Topic: Tascam DR-70D 4-channel audio recorder (Part 5)

[stevetoney]

Tested media list updated today:
http://tascam.com/content/downloads/products/867/dr-70d_tested_media_list_20151006.pdf

Check out this post on JWsound

http://jwsoundgroup.net/index.php?/topic/22949-tascam-dr-70/&do=findComment&comment=270154

"This is our first recorder that supports SDXC cards, max 128GB qualified so far."

Yet - it took almost an entire YEAR for Tascam to make good on this...

You're being too kind.

That statement was made a year ago, but according to our most recent feedback they didn't qualify a 128gb card until something like a few weeks ago.  So was that the truth then or not?  Why would that statement be made at all if no cards had been qualified at the time?  Oh yeah, I forgot...because the list that was published for the DR70D was actually the DR100MKii list.  But guess what, the DR100MKii can't use 128gb cards.  So why would they say they'd qualified 128gb card a year ago if they hadn't qualified any yet, because the first DR70D list they published a couple of months ago didn't have any 128gb cards on it.  The response might be, well that list that came out a couple months ago wasn't the first DR70D list.  But if that's true, my question then is, where is the list from a year ago with the 128gb card on it?

[vanark]

Unreal.

They are denying that they have heard about this from more than two people. They admit that I have contacted support about this issue but claim that only one other user in the entire world has done so.

Are you the only one in this thread that has contacted support? I've been reading this thread for some time and don't recall anyone else coming forward with information on contacting support, other than a couple people saying they contacted them about sending in their cards. Why aren't you ALL contacting Tascam support?

I am a DR-60D owner and have had DR-70D envy, so I've been following this thread (all parts) to see if it was worth my while to make a switch. So far, I'm waiting to see how this is resolved. If the final resolution is simply to use a card on the list, that would be disappointing.

That being said, I thought Tom's responses were fair and sincere. If you don't think you chased him off, you've spent too much time on TS where we all grow thick skins after a while. If one of my customer service reps had been here trying to solve a problem and endured the responses he did, I would have told him he tried to address the issue, but it was time to withdraw and have the customers follow the official support protocol. I'm certain there are some of you that disagree and I fully expect you to tell me so.

This thread has all the reasons why I still come to TS and all the reasons why I ask myself why I still come to TS. Which side are you on? We should all try to be on the former. Be kind to each other as well as new members, even the occasional company rep that wanders in to answer questions. 

[stevetoney]

Are you the only one in this thread that has contacted support? I've been reading this thread for some time and don't recall anyone else coming forward with information on contacting support, other than a couple people saying they contacted them about sending in their cards. Why aren't you ALL contacting Tascam support?

No he's not the only one.  The standard customer support response in at least a very limited sample of several responses has been to refer people to the card list.  The discussion here has been more focused on why that response doesn't address the more basic issue, which people are trying to figure out.  Also, alot of people here have already resigned themselves, either through past history or history related to this specific thread, that Tascam is fine with letting the card list stand as their only formal response so we're left on our own to try to learn more, if possible.

[Life In Rewind]

Unreal.

They are denying that they have heard about this from more than two people. They admit that I have contacted support about this issue but claim that only one other user in the entire world has done so.

Are you the only one in this thread that has contacted support? I've been reading this thread for some time and don't recall anyone else coming forward with information on contacting support, other than a couple people saying they contacted them about sending in their cards. Why aren't you ALL contacting Tascam support?

I am a DR-60D owner and have had DR-70D envy, so I've been following this thread (all parts) to see if it was worth my while to make a switch. So far, I'm waiting to see how this is resolved. If the final resolution is simply to use a card on the list, that would be disappointing.

That being said, I thought Tom's responses were fair and sincere. If you don't think you chased him off, you've spent too much time on TS where we all grow thick skins after a while. If one of my customer service reps had been here trying to solve a problem and endured the responses he did, I would have told him he tried to address the issue, but it was time to withdraw and have the customers follow the official support protocol. I'm certain there are some of you that disagree and I fully expect you to tell me so.

This thread has all the reasons why I still come to TS and all the reasons why I ask myself why I still come to TS. Which side are you on? We should all try to be on the former. Be kind to each other as well as new members, even the occasional company rep that wanders in to answer questions.

First, TASCAM has conceded that they have had trouble with their email. Eventually having to add disclaimer telling people not to use the form on the website...(not sure when that was added?)

This is the earliest reference I've found to unresponsive support. (at least regarding this product)

http://jwsoundgroup.net/index.php?/topic/22949-tascam-dr-70/&do=findComment&comment=299699


"I sent messages to Tascam's customer support; almost three weeks have passed and I still haven't received any reply to my messages. I called but was left waiting on the line for over 20 minutes. "

So - safe to assume going back to mid-july, customer support may have been unreachable.

I had a successful communication with TASCAM support regarding another product back in February - and I used the form.

Seems communication may have broke down sometime after that - right about the time some people may have tried to report problems.

Next, we didn't report - because we had TASCAM Rep - on the board here...who didn't seem receptive to the idea that there MIGHT be an issue.

Read that JW sound thread - On several posts - Tom was more than happy to refer others to TS.com for "real world testing" - until he started get real world reports he didn't like.

And then - suddenly - the EU card list...is wrong...glad Voltronic posted that - who knows how long TASCAM might have left it up??!

[voltronic]

...
 update: We are up to 30 responses; still at 11 error reports. ...

how many before it is significant?

Also, you made reference to my "only 11 out of 25" figure from the SD card survey. My point there was that 25 responses is statistically insignificant to start with.  Out of that, only 11 problem reports, all from people using cards not on the manufacturer recommended list is hardly enough evidence to establish this as a widespread issue.  This is out of the many thousands of units sold, and no problems of this type have been reported anywhere else that I'm aware of.  Should those 11 people have customer service work with them to help resolve their issues?  Absolutely, but if that response is "use an approved card", then that shouldn't be viewed as an unsatisfactory response.

No survey here could ever represent all the units that have been sold in the industry, so the statement about statistical significance against the thousands of units sold is irrelevant to the survey, not to mention that nobody here can perform any real statistical analysis against all of the units sold anyway so trying to claim any specific statistical analysis conclusions from this survey as significant or insignificant is bogus. 

For example, in my limited experience, a RANDOM sample of 25 is statistically significant to I think a 99 percent confidence factor to a total population of several thousand.  I know this because this is the sample rate the NRC requires for sampling in inspection programs in nuclear plants where the sample size is say several thousand valves in the plant.  Depending on the acceptance criteria being used, in my industry, a single fail rate in the random sample invokes a corrective action plan (usually increasing the inspection sample size and/or doing targeted inspections to get a better understanding of root cause).  Whether this survey constitutes a RANDOM sample is debatable, but that's my point about reaching ANY conclusions about statistical significance or insignificance of the survey results.

When I suggested the survey, I thought there were several things the survey could tell ts.com members a) cards that don't work, so cards to avoid, b) cards that aren't on the official list that people have had success with, so that maybe some alternatives to the tiny 'official' list would be available, and c) some general feedback to give an idea whether the issue is an isolated incident experienced by only a few or a more generic problem.  There's enough there to start to help people with a) and b) and IMHO there's enough information there to reach a reasonable conclusion on c).

Someone that wants to use the survey to help with future decision making can take the information for what it's worth in assessing a), b) or c) (or perhaps some other reasonable conclusion I haven't thought of).  Someone that's intent on arguing against IMHO overwhelming evidence that suggests there's something amiss on the DR70D design, and that Tascam seems to have been putting more effort into CYA than into solving the root cause of the issue, will come up with irrelevant talking points to continue to try to steer people away from the fact that the DR70D has an, as yet, unrevealed design issue that makes it ultra picky about the cards it uses.

Look, I just made the survey.  If anyone wants to send it Tascam as "overwhelming evidence", who's stopping you?  I just don't see it as enough to be convincing of a widespread issue.  Also, would you care to mention what these "irrelevant talking points" are?

[stevetoney]

...
 update: We are up to 30 responses; still at 11 error reports. ...

how many before it is significant?

Also, you made reference to my "only 11 out of 25" figure from the SD card survey. My point there was that 25 responses is statistically insignificant to start with.  Out of that, only 11 problem reports, all from people using cards not on the manufacturer recommended list is hardly enough evidence to establish this as a widespread issue.  This is out of the many thousands of units sold, and no problems of this type have been reported anywhere else that I'm aware of.  Should those 11 people have customer service work with them to help resolve their issues?  Absolutely, but if that response is "use an approved card", then that shouldn't be viewed as an unsatisfactory response.

No survey here could ever represent all the units that have been sold in the industry, so the statement about statistical significance against the thousands of units sold is irrelevant to the survey, not to mention that nobody here can perform any real statistical analysis against all of the units sold anyway so trying to claim any specific statistical analysis conclusions from this survey as significant or insignificant is bogus. 

For example, in my limited experience, a RANDOM sample of 25 is statistically significant to I think a 99 percent confidence factor to a total population of several thousand.  I know this because this is the sample rate the NRC requires for sampling in inspection programs in nuclear plants where the sample size is say several thousand valves in the plant.  Depending on the acceptance criteria being used, in my industry, a single fail rate in the random sample invokes a corrective action plan (usually increasing the inspection sample size and/or doing targeted inspections to get a better understanding of root cause).  Whether this survey constitutes a RANDOM sample is debatable, but that's my point about reaching ANY conclusions about statistical significance or insignificance of the survey results.

When I suggested the survey, I thought there were several things the survey could tell ts.com members a) cards that don't work, so cards to avoid, b) cards that aren't on the official list that people have had success with, so that maybe some alternatives to the tiny 'official' list would be available, and c) some general feedback to give an idea whether the issue is an isolated incident experienced by only a few or a more generic problem.  There's enough there to start to help people with a) and b) and IMHO there's enough information there to reach a reasonable conclusion on c).

Someone that wants to use the survey to help with future decision making can take the information for what it's worth in assessing a), b) or c) (or perhaps some other reasonable conclusion I haven't thought of).  Someone that's intent on arguing against IMHO overwhelming evidence that suggests there's something amiss on the DR70D design, and that Tascam seems to have been putting more effort into CYA than into solving the root cause of the issue, will come up with irrelevant talking points to continue to try to steer people away from the fact that the DR70D has an, as yet, unrevealed design issue that makes it ultra picky about the cards it uses.

Look, I just made the survey.  If anyone wants to send it Tascam as "overwhelming evidence", who's stopping you?  I just don't see it as enough to be convincing of a widespread issue.  Also, would you care to mention what these "irrelevant talking points" are?

As I said, I think the survey serves as input to people here and that's about it.  So, I don't see where submitting it to Tascam serves any purpose other than maybe so they can revise their baseline of people that have reported the issue. 

Thought it wasn't clear from my statement, the overwhelming evidence I was referring to wasn't with respect to the survey, it was with respect to many of the details that have been discussed in this thread. 

The irrelevant talking points was my cheap shot at you for your IMHO overzealous defense of Tascam in this thread at nearly every turn, whether trying to argue statistical insignificance of eleven data points, justify why burst speeds on a card logically supports Tascams explanation of why cards don't work on 2 channels in their recorder, even though the same card writes fine to ten channels (8 inputs plus the two summed L/R channels) in my Zoom F8, etc. 

I realize that I've been overly harsh on them, so I'm guilty of being overzealous in my criticism.  Most people here take the middle road and say...well at least we've got a workable compromise solution...I respect that position even though I haven't been too abiding of it in my responses here.  But my bottom line now is that I have a card that seems to work, so I probably should just bow out of this thread altogether.  It's just that I keep coming back and seeing things that torque me back up about this whole thing...like the post earlier today that LIR posted with the statement that was made a year ago that 128gb cards had been verified to work. 

[aaronji]

"irrelevant talking points"

The entire discussion about formatting is a good example.  Start from the assumption, justified or not, that other portable recorders do not have an erase format, only a quick format.

I didn't realize that even the cheaper Tascam units have had Full / Erase format as a normal feature!  My other portable recorders have been Sony, Marantz, and Zoom which do not.

So, if the assumption is true, then Tascam's implementation of the quick format was deficient.  I have only seen a sporadic report of this type of problem with other recorders.  If the root cause was failure to do an erase format, then those other recorders, which only have the quick option, should have the same problems.  I think a large number of M10 users never remove the card and have been using the same one, in some cases, for years.  Surely if the problem were to show up, you might expect it to show up in that case.

If the assumption isn't true, and other portable recorders do have an erase format, then Tascam's failure to initially include it, especially when their other recorders have it, was deficient.

Also, what tondeaf, voltronic and morst were discussing in the past few post is "statistically representative" (sampling) and not "statistically significant" (hypothesis testing).  If the target population is "DR-70 users", then the survey is definitely not representative.  Even if the target population is "tapers using the DR-70", it probably isn't representative due to known biases in online, self-reported surveys.  Significance would require some sort of hypothesis to be tested and either accepted or rejected in favor of the null hypothesis (such as "tapers using the DR-70 experience these errors more frequently than DR-60 users").  The sample is large enough for hypothesis testing if the difference between the null and alternative is large enough.

[vanark]

The fact that at least 11 tapers on TS have reported the same issue with the same recorder is significant, sample size or otherwise. If Tascam wants to have time to look into it and in the meantime advise users to stick to the approved list, that seems like a sufficient *interim* solution. There must be some other issue with the recorder to have such a narrow tolerance of SD media.

Another point, just because they did not publish a 128 GB card doesn't mean they didn't test a 128 GB card and have successful results. It might just mean they didn't update the list as it seems that is how they operate. Now, they got caught with their pants down when they started telling users to use a card on the list and the largest size was 32 GB and they realized they needed to provide an alternative in the interim.

[aaronji]

^ I am not suggesting that the 11 out of 30 isn't "significant" in the colloquial sense of the word (I think it certainly is), but, in statistics (as used here), "significant" has a specific meaning.

[yug du nord]

Does anyone else have the "INITIALIZE" option in the menu settings??

[Life In Rewind]

Does anyone else have the "INITIALIZE" option in the menu settings??

Yes...manual says it restores factory settings.

[vanark]

^ I am not suggesting that the 11 out of 30 isn't "significant" in the colloquial sense of the word (I think it certainly is), but, in statistics (as used here), "significant" has a specific meaning.

I agree. Just because it isn't statistically significant doesn't mean Tascam shouldn't take notice.

[voltronic]

The irrelevant talking points was my cheap shot at you for your IMHO overzealous defense of Tascam in this thread at nearly every turn, whether trying to argue statistical insignificance of eleven data points, justify why burst speeds on a card logically supports Tascams explanation of why cards don't work on 2 channels in their recorder, even though the same card writes fine to ten channels (8 inputs plus the two summed L/R channels) in my Zoom F8, etc. 

I realize that I've been overly harsh on them, so I'm guilty of being overzealous in my criticism.  Most people here take the middle road and say...well at least we've got a workable compromise solution...I respect that position even though I haven't been too abiding of it in my responses here.  But my bottom line now is that I have a card that seems to work, so I probably should just bow out of this thread altogether.  It's just that I keep coming back and seeing things that torque me back up about this whole thing...like the post earlier today that LIR posted with the statement that was made a year ago that 128gb cards had been verified to work.

From my perspective, I thought you were simply venting about your problem and finding correlations that confirmed your suspicions at ever turn, where none existed.  That said, if you are willing to concede that you may have been an overzealous critic, then I'll concede that I may been overzealous on the other side.

I'll even go further than that and say that even though I think this still doesn't seem to be a problem many people have had, that Tascam's response to the problem for those people could be much better from a service and also public relations standpoint.  I suppose my harping about there being very few error reports doesn't help out the people who are having problems, so if that was offensive then I apologize for that.  Also, the fact that Tascam had incorrect information on their European site (as well as the site being terrible in general) shows that they don't really have all of their ducks in a row so they definitely have work to do.

[voltronic]

Does anyone else have the "INITIALIZE" option in the menu settings??

Not sure if it's a new added feature or not, but it resets all of the menu options to factory settings.  Never tried it before.

[yug du nord]

Does anyone else have the "INITIALIZE" option in the menu settings??

Yes...

Maybe I missed the discussion about that....  I've always thought of initializing and formatting as the same thing more or less.......  am I wrong about that??
Or is this part of the whole "quick format" discussion??
Sorry if this has been covered.

The "INITIALIZE" option is right above the "FORMAT" option on my 70D.
I have the original firmware loaded that came out of the box..  I've never updated.  Version 1.01 0044