Speaker 1: Hey, my name is Matt Johnson, and I recently made a review of the Tascam X8 audio recorder. And in that review, I declared it to be the best new audio recorder for wedding filmmakers. But hold on to your beard, because this is the new Zoom F3 audio recorder. And it offers some of the same features as the X8, but for an even cheaper price. Today, I'm gonna be comparing these two audio recorders in depth and tell you which one I think you should buy. Also, I want to give a huge shout out and thank you to this video's sponsor, Sweetwater. Sweetwater was kind enough to send over this X8 and F3 so I could make this comparison video. But for the sake of ethics, I want you to know that they have no say in this video. And the first time they see it is the first time you see it when it's uploaded to YouTube. Starting off the comparison now, the first thing you will notice when you look at the X8 next to the F3 is the size difference. With its microphones attached, the X8 is approximately two and a half times larger than the F3. The F3 is a bit thicker though from the side due to having metal bars that allow it to be strapped to a boom pole. The increased size of the X8 does make it significantly heavier than the F3 at approximately one pound, but the F3 is a surprisingly dense smaller recorder and it comes in at a little over half a pound in weight. Of course, the X8 is larger because it has significantly more features than the F3 as well. With the most notable feature by far being the massive full color touchscreen on the front. With this touchscreen, you have access to many built-in presets as well as the ability to dive deep into nearly every imaginable setting that you could want to tweak. In comparison, the F3 takes me back to my childhood when I got my first Game Boy, a Game Boy Pocket with a black and white screen. Thankfully, the screen on the F3 is backlit unlike my original Game Boy and while it will not win any high resolution awards, it is still plenty high resolution for all the text to be legible, which is really all that you need. I do wish that it could play Pokemon though. Anyways, you're going to find that this is going to be a running theme of this video. Tascam gives you everything in the kitchen sink with the X8 while Zoom with the F3 strips nearly everything away and gives you only what you need. Keeping with that trend, let's talk audio inputs. As the X8's name implies, this recorder is capable of recording eight tracks of audio. Specifically, it has four combo XLR and quarter inch jacks and two detachable microphones on the top that can be removed to reveal two 3.5 millimeter mic jacks. You're probably thinking now, wait a second Matt, that's six inputs, not eight. And you'd be right because those last two audio tracks that the X8 is capable of recording are a stereo mix of all of the other audio tracks. So it's really just a six input recorder with the ability to output eight tracks but I'm betting the Tascam figured that X8 sounds fancier than X6. Regardless, this is still a very healthy amount of inputs, especially whenever you compare the X8 to the F3 which only has two XLR inputs. Yes, just like Tascam, Zoom gave this recorder a letter and a number which is bigger than the amount of inputs that it has. But then again, the name F2 was already taken but that recorder only has one input. So these companies need to just call recorders by the number of inputs that they actually have. Anyways, as I said, the F3 only has two XLR inputs and I would be sure to notice that they are only XLR inputs not combo XLR and quarter inch inputs like you would find on the Tascam X8. While this is a bummer because the added versatility of combo XLR and quarter inch jacks is great, looking at the size of the X3, I think that it was actually physically impossible for them to fit quarter inch jacks into this recorder and still have it be this size. Personally, I probably would have taken a slightly larger recorder if they had included that feature but Zoom doesn't listen to my beard. Regardless, you can buy quarter inch to XLR input adapters for about 10 bucks on Amazon, so this is not a big deal. But what is a big deal is you need to decide how many inputs you typically use when recording audio. If you're someone that only uses one or two inputs, I think the F3's dual XLR inputs are going to be plenty for you. But if you commonly find yourself needing to record more sources of audio, that is one area where the X8 is really going to give you everything that you want. In addition, while we're talking about inputs, if you're someone that commonly finds yourself needing a standalone audio recorder that has built-in microphones, the F3 unfortunately only has built-in XLR inputs. There's no hidden internal microphone on this recorder somewhere. In contrast, the X8 comes with those dual detachable mics out of the box, which does make it more versatile. Now, let's talk about the audio quality that both of these recorders are capable of recording. As I said earlier, these are both 32-bit float audio recorders. They record with an incredibly high dynamic range, meaning that anything that you record that is too quiet, you'll be able to bring up the audio levels without increasing the noise floor because the dynamic range is so good, while simultaneously, if you have anything that is too loud that would normally be peaking and blown out with any other audio recorder, you can simply drag down your audio levels in post and recover all of that missing audio. It's pretty magical. And in my audio comparisons between these two recorders, trying to speak very quietly and test the noise floor, then shouting very loudly into the microphone to see if they would peak, I found that the audio quality from both of them is virtually identical. In case you want to hear exactly how these two recorders compare though, here is me talking into the Zoom F3. And as you can hear for yourself, I think it sounds pretty good. Now here's me speaking into the exact same microphone using the Tascam X8. As you can hear, it sounds very similar. I'm sure there are differences if you do very in-depth testing, but for the vast majority of recording scenarios, I would not be choosing one of these recorders over the other based on the sound quality because they're so similar. That said though, both recorders do have some settings that will give you some degree of control over the audio quality they record. With the Zoom F3, because it keeps things simple, you actually cannot set the audio to record at any bit rate lower than 32-bit float. Zoom basically says, hey, what you need is 32-bit float, so here's 32-bit float. The only tweak that you're able to make to your audio quality on the F3 is that you can change the sample rate that your audio is recorded at. It will still be 32-bit float, but you can set your sample rate anywhere between 44.1 kilohertz and 192 kilohertz. In addition, whenever you are setting your audio levels that you want to record at using the F3, Zoom has also dramatically simplified this as well. Instead of dialing in your audio levels and making sure that they hit a peak of negative 12, for example, with the F3, you have a scrolling waveform of your audio levels, but you do not have any specific way to tell the actual decibel level that your audio is hitting. It's all very abstracted, which can be terrifying, but you have to remember that with 32-bit float audio, even if your audio is too loud or too soft, you should be able to bring it back to a level that sounds good. So with the F3, you're really getting your audio into the ballpark of where you want it to be. With the X8, on the other hand, you have dramatically more control over your audio quality, where you have a traditional decibel meter that's telling you the exact level that your audio is hitting, plus a red peaking light that will warn you if your audio is peaking. This is such a significantly larger amount of information than with the F3. With the X8, you can also set your audio sample rate just like with the F3, but in addition, you can also lower the bit depth all the way down to 16-bit if you want. You can even set the recorder to dual record, where it will record one track at 24-bit and a backup track at 32-bit float if you want that. Incidentally, the F3 does not support recording a backup track at all because it only records in 32-bit float and a backup track really isn't necessary. Back to the X8. Of course, if you're not recording at 32-bit float, you do not get all the benefits that comes with it, but if you're recording in a situation where you do not need it and you want to save space on your memory card, this is one way to do it. Speaking of memory cards, both the X8 and F3 record to micro SD cards, but surprisingly, this is an area where the F3 solidly beats the X8. With the X8, you can use memory cards up to 512 gigabytes in size, but with the F3 on the other hand, it takes cards up to one terabyte in size. In addition, the F3 also comes with a very helpful memory card speed test, which will check your memory card and ensure that it's fast enough to work with the recorder. I really like this feature and considering how many other features the X8 has, I'm kind of surprised it doesn't match the F3, both in memory card size support and that cool memory card benchmark test. There is one small area where I will give the edge to TASCAM over Zoom whenever it comes to memory cards with these recorders though, and that is, while Zoom has made great strides to improve the quality of their SD card door, the X8 has a wonderful rubberized SD card door that very solidly covers the memory card and it just feels more premium. I realize that's weird for me to be talking about SD card doors, but I did tell you this was gonna be an in-depth comparison. Keeping up with the theme of where the F3 beats the X8 though, let's talk about one more feature that it has and that is timecode support. If you are someone that uses timecode, I'm pleased to tell you that the F3 has timecode built in and you can access it in the menu with no need for anything extra. In contrast, the X8 unfortunately does not support timecode out of the box, but TASCAM has said they're gonna be adding timecode support to the X8 via Bluetooth. Bluetooth, Matt? These recorders support Bluetooth? Well, kind of. While both Zoom and TASCAM advertise the Bluetooth capabilities of these recorders, both the X3 and X8 have a slot on the side that you can insert a Bluetooth adapter into. And I assure you that both Zoom and TASCAM are more than happy to sell you this adapter for an extra fee. I really wish this was a feature that was included out of the box, but I hope and possibly foolishly want to believe that this is a way for these company to cut the cost of these recorders and give them to us for a cheaper price and not a way for them to nickel and dime filmmakers. It's probably foolish, but I can hope. At the time of making this video, both of these Bluetooth adapters for both recorders cost approximately 40 bucks, and they both work with phone apps that are available on iOS and Android. Unfortunately, my Bluetooth adapter for the F3 is still back-ordered, but I do have one here for the X8, and I can tell you that it does exactly what TASCAM says it will do. Namely, you can connect it to the recorder, check your audio levels, and start and stop recording. Notice here that I did not say that you were able to monitor your audio levels, only check them. Yes, unfortunately, both TASCAM and Zoom do not allow you to monitor your audio levels remotely. There's no way for you to have the audio transmitted from these recorders via Bluetooth to your phone to be able to monitor it. This is a big bummer, and I'm not sure why, but it would definitely be a big win if either of these companies wanted to enable that, but by the time of making this video, they haven't done it. Regardless, if you want wireless control of these recorders and only wireless control, I think that the Bluetooth adapters are a good purchase for both of them. Talking battery life for a bit now, the F3 is powered by two AA batteries, while the X8 is powered by four AA batteries. You may think that the X8 gets better battery life than the X3 because of more batteries, but you need to keep in mind that the X8 also has this big and beautiful color screen on the front that's sucking down power all the time. So in my battery test where I loaded up the F3 and X8 with brand new Amazon rechargeable batteries, I found that the X8 recorded for five hours and 54 minutes before dying, while the F3 recorded for almost an hour longer at six hours and 47 minutes before dying. Now, this recording time for both of these recorders is actually less than both Tascam and Zoom claim you'll get with them, but I want you to keep in mind that to keep this test fair, I had to use shotgun microphones that required phantom power for both recorders. So they would both be consuming a similar amount of power. Without phantom power, whenever I tested the X8 using its internal microphones, I found that it was able to last for eight hours and 38 minutes. So I would expect both recorders to be capable of running for longer than I showed in this test if they are not using phantom power. Keep in mind that both of these recorders also support rechargeable and lithium batteries, with lithium batteries, especially being able to typically record for dramatically longer. Also, if you're wondering about startup times for these recorders, I'm pleased to tell you that both of them start up very quickly, with the F3 powering on and being ready to record in approximately three seconds, while the X8 is powered on and ready to record in approximately 10 seconds. The F3 definitely wins, but whenever you compare it to my old Zoom H4n, that would take one minute plus if it had a large memory card inside, both of these recorders are fast enough starting up that it shouldn't be an issue. Wrapping up now, let's talk about the price and which one of these recorders you should buy. Looking at the numbers, the F3 comes in at 349 bucks at the time of making this video, which is $150 cheaper than the X8 at 499. If you're on a budget, and especially if you are a new filmmaker who wants an extremely simple and easy to use audio recorder that also has a very small size, the F3 is definitely going to be my recommendation. But if you're a more experienced filmmaker and you want more features and more fine tune control, or if you oftentimes find yourself using more than two audio inputs, or heck, if you're somebody that doesn't like bringing extra audio cables that have different adapters and you want those fancy combo XLR and quarter inch inputs, the extra 150 bucks for the X8 is a no brainer. And actually it's only 140 bucks extra if you have to buy those XLR to quarter inch adapter cables with the F3. With that, thank you so much for watching this comparison between the Zoom F3 and Tascam X8. And I want to give another big thank you to my friends at Sweetwater for sending over these recorders so I could make this comparison. Regardless of which recorder you end up buying, Sweetwater is a great company to buy from, and I will link to where you can buy both of these recorders at Sweetwater down below. Also, if you are a wedding filmmaker, which there's probably a good chance that you are considering, this is a comparison of two audio recorders for wedding filmmakers. If you upload your wedding films to YouTube, which I assume that you do considering that you're watching me on YouTube right now, I have created a guide called YouTube Tips for Wedding Filmmakers. It's completely free, and it will walk you through some practical things that you can do to dramatically increase the amount of views, likes, and bookings you get from couples on YouTube. You can download it for free at the link down below. Thanks so much for watching and have a great day.