Sorry I didn’t get back to you yesterday – I don’t use these particular pieces of equipment personally, nor does our studio expert, but I would suggest you’d get a summary of functional differences from reading the description plus a review or two. Just Google “Tascam DR07 reviews” or similar.

At a glance, based on your requirements outlined, your main trade-offs are

• DR07 costs less
• h4n has good range of effects on-board

Also, you can have a quick look at other possibilities along a similar vein (some sales websites offer a ‘if you like this, you might like to consider this too’ kind of advert) and see what sells best.

Compare these key points:

Connectivity:

• are you working to a hard disk, or CD player / iPod perhaps?
• do you need to connect speakers, or just headphones?
• what is the input – XLR, jack or…?

Complexity

• are you looking to mix various instrumental parts?
• or is this to be done in the backing track, so you just need to get your lead and backing vocals to blend well;
• therefore how many tracks do you need?
• do you need a mixture of plug-ins / effects
• or will EQ, compression, delay and reverb be all you need

Expandability

• will you be able to develop / expand the system if and when necessary?

But selecting suitable equipment is only part of the solution. The biggest difference in results comes from your skills in using what you’ve got.

For example, here are a few topics to research, study and practice:

How to best record vocals: – techniques, mic placement, controling room acoustics etc.

Important things that are often overlooked:

Monitoring level

• if your recording sounds like your straining vocally, or are generally sharp, then probably the monitoring level is too loud
• similarly, if the general take sounds flat, you can probably hear too much of yourself

In-built Effects
The H4n offers a choice of 50 studio-quality DSP effects including compressor, chorus, delay, and reverb. These onboard studio effects, along with its tuner and metronome make the H4n very musician friendly. But…

• do you need to get tips on how to use them?
• do you know the difference between reverb and delays, and how they make the vocal sit in the mix,
• don’t forget the importance of EQ and compression in gaining a balanced result

And check you are happy with the built-in mics in either of the models you mention!

Hope this helps

Ken

Very informative info… thanks

was wondering if you could give me some advice. I’m a vocalist and am wanting to record me singing to backing tracks. Im not sure what equipment to get. I having been looking at the Zoom h4n and Tascam DR07. Im not sure if they have basic inbuilt effects like reverb etc. Could you suggest something? I dont want a raw recording but i want to get something basic and simple to use that can achieve this.