I just bought an H2 and can't wait to try it out tonight at choir practice. I also hope to do some home recording with it and later use it for some live recording of me or the band.

What can you tell me about pros and cons, ins & outs, whatever? It seems pretty straight forward. I'm used to doing most of my editing on Sound Forge, do you use the on-board controls or do you offload to another program for mixing and editing?

Looking forward to hearing your Zoom H2 stories and advice.

It is a great recorder and simple to use. Just pick the format, WAV or various MP3s. You'll have to set the date and time most likely, if you want that to be accurate.
I record directly into it either from mixer or from the headphone output of my keyboard.
I do any editing on the PC.
You can get pretty large SD cards for it. I can record an entire 4-hour performance in WAV format and have plenty of room left on a 2-gig card.
Once I tried recording from the built-in mics. Seemed to work o.k., but I don't need to use it that way.
DonM

First impressions. Wow, this is so easy to use. Getting around the menu is simple. I recorded three songs as mp3 at 128kps and they all sounded pretty good; the separation was excellent. I think I had the mic set a little too hot, but it wasn't bad for a first try. Tomorrow I will record our Maudy Thursday service and see if the choir sounds any better than tonight. Maybe I'll try running out of the mixer board for a few songs to see how that works.

Cass that H2 is a nice recorder I would have purchased that one, but when I was in the market only the H4 was on the market. I like the form factor of the H2 better. But all in all I'm very happy with my H4. Since I've been working on improving my vocal work. I often sing directly into the built in mics and listen back. Works very well.

I had an H4 for about a year, but I fried the power supply by plugging the wrong adapter into it. It still worked, but only on batteries. I sold the H4 to Semilive and bought the H2. Both are great, but the H2 is smaller.
DonM

Direct inline recording is the way to go for sure.

I just bought the H2 this week.It records very well but im finding there is a problem when converting a stereo wav to a mp3 file.The screen says please wait and if after 15 mins is not long enough I dont know what is.
I have to take the battery out to restart the unit.

I always convert on the PC. Windows XP has built-in converter. Just right-click the file and pick convert format.
Haven't tried it on the H2.
DonM

I have the H4 and use it to record my concert band rehearsals - I love it.

I used my H2 to record the choir this past weekend. I recorded directly from our Behringer 1224FX mixer, using three AT?? choir mics and two AT4L hand mics. The recordings were great; sometimes too great. Songs that I and the choir thought were very good didn't sound as good on the recording. All I can imagine is that the line out is pre-FX and we use a little cathedral reverb thru the PA.

In any case I'm very pleased with the H2 - it's a keeper.