Topic: TASCAM DR-680 portable 8-track #6

[Gutbucket]

My experience was similar to hi and lo's- only happened once a couple years ago, with the recording bag in the sun at an outdoor festival.  At the time I was clock synced to an R44 and thought the sync may have been the issue, but that has never been a problem since.  Once it cooled down it reverted to normal operation and has workd fine ever since.

[thunderbolt]

Four years late to the party. 

The jazz quartet recording went well, given the room I had to work with.  The deck performed flawlessly, although I did use AC since it was available.  Ganged function is wonderful.  Headphone output quality is definitely so-so, but loud enough (and louder than my PMD661).  I agree that Tascam allocated their money where it mattered most: preamps.  They were definitely good enough, and quiet enough, for this gig.  Unavoidable bleed between mics, but I was able to isolate instruments fairly well.  I like the Recorderman technique for drums a lot; simple, and it works quite well if you only have two mics.

Appreciate all the beta testers out there and the amount of information available to me ahead of time.   Helped immeasurably.

[achalsey]

Generally, how noisy is the 680?  Are the 1/4" inputs noisier?  I've recently recorded 1/4" mic-in, gain on high and had LOTS of self noise.  Just a constant humming sort of hiss in the background.  One time a relatively quiet, but still fully amplified show with as much gain as the machine had and the recording is basically unlistenable.  Just last night ran again, mic-in, gain on high, but trim only at ~11.  Still VERY noticeable noise during the quiet parts.  Is this normal?

When running XLR in it has been much quieter.  Maybe just simply since less gain was needed? I can't remember what my settings were for XLR in.

[lukpac]

Generally, how noisy is the 680?  Are the 1/4" inputs noisier?  I've recently recorded 1/4" mic-in, gain on high and had LOTS of self noise.  Just a constant humming sort of hiss in the background.  One time a relatively quiet, but still fully amplified show with as much gain as the machine had and the recording is basically unlistenable.  Just last night ran again, mic-in, gain on high, but trim only at ~11.  Still VERY noticeable noise during the quiet parts.  Is this normal?

When running XLR in it has been much quieter.  Maybe just simply since less gain was needed? I can't remember what my settings were for XLR in.

The 1/4" TRS inputs are the same as the XLR/TRS inputs, they just don't have XLR. With the gain set correctly noise shouldn't be an issue. This was recorded with 5 mics:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61DgL-uij10

The guitar and vocal were recorded with dynamic mics (2 SM57s and 1 545) with the trim at +5, while the room mics were 2 AT853s, trim at -11. Gain switch set to "HIGH" for all channels. I would argue that any hiss was negligible.

What microphones are you using? When running 1/4" are you running them balanced (TRS rather than TS)?

[achalsey]

The other day I ran AKG 63s with Naiant Actives and PFA, last night a brand new pair of 61s.  I was running TS. 

I lost my XLR extension cable, so have been running my board feed cable that has RCA (both times with XLR adapters) on the PFA side and 1/4" TS on the recorder side.

[lukpac]

I would experiment and compare, but my guess is it's an issue with running unbalanced.

[achalsey]

Okay, thanks.  Been putting off buying another XLR cable, but looks like that will need to happen.

[achalsey]

Fuuuuuuuck. Recorded tonight, started up, everything looked fine, went up front for the majority of the set, came back and there was no levels. Stopped the recording, it was kind of show to respond and when I pressed pause to see if I was getting levels the date on the take showed all zeros.  Turned it off and on again and it went back to normal. Not sure how much I missed.

I formatted my card (32 g transend ultra) on Thursday. Had recorded two shows on it last weekend.

Wtf.

Just did it again like 20 minutes after restarting it. 


Update:  Formatted the card and have been recording for 2 hours with no hiccups.  Going to keep it going for another few hours to see what happens.

[jbell]

⬆ That sucks Allyn!  If you need to you can borrow my DR-2d. 

[achalsey]

Uuugh, got the 'battery empty' message.  Not like I'm recording anything, but first time I've seen that one.  Running of an external battery, no power was cut from it, but the machine stops the recording to display the message about the internal AAs.  Note to self, make sure that doesn't happen in the field.

I feel like these are localized problems that I could avoid with fresh batteries and a formatted card, so not hating on the 680, but its kind of frustrating.

[Gutbucket]

Possible intermittant power cable that forced it to switch to the interenal AAs?

Good that it stops recording before the internal AA's die.  It will not save the files gracefully if it dies while recording.

[achalsey]

That's a good point.  Don't think there was any movement on the power cable but I suppose it's possible.

[Gutbucket]

If the power connection is intermittant, it should automatically switch back to the external source once the connection is good.  However, if the AA's don't have enough charge to keep things going before that can happen it might pop up that warning and stop recording. 

Double check to make sure both your external battery and internal AA's are charged and the battery cable and connections are in good shape.

[tubems]

aloha

ok so my 680, when i put in record pause with a formatted memory card (32bg) says -1:02:06 time left.  when i record past this it just starts over.  what am i missing here?

thanks

[hi and lo]

Pretty sure you need to change the file size limit from 1GB to 2GB.