I just wanted to report that while on top of a mountain in a forest of redwoods, doing location audio for a PBS documentary, I had some down time and with barely one bar of signal I was able to email Chris Johnson of Busman Audio, and get a more detailed description of the mod he now does to DR-680. He sold me on the mod, and said he had one in stock that he just modded, so I grabbed it as quickly as I could type the message and hold the phone in the air to get the one bar needed to send the email. I'll share with you what he wrote me about what he does to the DR-680.
First Message with a general description:
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Chad,
I am offering mods for the DR-680, I just haven’t listed it yet. I have done about 5 units so far including the one I have been using since May.
I really like this unit a lot more than the R-44 partly because of the track count but more for the converters and sound quality.
The price for all 6 channels is $300 if you want 4 channels its $225 and 2 channels is $150.
I am currently only offering the transparency style mod which is clean, quiet, and has a large soundstage.
The mod does quiet the preamps some but they are already decent for most uses as stock. With the mods the unit will work great for dialogue and nature recordings as well as live music. The unit has a mic setting with high and low gain as well as the line in when using outboard gear.
I do not compare my gear to Oade so I don’t know what differences there are besides the fact that I have always like my own mods better along with my offering of a 2 year warranty with my mods and I know we use different parts.
My take on Oades different mods is he is just trying to appeal to every person out there, I don’t know how big of a difference there is between each mod.
I have owned Oade modded gear in the past and have always liked it alright but once I found my own parts I have always enjoyed the sound of my gear more.
I have not thought about painting one Busman yellow but that is something I might do to my own to see how it will turn out then offer it if I like it.
The R44 is a nice unit but limited for mods IMO. There is not much space for good parts in there but it sounds warm with most mods compared to past edirol pres. The mods have a very nice natural soundstage and they help to bring the noise floor down some. I have never liked the R44 as much as the modded original R4. The original had more room for great parts and ended up sounding better.
Let me know if you have more questions.
I asked some followup questions and here's what he wrote back:
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Chad,
I was just about to call but if you are out of town I will just answer here for you.
Some bigger components that fit are mainly the capacitors I like to use along with bypass caps.
I have one modded unit here right now that I just finished that is ready to go. It has the 6 channel mod and I can sell it for $1100.
I do give a warranty for my modded gear of 2 years parts and labor and if anything comes up that is not something to do with the mod it can be fixed as well.
As for cards. I use the transcend 16GB class6 cards that Tascam recommends. For 32GB cards I would only go with what Tascam says works otherwise it’s a crapshoot.
Soundstage is the ability for the recorder to place the sound in correctly in space so you hear it as 3 dimensional just like being in the room you record in. When you have a closed soundstage everything tends to get muddy and less detailed as well as the feeling of everything coming from one place. With a natural large soundstage you get the sound just as it was in the location that it was recorded. It makes it more “real” and true to life. There are multiple factors in a recorder that determine soundstage quality so I will just leave it there. I change out all of the input op amps and capacitors along with some in the power supply section I also run bypass caps in the input path.
The preamps are noisy when driven in the high gain mode but with the mod the high gain mode is more usable with less “hiss” in the recording.
I felt that the difference was significant enough for my ears to be satisfied with the results and not try to go deeper into the mod for diminishing returns. I was recording at an outdoor bluegrass show and was amazed at how much gain I could get without any hiss. I can hear planes in the distance during song breaks as well as birds and I can pick out a location as to where they are in the sound field. Once I transferred the files into my computer I raised the gain a good deal and was not able to detect noise in the quiet sections. I am very happy with the results.
Let me know if you have any other questions, I am always happy to answer.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
There you go, from the horses mouth. At 1,100.00 you are very close to a modded R-44 in price, and I am fairly confident that we'll have a better sounding unit than an R-44, whether modded by Busman or Oade. Chris is a very nice guy, and I'm glad he took the time to explain what he does to the unit. I was surprised that he sold them too, I expected to have to buy one from B&H then send it in to Busman. Needless to say, I am very excited to receive my new Tascam DR-680 with a sweet Busman Audio mod!
Cheers.
Topic: TASCAM DR-680 portable 8-track Part 2 (Read 101658 times)