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Gear / Technical Help => Ask The Tapers => Topic started by: sparki on February 27, 2020, 12:14:07 PM

Title: Need Advice on a recorder
Post by: sparki on February 27, 2020, 12:14:07 PM

Hey All!

it has been awhile since I have been into taping but I want to get back into it for smaller shows locally. I need advice on a hard drive recorder that has a decent A/D converter.

I have a pair of AKG 480 CK 61 caps and a lunatec V2 preamp. I used to just run that into my Tascam DAP-1 via analog cables.

Looking for something comparable in a hard drive recorder.

Any suggestions? I have looked through a lot of threads here but wanted to get some feedback before I purchased anything.

Thanks for any advice!

Title: Re: Need Advice on a recorder
Post by: morst on February 27, 2020, 04:39:42 PM

It has been a long time. But the good news is that you're lucky and will be skipping hard drives entirely. The need to spin rust in a circle to record digital data has been obviated by the development and promulgation of Secure Digital "flash" storage. Which is to say, most all of the new recorders used by members of this website record to SD cards.
If you're new to SecureDigital (SD) cards, the most modern version is currently the SDXC [eXtended Capacity, specs announced January 2009] which can go up to 2TB on a card, and someday we will look back and laugh at how expensive it was when it came out. The version before SDXC is called SDHC [High Capacity, announced January 2006] and they go up to 32GB.
There are plenty of good recorders which were made before the SDXC cards came out, for instance, I saw a DR-40 (not the newer X version) on sale for a hundred bucks the other day.


As for the deck, now that you understand the general parameters, would you want something small and two-channeled, or might you utilize 4 channels or more if you had them?
If you require XLR input rather than 1/8" mini input, that will exclude many of the smallest units.
Hope this is instructive for you and helpful and not just #captainObvious material.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SD_card#SDIO,_SDHC,_and_SDXC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SD_card#SDIO,_SDHC,_and_SDXC)

Title: Re: Need Advice on a recorder
Post by: anodyne33 on February 28, 2020, 09:25:27 AM

I picked up a used Tascam DR-70d last year and got back to taping after a while. It's about half the size of a DAP-1, 4 channels. I haven't paid much attention to the empirical data or what everybody thinks of the D/A... does the job and they can be had for what I consider affordable used.

Title: Re: Need Advice on a recorder
Post by: steve4134 on February 28, 2020, 09:28:36 PM

Tascam HD-P2 can be had on ebay for around 100 ish. Pretty much dap1 but compact flash card.

Steve

Title: Re: Need Advice on a recorder
Post by: sparki on March 03, 2020, 12:08:56 PM

Thanks everyone for the replies.

I ended up buying the Tascam DR 100-MKII

I will let you guys know how it goes.