Musings on a mobile recording setup.

Reminds me of the oscillations of the DA-P1 pre-amp at high gain. Mine went back for patching to Tascam. Good to know as having to use an external phantom supply kind of defeats the idea of the DR-680.

Don't know about soundfield mics but as long as it aren't 7 pin Lemo OB size it should be fine...

Oh, no it's nothing like that - it's a mini 12-pin  Lemo!

Since I found out about Lemo's cable making service, I haven't felt the need to solder one of their connectors. They're very reasonably priced although maybe not the fastest of turnarounds.

James.

Fortunately the Soundfield cables are pretty well made, and I didn't have to do anything. Hopefully if I look after them, I won't have to! I'm not sure whether the firm make them up themselves or not - trying to get an empty current-style cable drum out of them has proved to be difficult; apparently they all come in pre-loaded, and with the cable trapped at one end. But hey, that might be just an excuse; I'm going to find a different approach to this anyway, so it hardly matters.

I've just ordered one of these - http://tascam.com/product/dr-60d/ - to add to my mobile setup.  Chiefly for its intended purpose - DSLR video - but also makes an inexpensive location recorder with some handy features, that doesn't look like a "shaver" and doesn't have unnecessary built in mics.  MS support included so for a really minimalist rig, that with my Sennheiser MS pair and a pair of cans should work well.  (And it can write a safety track as well as the main pair at anything up to 12dB below the main tracks).

   That's a neat bit of kit.

Yeah - I think that Tascam are going to make a bit of a killing with those, at the price they're selling them for.

Hopefully they have managed to get rid of the unnecessary 9 ... 13 dB of unnecessary noise as in the original DR-680 !

Hopefully they have managed to get rid of the unnecessary 9 ... 13 dB of unnecessary noise as in the original DR-680 !

No doubt ozpeter will soon tell us if they haven't 

Indeed a nice piece of kit. Makes it even more difficult to choose. Until now I was leaning towards the DR-680 but the mic issue made me a bit reluctant to go that way. The RME is tempting but not for the use I'd make of it. But this DR-60 and 4 mic preamps wouldn't be that hard to carry along either and easy to feed on battery. Choices...

Looks like my DR-60D will arrive at the end of this week or beginning of next - they've sent me my tracking number.  Watch this space... yes, it has four mic preamps but only one pair has phantom, the other being designed for typical camera mics which use plug in power on small connectors.  Still, that should work with some Naiant mics - of which I have some - possibly over reasonably long mic leads - I'll test that.

...that should work with some Naiant mics

They're pretty neat as well - great value for money .  All told, should make a nice portable rig

With my older US-122 series Tascam interfaces, the noise problem appeared when one of the two main channels had phantom power switched on and a condenser mic connected and the other main input had power off and was in use with a guitar or a dynamic mic.

The DR-60DThe does look a nice unit.