I could not resist buying the FR-AV2 when it finally came on market, and this week I had a chance to run it through five days of workshops in China. Basically, it’s great, and the 32-bit option is super useful.

With such meetings I don’t usually have any idea what the local AV setup is like and have to improvise when I get there.

The first workshop I needed to capture people speaking from a podium microphone. Plan A was to run an XLR cable to a nearby USB interface/laptop but the logistics didn’t work out. So I just left the recorder running unattended on the podium and trusted the 32 bit to accommodate anyone blasting the microphone. 

The second workshop I needed to capture discussion with about 30 people speaking into conference microphones. So, I fed a line out from the hotel sound system into the recorder and got the lot. This is where the Zoom F3 would have let me down (no line in).

I don’t have the optional Bluetooth dongle to enable remote control / monitoring yet. Having one of those would greatly simplify logistics, in that I could probably stop running cables everywhere.

I found a couple of small downsides: Copying files from the recorder to a computer via USB is dog slow, it seems to be a USB 2 device. You can avoid this by taking the memory card out and putting it in an external reader, but this is the future people, why should we have to?

Playback of files directly from the recorder is a little clunky, fast forwarding through a long track is a bit slow, even at the highest speed. But probably most people will transfer files to a computer in such cases.

Battery life is not particularly strong on AAs, so I suggest powering it by USB for long recording sessions, preferably via a charger, but a larger power bank should also get you through a full day.

Overall it’s a great device and highly versatile, as a field recorder should be, and the compact size is appreciated.

I do wish it had knobs for gain adjustment, like the new Zoom H5 Studio, but that’s probably another thing I won’t miss if I can get the remote monitoring via the Bluetooth dongle.