Zoom F6: Is it time to upgrade your recorder? | Curtis Judd

Should you upgrade your zoom f6? It's late 2023 I'm not sure but do me this favor down in the comments below Go ahead and tell me what's not working. Well with your zoom f6 and then I can go and actually answer each of those Individually, so in short it depends and to a large extent Probably the answer is no it probably is not going to do you a lot of good to upgrade your zoom f6 in most Circumstances, there are some circumstances where I think it will this entire episode is being recorded with a zoom f6 right here And we're just actually recording in 24-bit 48 kilohertz. We're not even using 32-bit float more on that later So I'll wait here while you put your answer down below. What's not working? Well with your zoom f6 Let's talk first about some reasons for upgrading that I don't think are probably valid and probably won't get you your money's worth if you do upgrade and The first one would be I want better audio quality if you're not getting good audio quality with your zoom f6 It's probably not the recorder. It's probably something else. It's probably your microphone the cable or Your technique. So if you're still putting your microphone on top of your camera You got it You got to change that if you want better audio quality if you don't care or if it's good enough on the camera fine But a new audio recorder is not probably going to get you better audio quality So just be aware of that the the kind of the fundamental thing here is that the microphone is going to impart the biggest Impact in terms of your audio quality along with where you position that microphone in our case here We're using a Sennheiser mkh 50. It's right here. Just barely out of the frame That's the reality. So if you think you're going to get better audio quality by upgrading to a mix pre 10 to Probably not zoom f8m pro probably not sound devices 833 Probably not. It's probably more to do with your microphone and where you place it Sorry to break that to you because if you've got money burning a hole in your pocket It's just probably not gonna make that big of a difference. I just feel like I've grown out of the f6 Well, if that's one of your reasons as well, I would say Get more specific than that. Is there something about the zoom f6? It's not working for you Does it take too long to set up? Are you finding it difficult to use because of where the buttons are laid out? That could be legitimate now if you were trying to use this in a sound bag say you're a dedicated sound person on a you know on some of your projects and You're trying to operate this from a sound bag I think that's actually a legitimate reason to say, you know, what maybe the zoom f6 is not the best fit for us Maybe it would be fine for those situations where I need to for example Mic up the interior of a car and send them off. That's actually a really good use case for a zoom f6 but if you are booming a microphone and you've got the recorder in a sound bag all day long I find that the ergonomics of the f6 are not that great and that might be a Legitimate reason for example to go with a zoom f8n Pro. Is it going to change the sound quality directly? no, it's the same preamps same pretty much everything except the ergonomics of the The knobs and the buttons and how you control it are better So what that's going to mean how it's going to translate into better audio quality is it's gonna be easier for you to get things Where you need them to capture good audio So it's really important to understand that most people assume if I spend more money, it will sound better It's actually once you get past like six hundred dollars ish on a recorder You might get tiny incremental gains in terms of audio quality But the bigger things are going to be more ergonomics inputs and outputs and things like that there are a variety of other legitimate reasons for upgrading and That might be if you're working more and more production sound you're getting hired for little gigs for little commercial pieces or whatever And you find yourself on a set where you need to Actually feed wireless audio to a director or a producer or a script supervisor or whatever That might be a valid reason to go with something more like a zoom f8n Pro there's also the question of if you did upgrade what would you upgrade to a lot of people are like well if I upgraded to A mix pre 10 to would that be a better recorder? Well, it depends it depends on what you're doing and I don't think it's gonna sound a whole lot different Tiny tiny bit you'll get a little bit more tiny tiniest bit of bass response in the mix pre But ninety nine point nine percent of your audience is not going to notice that so I don't think that in and of itself is a reason to spend almost $10,000 on an upgrade recorder from a zoom f6 So I don't really think that's it just to illustrate this point at some point in this video We switched from recording to the zoom f6 to a sound devices 888 Can you tell where put the time in a comment down below? I'll let you know if you got it, right My point is this Quit letting money burn a hole in your pocket a few pieces of advice Some great ideas from my friend Bandrew over at the podcast edge YouTube channel also the Bandrew says podcast he had some advice which was if you are thinking about buying something write it down on a list and Wait at least 30 days and if at the end of the 30 days you still think it would be useful for you Go ahead. That'll help eliminate the kind of The impulsiveness from the purchases and get your mind Some time to think about it actually logically in a cool rational fashion instead of a oh I just need this That's one. I think really good piece of advice if you're running a business and you need to solve a specific problem Do your research and buy if it's going to solve a problem if you're not sure hire someone you can consult with who has experience in that area and Let them make the mistakes for you or let their experience help prevent you from making the same mistakes So a lot of things to think about I just want you all to have the benefit of experience from my mistakes buying things that I didn't need And I actually feel like at this point now with all of the equipment that I have here. I feel very little need to upgrade Obviously if you have an 888, why would you need to upgrade but it's but it's similar to if you're if you're running a YouTube Channel, why do you need an Arri Alexa LF mini? You don't you do not you can get great video without that and Nobody's gonna notice and nobody's gonna care. It's gonna be just an ego or a vanity thing for you So another thing I'd like to talk about just quickly is 32-bit float frankly, I Almost never use 32-bit float. It just doesn't solve any problems for me And if you think that upgrading to a zoom f6 from something else It doesn't do 32-bit float is going to answer all of your problems You can stick your microphone on top of your camera and you don't have to care and you're gonna get perfect Hollywood sound every single time you are Deluded and you need to stop thinking that way 32-bit float does not solve all the problems in fact, it solves very few problems and There are still going to be audio engineers out there There's still going to be production sound mixers and boom operators out there 32-bit float does not take away their jobs. It just doesn't solve any of those problems So I just don't see 32-bit float as a as the end-all be-all Also there I've got I can't tell you how many notes I've gotten from people saying Oh, I recorded this whole thing in 32-bit float Then I gave it then I delivered it to my client and their post team says they want it in 24-bit What do I do? It's another example. Just why did you record it into a 32? What advantage was there and Yeah, I understand if you're a solo operator and you know, you're operating it You're the camera the lighting that you're doing the interview. You're also operating sound Okay, it could help if you manage to set the gain in correctly but why are you not listening with headphones if you're doing that and you would know right away if there was a problem with that so It's just not worth the upgrade from my point of view. It doesn't sound better in and of itself So this was just a little bit of tough love because I love you get out there and make some great sound