Previous tests showed the Zoom R16 timing is not perfect. But does it make any difference in real world applications? Some say no, people would never hear it.

But can you hear it? It's difficult to understand what some numbers and screenshots of waveforms really means. You need to hear it for yourself.

This test is 8 subsequent recordings of the internal metronome, spaced evenly in a stereo field, over a period of 5 minutes.

Listen to the results using headphones, and hear for yourself an averaged snapshot of the Zoom R16 timing.

For me personally, I clearly hear inconsistent changes as the sound emphasis shifts randomly in left/right directions.

Note that because the source was absolute, the metronome, there is no recorded latency in this project. If the previous tracks were referenced in a relative manner by recording them, the recorded latency would have been up to 9ms, which would be too obvious and make it difficult to hear the drift. So instead this test mostly just shows the random timing drift.

Method

  1. New project, default settings, faders 0, master 100
  2. Enable metronome, stick, headphones only
  3. Connect headphones output to channel x input
  4. Set auto punch for 5 minutes, record
  5. Repeat for 8 tracks
  6. Set 1-8 levels to 60, and pans spaced 100, 76, 50, 26
  7. Record master track, import to PC
  8. Speed up master .wav by 400% for fast version

Results

The Zoom R16 colors its recordings with random timing drift.

  1. Zoom R16 timing Untouched stereo master
  2. Zoom R16 timing fast 4x speed to hear changes faster