Zoom Gear & Home Recording Forum

Around this time last year I received the R16, and shared information to help improve the product. ZOOM did not respond by changing the firmware, but instead were working on the R24, which is essentially the H4n to the R16. Now I've ordered the R24 and will be tearing it apart to see how they did.

My first reaction was disappointment, that they chose to stuff a sampler into the small form-factor rather than just giving us MIDI, footswitch, and the extra bank of tracks. Simply improving the R16 would've been fine. But I'm curious exactly what changed, so I'll reserve judgment until it's dissected.

I found a way to get the R24 for $450, which I just tried to see how it goes. I won't be surprised if it ends up taking 2 weeks or something where the $50 savings turned out to be not worth it, but if it works out it can save some people some money, and they have affiliate linking so I can earn back a few bucks.

If anyone has any requests for what they want to know, I'll try to fulfill them as I satisfy my own curiosities about the device. I'm mostly interested to see how the workflow has changed now that there's a multi-line LCD, new buttons, and changed menu items. I'm also curious if the amp modeling has improved.

You can see whatever I learn as I document it to my Zoom R24 page.

Cool. Mine should ship next week sometime. I'll report as well...

The bigger screen is a plus...can see more menu functions at once.

I want to see how to integrate the drums and looping function...that will be the biggie for me I guess...how easy and how quick can they be set up. Looking over the manual I kinda of have an idea of what they are talking about but as we know doing it trumps reading about it...

Yes. Often when I read something like that in the manual first I think I understand it and it seems great in theory! Then I get it, and actually doing it I discover it's kind of a pain, and then end up never using that feature because, although it's possible, in practice it's just too much of a hassle to bother.

I have Akai MPCs, which have similar drum grids and sampling functions, so I'll compare the workflow in the R24 to the MPC.

Here's a nice surprise: there are 16 pads...not 8.
(2 banks)

Yeah it says bank 1 is for "drum kit sounds" and 2 is "percussion sounds".

Are the built-in drum kits something you see yourself using often?

I'll wager that they've setup the drums similar to most "arranger" keyboards such that Bank 1 (or MIDI channel 10 on an arranger) is a full drum "kit" whereas Bank 2 (or MIDI channel 9 on an arranger) is nothing but auxiliary percussion (congas, bongas, shaker, guira, tambourine, etc.).

This is actually a good setup because you can separate out the auxiliary from the bona fide "drum kit" drums and raise or lower volumes separately. Comes in handy.

This R24 is looking pretty good. In my quest for world audio domination, I just might have to cast forth the sheckels. Basically...at the $450 price it's only about $50 more than the R16 from what I can see.

Kevin do you see yourself using the stock drums in your final productions? Do you record with them to help with timing then remove them before mixing down?

IF you mean the "stock" drums of the R24 I would have to hear them and compare them in MINUTE detail to what I have with the PSR keyboard and EZ Drummer and all that.

I would also have to see how they worked "in performance". In other words, what if they were a great way to have drums for live performance and since they're built right into the recorder I assume I can "capture" them.

IF they had good sound and were easy to "arrange" and if they didn't interrupt my workflow, then yes, I would use them for final production stuff.

On the other hand, for my album "Old School" that I'm working on right now, NOTHING will knock me off the track of using the kit on the PSR and the "Stage 4" reverb. I will also try my hand at "re-amping" the drums and bass from the PSR to give it that "old skool" sound.

On the complete and total opposite other hand, I tend to use whatever I can find at the time of a particular project or time of life that I'm in. So ya never know.

The pads are velocity sensitive, but it doesn't seem to say if the built-in drum sounds are velocity layered.

Still the drum feature is much to limited:
- No way to play the drum sounds other then with the build in pads (no e-drums or whatever).
- No way to import patterns (i've got an extended library of midi drum patterns from ezdrummer etc.)
- No way to edit the patterns other then on the R24 itself (no soft editor for your comp like Armin's, you will have to allways use the tiny display).
This all means the usability of the drums is way less then on the HD16 and allthough a nice "extra" over the R16, it sure ain't the groundbreaking all-in-one solution i'm looking for.

You can assign samples and loops to the pads. Doing this you can create "phrases" for each pad (verse, chorus, bridge, jam, etc). This will be handy for working out arrangements in a non linear recording structure. It remains to be seen, and I have been trying to sus it from the manual, if there is an extra bank of 8 pads for this as well...making 16 total pads fro phrasing loops and samples...

R24 Pattern Editor will be available soon ;-)

Yeaaaaaaah, that's good news.
Now the big question is: will it import and export midi files?

Perhaps that drum feature is more like a toy. Just for "scratch recording". In my opinion, unless paying for an item that's $1000.00 and up it's going to be a gimmick. I'm kinda against the R24 because it came out almost back to back with the R16. Yeah! Me and my crazy posts....

It is possible that when in sample/loop/pattern mode
that each of the three banks of tracks
Get it's own bank of pads as well...to play loops/samples/phrases
That can then be assigned to that track (1-24)

I'm just guessing...I don't know for sure just by reading the manual...but it hints that that may be the case.

So to sum up, this guessing of mine, we have in the R24:

Two banks of pads (1-8/9-16) for individual drums and individual percussion
Three banks of pads for sampling.

Am I right?

The manual doesn't explain very well does it?

It looks like each track can have an audio file assigned to it, which can be set to loop between two points, and triggered by the pad in either repeat, gate, or 1shot mode. Each track also seems to have a track sequence, which is essentially like a timeline of MIDI triggers.

What they don't seem to clearly explain is how exactly all of this comes together. Is there a global sequence where you program when everything is played? Or, do looped tracks just always play, and individual track sequences all overlap?

If you record a guitar riff, then set it to loop, does it automatically loop constantly throughout the whole song? How do you sequence it to only play during the hook? If you have 4 tracks with different drum patterns, how do you tell it to play 1 twice, then 2 once, 1 twice, then 3 once, etc.?

I don't think each track gets its own bank of pads. It's simply that you have 24 tracks, and each of those can be assigned a .wav file, which can either be set to loop or triggered with the pad. If you had 8 drum samples you wanted to use, you'd have to use a whole bank, leaving you with 16 tracks left for regular recording. Then in the track's sequence you can trigger those drum samples, but I'm not sure how you sequence them for the whole song.

I don't get that from the manual... What I see is that each project has /one/ sequence; the display of said sequence is a grid of

measure/beat ->
t
r
a
c
k
|
V

In that grid is displayed when the sample/pattern of a track is to be played, and how long it is. Look at step 5 on page 54...

So far as I can tell, those are track numbers going down the left edge (notice the scroll bar on the right edge indicating that 1-4 is about a sixth of the total height)

I suspect loops are treated as one-shots when filling in the sequence -- one would have to trigger it at the proper point for each measure...