it breaks. I really like its portability. The built in drum/bass are why I bought it. I can very easily program with the ~FAST~ feature that it has. The idea was for me to be able to concentrate on guitar and vocals and it lets me do that. I'm still using the 4 Duracells I put in it 2 weeks ago and I'm still using the 32mg Smart Media card that came with it. I record everything on the LONG mode(15khz), just because I'm trying to get back to my 4 track cassette roots. I really wish it had a USB port and a way to easily export straight to .mp3 or .wav file. You ~can~ do this, but you have to jump thru a few hoops.
This little device helps me make music, and thats what I bought it for. Its funny, I'm 40 and finally got to a point where I could afford whatever I wanted...to my hearts content. So I got all this stuff and it was like I didtn know where to start or something. So I decided to scale WAY back.
I've done way more recording now. The vocal patches have some really nice echo and reverb on them that allows me to sing in the car and utilize my drive time. The background noise is much lower than you might think, and I'm in a small car!
The ~FAST~ pattern creation stuff is a big time saver. Once you get it down, its very easy to put in your pattern and then edit it to your liking. you can go back and change the bass type, the drums, etc.
This little guy is a winner.

Don't expect a good sound from it... i dont think anyway...
it's more of a demoing tool !
editing patches... tricky... it's a great unit... lots of learning! i haven't programmed anything!
upgrades... hmmm... i'm is stock haven't upgraded... i bought mine in Nov. 2004.
The manual come's in 3 books (en/es/de) and each is around 200pages.
It's sometimes hard to read but its thorough

I use the stock settings.. it's has an inbuilt guitar fx pedal... it's sounds ok.
amp... mainly headphones.
sound like favorite artist .... hmm i don't think so.. for me its demoing tool.. it sounds dorky but its a good work in progress.
the fx's are very ordanary! but good varity.. you can program them yourself!

very reliable.. even with batteries! which i love.
i don't use it for gigs ... tho jamming it's a great too to get something down quickly and anyway!... i don't use a computer anymore in jam sessions... it's great ;)

zoom... never had to deal with them.
not aware of upgrade

it's smart unit!.. very flexiable.. great features
and it's 100% portable!
I take mine in a camera bag! easy
it's worth the money, i would get another!
compiered to the korg's unit it beats it.. tho i think the quality is abit better.. still the zoom has way more features.
i wish it came with the mike clip haha ;)
it helps making music for sure... the basics are very easy!
yer good forum too!

Not easy at all ... It was easy to begin with but now after four recordings i'm doing exactly the same thing but it refuses to record maybe its broken...

excellent when it works

Maybe if it would work ... i think thats a no

great potential but the instructions are so limited and i followed them 4 times now with sucess on the 5th attempt it just doesn't do anything that i want... very cionfused the troubleshooting guide sucks...

i had neevr recorded before i got this unit and within 5 minutes i already had figured out how to lay down a few tracks. The manuel seems complex but if u set up what u want step by step its e to figure out.

Im using a jackson warrior xt and an old randal 2x12. The effexts are pretty descent n u can set the levels if u dont like the presets. I used the unit with anamp and headphones both sounded great. i dont go for the osund of other artists so that na.

hasnt broke or froze on me yet never know with electronic thing liek this tho

Good website dont go to the smasontech one tho o to zoom.co.jp for the downloads

cant find a cheaper digital recorder and it actually sounds rlly good too.