Zoom H2 with the IMR Vortex encoder?

Question

Looking at the specs of the well known Zoom H2 I stumbled upon the following: a relatively new and low cost piece of software by IM Research, which converts multi-channel files from the H2 and H4 to various 'surround' formats:

http://im-research.com/products/vze/

I've found metric tons of information about the H2 on here and elsewhere but very little to no user experiences with this specific software. (Excuse me if it has been discussed on here, I did a search.)

Who has actual experiences with this, I'm quite curious. Surely it will not compare to Soundfield, Holophone and the likes, I guess. But is it actually useable or just a gimmick? The concept in itself is quite nice, it could potentialy be a great alternative for the very low budget productions.

Answer 1

I haven't had any hands on experience with the H2, but I know from experience undertaking ambisonic recordings that the angles of the microphones, and the mic capsule and gain matching, are very important!

According to this site Ambisonic.info the results of decoding recordings from the H2 into surround using custom software leave something to be desired. Since the math is quite well established it seems that the IM Research VZE probably would also have difficulty recreating an accurate surround image.

That said, accuracy is not necessarily what everyone is looking for, and the 'proprietary spatializing algorithms' may work to create a spacious sounding surround image, even if it is not as accurate as a soundfield etc..? You'd have to make up your own mind as to whether that'd be a gimmick I guess.

Would be great to hear of some first hand experience of course!

Answer 2

YES !! VORTEX had a big mouth and nothing behind. Vortex surrounnd soft, especially for ZOOM H2N, is only GIMMICK _!! The company answer never of emails.

We have now contacted ZOOM in japan, perhaps we get a solution

Sebastian Tropp