Topic: TASCAM DR-680 portable 8-track - announced at NAMM

[Busman Audio]

After receiving my own DR-680 and testing I am going to do a mod for sure.  I feel the pres are somewhat noisy but not bad sound just not enough clarity with a large low end. I plan to clean up the signal quite a bit while using op amps that give it better detail.  I should have results within a week or two and will post some comp files when finished.  i am measuring the stock specs here as well then will do an after mod test as well for specs on noise and thd.   

[yltfan]

For the stereo mix, how much control is there in terms of levels and channels?

For example, let's say 1 and 2 are a SBD feed, 3 and 4 are stage lip mics, 5 and 6 are ambient mics. For 7 and 8, could I do a mix of just 1-4, since the room mics will have a little delay?

[yug du nord]

After receiving my own DR-680 and testing I am going to do a mod for sure.  I feel the pres are somewhat noisy but not bad sound just not enough clarity with a large low end. I plan to clean up the signal quite a bit while using op amps that give it better detail.  I should have results within a week or two and will post some comp files when finished.  i am measuring the stock specs here as well then will do an after mod test as well for specs on noise and thd.

Great news Chris......   thanks man!!!

[ShawnF]

Just started mixing it last evening, but it sounds great thus far.  Not sure how much of the sound really has to do with the recorder, though, since I used external preamps for everything but the spot and an external D/A for one of the pairs.  Still, the recorder did what I needed it to do very well.  No complaints at all.

thanks, that helps a lot.  ...and did you like how your recording sounded?

Philip Perkins

[Chuck]

After receiving my own DR-680 and testing I am going to do a mod for sure.  I feel the pres are somewhat noisy but not bad sound just not enough clarity with a large low end. I plan to clean up the signal quite a bit while using op amps that give it better detail.  I should have results within a week or two and will post some comp files when finished.  i am measuring the stock specs here as well then will do an after mod test as well for specs on noise and thd.

Keep us posted.

[Ozpeter]

I feel the pres are somewhat noisy

A-weighted EIN of -127dBu is bettered only by the FR2-LE (-129) and the SD722 (-130) in independent tests.  For comparison, the Edirol R-09HR is down at -118.  If you could make a economically justified improvement I guess that would bring it down to SD722 noise levels.

[ArchivalAudio]

After receiving my own DR-680 and testing I am going to do a mod for sure.  I feel the pres are somewhat noisy but not bad sound just not enough clarity with a large low end. I plan to clean up the signal quite a bit while using op amps that give it better detail.  I should have results within a week or two and will post some comp files when finished.  i am measuring the stock specs here as well then will do an after mod test as well for specs on noise and thd.

Chris, as always You Rock! that is fantastic news
and I am sure some op amp mods will help!
cool

--Ian

[ArchivalAudio]

A couple of notes I have after doing some of my own tests today:

- It does work fine on a 9v DVD battery.
- With 8 AA batteries installed (internally) I pulled the external plug out and it continued recording without a hitch. So internal battery back-up works fine.
- Without batteries installed I pulled the external plug and it shut down. The WAV files were saved fine. The header was fine too. The files were not corrupted.
- The pre-amps are not noisy.
- There is plenty of gain in the LOW mic setting. I wasn't able to check if my mics overloaded it with concert level volume.
- The screen back-light stays on when using the external power source (9v DVD battery or AC). So that will negatively effect external battery life.
- It's fairly easy to use right off the bat. I did read the manual inside and out a number of times before it arrived.
- I like it.

I doubt I'll have much more time to mess with it before I use it to record this weekend.

Chuck ,
your reports sound excellent!
I doubt that the back light would really drain all that much more on an external battery, yes more draw but I would think it fairly negligible.
all in all this sounds very promising for us TS geeks!

thanx
--Ian

[JasonSobel]

A couple of notes I have after doing some of my own tests today:

- It does work fine on a 9v DVD battery.
- With 8 AA batteries installed (internally) I pulled the external plug out and it continued recording without a hitch. So internal battery back-up works fine.
- Without batteries installed I pulled the external plug and it shut down. The WAV files were saved fine. The header was fine too. The files were not corrupted.
- The pre-amps are not noisy.
- There is plenty of gain in the LOW mic setting. I wasn't able to check if my mics overloaded it with concert level volume.
- The screen back-light stays on when using the external power source (9v DVD battery or AC). So that will negatively effect external battery life.
- It's fairly easy to use right off the bat. I did read the manual inside and out a number of times before it arrived.
- I like it.

I doubt I'll have much more time to mess with it before I use it to record this weekend.

A couple of things to be wary of, if the power operations are anything like the HD-P2.  The HD-P2 would automatically choose (and seamlessly switch between) the power source with the highest voltage.  So even though an external 9V battery would "work", some people had issues when using an external 9V and AA's loaded at the same time.  The 8 internal AA's would provide 12v, so even though a 9V external was connected and people thought that the deck was running off the external, the power was actually coming from the internal AA's.  Also, some people found that if they left dead AA's inside the deck, and tried to power the deck with an external 9V, the deck still saw a higher voltage from the dead AA's (even though they were dead and had no juice), so it would try to use the internal AA's instead of the external 9V battery.  This would result in the deck just not turning on until the internal battery's were removed.

So, all that said, while a 9V battery might work with the DR-680, if you are planning to use internal AA's as a back-up power source, it would probably be a good idea to get a real 12v external battery.  There are plenty of fantastic 12v battery options now that don't involve lead-acid (the tekkeon, for example.  there are many others as well).

On the other hand, maybe the DR-680 doesn't handle power sources in the same way as the HD-P2, and everything I just wrote is irrelevant.  but I wouldn't want to find out at a show during a live recording, so it's probably worthwhile for someone to test the internal/external battery operation at home to determine what really happens and where the DR-680 is really drawing power.

the other thing that i would be concerned about is that 6 channels of phantom power turned on might be too much for a 9V battery.  maybe I'm wrong and all 6 channels of phantom operate within spec (48v +/- 4V) with a 9V battery, but it's probably something else that should be tested.  Also note that some mics are more amenable to a lower phantom power voltage than others.

[Chuck]

A couple of notes I have after doing some of my own tests today:

- It does work fine on a 9v DVD battery.
- With 8 AA batteries installed (internally) I pulled the external plug out and it continued recording without a hitch. So internal battery back-up works fine.
- Without batteries installed I pulled the external plug and it shut down. The WAV files were saved fine. The header was fine too. The files were not corrupted.
- The pre-amps are not noisy.
- There is plenty of gain in the LOW mic setting. I wasn't able to check if my mics overloaded it with concert level volume.
- The screen back-light stays on when using the external power source (9v DVD battery or AC). So that will negatively effect external battery life.
- It's fairly easy to use right off the bat. I did read the manual inside and out a number of times before it arrived.
- I like it.

I doubt I'll have much more time to mess with it before I use it to record this weekend.

A couple of things to be wary of, if the power operations are anything like the HD-P2.  The HD-P2 would automatically choose (and seamlessly switch between) the power source with the highest voltage.  So even though an external 9V battery would "work", some people had issues when using an external 9V and AA's loaded at the same time.  The 8 internal AA's would provide 12v, so even though a 9V external was connected and people thought that the deck was running off the external, the power was actually coming from the internal AA's.  Also, some people found that if they left dead AA's inside the deck, and tried to power the deck with an external 9V, the deck still saw a higher voltage from the dead AA's (even though they were dead and had no juice), so it would try to use the internal AA's instead of the external 9V battery.  This would result in the deck just not turning on until the internal battery's were removed.

So, all that said, while a 9V battery might work with the DR-680, if you are planning to use internal AA's as a back-up power source, it would probably be a good idea to get a real 12v external battery.  There are plenty of fantastic 12v battery options now that don't involve lead-acid (the tekkeon, for example.  there are many others as well).

On the other hand, maybe the DR-680 doesn't handle power sources in the same way as the HD-P2, and everything I just wrote is irrelevant.  but I wouldn't want to find out at a show during a live recording, so it's probably worthwhile for someone to test the internal/external battery operation at home to determine what really happens and where the DR-680 is really drawing power.

the other thing that i would be concerned about is that 6 channels of phantom power turned on might be too much for a 9V battery.  maybe I'm wrong and all 6 channels of phantom operate within spec (48v +/- 4V) with a 9V battery, but it's probably something else that should be tested.  Also note that some mics are more amenable to a lower phantom power voltage than others.

Jason, thanks for the heads up. I hadn't thought of that.
I'm doing the maiden run tonight for moe. So, I'll report back how that goes.
I'm running my old rig (V3 > iHP-120) as a back-up

[Chuck]

No issues running (1) 9v Wally World DVD battery for moe. last night with the DR-680.
At the end, there was only (1) green light out...
That's about what I get when running the V3 on one of those batteries.

Metering isn't great. I also noticed that I got the "clip" indicator on the DR-680 many times when the V3 didn't show a clip. Being that the DR-680 "clip" indicator comes on at 2db below clipping that makes sense.

Pause and Record LEDS are too bright.

Volume changing wasn't difficult at all.



Edit to add links to my moe. recording from last night:

http://www.archive.org/details/moe.2010-04-15.C-461

http://bt.cotapers.org/torrents.php?id=402&torrentid=551

[ajcourtney]

So since we know we'll have to tweak sync anyhow, we make the concert shooting lighter weight, simpler, w/more cameras than we could cable up and take advantage of the small size of newer cheaper non-genlockable cameras to get shots we couldn't have before.

Agreed, I've been weighing the pro's and con's of this approach as well; but it just seems that you'd be making video edits based not only on artistic presentation, but also timing (e.g., I've got to fill "x" number of frames to sync this clip with the audio before cutting to this shot).  And this workflow process must add considerable amount of edit time to the project, even if it is offset in the upfront production.

[BayTaynt3d]

A couple of notes I have after doing some of my own tests today:

- It does work fine on a 9v DVD battery.
- With 8 AA batteries installed (internally) I pulled the external plug out and it continued recording without a hitch. So internal battery back-up works fine.
- Without batteries installed I pulled the external plug and it shut down. The WAV files were saved fine. The header was fine too. The files were not corrupted.
- The pre-amps are not noisy.
- There is plenty of gain in the LOW mic setting. I wasn't able to check if my mics overloaded it with concert level volume.
- The screen back-light stays on when using the external power source (9v DVD battery or AC). So that will negatively effect external battery life.
- It's fairly easy to use right off the bat. I did read the manual inside and out a number of times before it arrived.
- I like it.

I doubt I'll have much more time to mess with it before I use it to record this weekend.

A couple of things to be wary of, if the power operations are anything like the HD-P2.  The HD-P2 would automatically choose (and seamlessly switch between) the power source with the highest voltage.  So even though an external 9V battery would "work", some people had issues when using an external 9V and AA's loaded at the same time.  The 8 internal AA's would provide 12v, so even though a 9V external was connected and people thought that the deck was running off the external, the power was actually coming from the internal AA's.  Also, some people found that if they left dead AA's inside the deck, and tried to power the deck with an external 9V, the deck still saw a higher voltage from the dead AA's (even though they were dead and had no juice), so it would try to use the internal AA's instead of the external 9V battery.  This would result in the deck just not turning on until the internal battery's were removed.

So, all that said, while a 9V battery might work with the DR-680, if you are planning to use internal AA's as a back-up power source, it would probably be a good idea to get a real 12v external battery.  There are plenty of fantastic 12v battery options now that don't involve lead-acid (the tekkeon, for example.  there are many others as well).

On the other hand, maybe the DR-680 doesn't handle power sources in the same way as the HD-P2, and everything I just wrote is irrelevant.  but I wouldn't want to find out at a show during a live recording, so it's probably worthwhile for someone to test the internal/external battery operation at home to determine what really happens and where the DR-680 is really drawing power.

the other thing that i would be concerned about is that 6 channels of phantom power turned on might be too much for a 9V battery.  maybe I'm wrong and all 6 channels of phantom operate within spec (48v +/- 4V) with a 9V battery, but it's probably something else that should be tested.  Also note that some mics are more amenable to a lower phantom power voltage than others.

I'm in this thread because this recorder has my attention as a potential replacement for my modded R44 -- but I won't part with my R44 easily, it's been so f'ing ROCK SOLID.

Anyway, just wanted to give Jason a shout out because I haven't been around TS for a while really, but I'm stilling shooting 5D2 photos and loads of HD video on your CF card still (check my website for some cool sh!t I've been doing lately)!!! It still says "Sobel" on the back of it, heh...

[philper]

So since we know we'll have to tweak sync anyhow, we make the concert shooting lighter weight, simpler, w/more cameras than we could cable up and take advantage of the small size of newer cheaper non-genlockable cameras to get shots we couldn't have before.

Agreed, I've been weighing the pro's and con's of this approach as well; but it just seems that you'd be making video edits based not only on artistic presentation, but also timing (e.g., I've got to fill "x" number of frames to sync this clip with the audio before cutting to this shot).  And this workflow process must add considerable amount of edit time to the project, even if it is offset in the upfront production.

That isn't how it's worked out--as I said the drift isn't really that much anyhow, fine for a rough cut, and then final tweaks are done to sync if it is felt to be necessary.  And as I've also said, those sync tweaks happen anyway in performance video--because even numerically correct sync often looks wrong, and many times shots are used over different music than was actually being played at that second (esp if multiple performances of the same music were shot).  Add also the fact that the final music may end up being a composite of more than one performance--the best musical moments get married to the best shots etc..  So there isn't any real add to the post time, in our experience, at all.

Philip Perkins

[leehookem]

Edit to add links to my moe. recording from last night:

http://www.archive.org/details/moe.2010-04-15.C-461

http://bt.cotapers.org/torrents.php?id=402&torrentid=551

Sounds great Chuck.  Look forward to hearing the 480s.