I Shani, I bought the Zoom H2 voice recorder based in what you said about it. I have a focus group coming up tomorrow and just wonder: what setting would be best to capture their voices? I've been playing around with it and I don't want to mess it up.

hi there,
i'm sorry but i really can't say! i bought it recently myself and am only using it for interviews so far. i wanted it to be capable of doing focus groups for another, later project. so i haven't tried it yet and can't tell you more than what's written in the manual!

i hope you can work it all out!

cheers, sh.

Ah well, never mind. Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. I'll let you know how I get on with it tomorrow. And, if it works well, I'll let you know what I set it to. And, if not, what not to set it to!

It's ok for focus groups. I've found that you need to set it to 2 channel, bi-directional. More or less caught everything but the volume is a little quiet.

The only advice I can give is, don't use the maximum volume for recording. Use a medium volume, that will give you a chance to increase the volume whilst transcribing. Always put the recording device on a book and not directly on the table.

cool, thanks! i'm glad it worked out!