TASCAM DR 680

I had disclosed my recording gear in earlier posts as usually ending up in a PC fed by up to 8 tracks from an M-Audio Delta 1010. Although this setup with AA3.01 works fine, it is a lot of material and a heavy load to bring to the recording site. Recently I could use a SD 788 on loan which spared me to bring along the PC, and its peripherals, the Delta 1010 as well as the mixer which I use as a mic preamp only, and all the patch cables, and power supplies. Thus the final load consisted of the mic cables, the mics and the mic stands only, which is still some stuff but a much lower load than otherwise.

No doubt, the SD 788 is about the finest and most universal 8+2 track recorder I could find, but its price tag is definitely out of my range. Looking around I could find only one candidate which comes somewhat near the SD 788, but has a considerably lower price tag: The TASCAM DR 680. I know, it will not match the SD 788 but I would like to hear its rating from a forum member if there is such a one. Reading some reviews gives not a consistent result. The only point of coincidence seems to be the headphone amp, which is rated not to be very satisfactory. The Alesis HD as earlier proposed by  Steve is no longer available, and seems to be somewhat outdated.

The Alesis HD as earlier proposed by  Steve is no longer available, and seems to be somewhat outdated.

The only way the HD24XR is outdated is in terms of its disk drives, but they can be updated. In audio performance terms, I'm not aware of any 24-track recorders that can outperform it.

They aren't yet too hard to pick up - you might be able to snag a bargain.

An alternative is the JoeCo BBR1 BlackBox Recorder - 24 Track Audio Recorder. A bit more expensive than the Alesis but less than half the price of a SD788.

http://www.joeco.co.uk/main/index.html

The only way the HD24XR is outdated is in terms of its disk drives, but they can be updated. In audio performance terms, I'm not aware of any 24-track recorders that can outperform it.

They aren't yet too hard to pick up - you might be able to snag a bargain.

I fully agree with this, but all my attempts to find a used item in Switzerland or Germany were hopeless. The representative told me that everybody who owns an Alesis keeps it. That proves Steve's second sentence. I do not consider a blind deal from somewhere far away where I cannot have a look at the item first. Is there no one using the TASCAM ?

I have a Tascam DR-680 which I use for stand-alone recording of four channels from a tetrahedral surround microphone.  It does the job just fine for me, and although I have not done a close comparison between its mic amps and those of the Traveler I use otherwise, certainly nothing has struck me as distinctly poor in comparison.  I know that it is possible to get them upgraded (in fact I bought mine second-hand from someone who had got another one upgraded and so no longer needed the vanilla one - SteveG may have seen the advert on the sursound list); I'd have to hunt for the details.

Points to note: 

The metering is sketchy at best - in fact, I have calibrated the gain settings to use in my normal venues by comparison with other equipment I have used there rather than trying to use it!

The battery life, if you try using (eight) alkalines, is only enough to be confident of getting half a concert...  Better use mains or get a larger battery (there are suitable inputs).

Update the firmware, if it's not at the latest.  In particular, updates have added multi-channel gain ganging, MS processing, and file roll-over without losing a sample.

Make sure to get a fast flash card (class 6 or better - I got a 32GB class 10 card for about £35).

You can't turn the speaker off, other by plugging in headphones; so I leave a jack adapter plugged in to prevent the hiss.  I haven't really listened to it through headphones, but wouldn't do so anyway other than to verify that the signal was there.

Last week I recorded a concert with it, and set the mic gain to low instead of high, by mistake (look, I was simultaneously setting up a new electronic organ I had built for the first time, right?).  Although there was much more hiss than ideal, the recording was still quite usable, and ordinary punters haven't noticed.

Paul

There's been a fair amount of activity here:[urlhttp://www.gearslutz.com/board/[/url]
with some reasonable comparisons/contrasts to perhaps it's closest competitor the Edirol R44
I have not followed the discussions particularly.    After it first came out I investigated it as a possible tool under much the same conditions you describe.  It had features that I liked but for me under circumstances in which I'd tend to use it, it did not significantly challenge the far cheaper Zoom R16 (which only has phantom power on 2 channels, thus typically requires inclusion of a couple of additional mic-pres which of course then require additional cables, a more robust power strip, etc.).  Not saying the R16 & DR680 are equivalent products merely that under conditions in which use the R16 I could not justify it with something twice as expensive.  (For field/live recording requiring more sophisticated options I use the rig based around the Alesis Adta HD (and I've been trying to find another one as back up for more then a year now)).  While it's true of a lot of new gear, again for the price, I was not crazy about the build quality.  The R16 is not particularly robust either, but most of the options I looked at to both protect DR680 and permit functional access to its features were a lot more expensive (even with a fair amount of DIY) then what I spent on the R16.  While investigation was more then cursory I did not field test it for a month, but while its mic-pres are no worse then you'd expect they were not sufficiently better for me to justify the cost.

Thank you very much Paul. You provided exactly the kind of information I wanted to get. I mean a comment from a pro who has the item in actual use and not only a paper report written by a journalist, who certainly does his best, but is not really in the field.

The points you mentioned all seem to be minor deficiencies you can live with if you know them. For example I would not even dare to record a concert on the SD788 without mains. Setting the correct mic preamp gain always is a point of concern which I have to take care of with any kind of equipment. Eventually it’s a matter of experience which I only can support using some kind of DIY acoustic mic calibrator. The point of relief is to use 24 bit recording which is somewhat more forgiving with settings too low. I also think that a mic preamp having some 2 dB worse S/N than the best available will not be noticed as long as you use the common condenser mics ranging in 10 .... 20 mV/Pa sensitivity. Thus everthing seems OK for me except the headphone output ? Other than you I use it to check the correct mic setups and to monitor the recording. Is it good enough for that ?

I am also very happy to get the comment of oretez. While the Edirol definitely has too few mic entries (I would even prefer 8 of them as with the SD788 – the DR 680 being a compromise already) I have very good experience from my M-Audio Mictrotrack II which provides perfect recordings as long as I  can stick with only a stereo pair of professional condensers. For my applications the R16 would be an overkill on one side and not sufficient on the other side. I do not doubt it’s quality.

Again thanks for the input – I will try to get a DR 680 for test.

The headphone socket isn't awful - it's just that bit hissier than you'd like.  I can't see any reason that it wouldn't do for your purposes, though.  Presumably you're not making the most critical balance decisions using headphones in any case.

Paul

Presumably you're not making the most critical balance decisions using headphones in any case.

Sure, that's a GO for me. I am not going to make the final mixdown on the DR 680 !

http://taperssection.com/index.php?topic=131128.0 is the first of several long threads on TapersSection related to the DR 680.

I read through the taperssection thread - interesting. On balance, if you can cope with one or two slight idiosyncrasies, the DR-680 looks like it's very good value for money. It seems pretty unlikely that the cross-section of users there would get it collectively wrong...

FWIW, I have a couple of recorders that record onto SDHC cards, and both of them have behaved fine so far. The only thing of note is that the Zoom H4N sometimes has moments of card-blindness when booting up. But once you've got it to recognise that the card's actually in it, it behaves perfectly. The Fostex 2-channel though, just works! It's not a portable, but a mains-powered rack recorder.

Thanks to Steve and ozpeter also for their comments. While I am still missing the chance for an Alesis, I think now that the DR 680 might be a good second choice for many purposes.

As to the joeco black box which needs a registration to get further information I am profoundly disapointed. It seems to merit the name black box in several respects: Except for the sensitivity settings (-10 dBu or +4 dBu), the manual contains no single specification on S/N, distorsion, frequency deviation, input/output impedances  which are common for any serious product. Furthermore the arrangement of a single red, yellow and green LED for level setting is rather primitive and almost ridiculous – certainly not adequate for professional work.

As to the joeco black box which needs a registration to get further information I am profoundly disapointed. It seems to merit the name black box in several respects: Except for the sensitivity settings (-10 dBu or +4 dBu), the manual contains no single specification on S/N, distorsion, frequency deviation, input/output impedances  which are common for any serious product. Furthermore the arrangement of a single red, yellow and green LED for level setting is rather primitive and almost ridiculous – certainly not adequate for professional work.

IIRC, the original idea of the black box was that it was supposed to be connected to an external mixer at the insert points. Hence the lack of metering, etc - all you needed to know was that it wasn't being overloaded. I think that the idea came from people doing stage mixes who wanted to record everything, but before any effects or EQ were added. This has the advantage, if you do it with a live band, that you can replay the stage feeds when they aren't there, and get things like EQ sorted out at your leisure - or whatever!

Since then the concept has been added to - at a cost!

A spec of sorts is on the website - here. There's also an SOS review of it - here.

Thanks for your correction. I looked at the manual immediately which usually is the most complete information. In this case it is NOT. Anyway I would not accept the blackbox as a replacement for the Alesis.

Anyway I would not accept the blackbox as a replacement for the Alesis.

Neither would I!