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Gear / Technical Help => Recording Gear => Topic started by: ScoobieKW on August 23, 2013, 07:30:12 PM
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Hey y'all
I'm looking to dip into the world of 5+ channel recording. I've had mostly good experiences with my Tascam DR-2D (other than battery life and a condensation issue at a late night festival stage)
and the $200 US price point of the 1800 is oh so tempting.
Anyone have experience with this line of preamp/interfaces? 1641, 1800, 2000?
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I've used the Tascam US-1800 a few times.
Lots of inputs, decent number of outs if you need them. The preamps are ok, if nothing special.
The only two issues I've had are:
-some difficulty selecting recording mode (seems to choose 96kHz or 48kHz arbitrarily - and not obvious how to change it again)
-playback of one particular recording via Audition caused some weird issue that locked up playback. Was never able to get to the bottom of it: only the combination of that recording, Audition and the US-1800 caused the problem :-\
But I don't think anything can compete for the money. Add in a ADC (a spare UA-5?) and you can run 16 tracks simulaneously.
This is a rough mix of a four-piece (3x vox, elec gtr, elec bass, drums, keys/pedal steel/acc gtr) band recorded with the US1800. 48kHz, 16bit single untracked FLAC file:
http://manchestertaper.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/crane-MTmix-48kHz-16bit-.flac
There's a bit of background hiss in places but that is because I haven't muted a noisy DI when it wasn't in use.
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the UA-1800 and two of these
http://www.audiopile.net/products/Electronics/MST-412_rack_splitter/MST-412_cutsheet.shtml
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With the dr680 only costing about $475 new and $400 or less used I'd go that route before considering lugging this unit and a laptop around (which the us-1800 would require)
I ran minime > laptop back in 2002-2003 and it was a PITA
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You mention battery life, the US-1800 is AC power only.
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You mention battery life, the US-1800 is AC power only.
Understood, if you read my initial mail, I mention the DR-2D I own and am reasonably happy with it, except for battery life.
Ordered the unit yesterday from B&H. Building cables to record from inserts today, can't wait for a chance to try it out.
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I've been using one in my home music space for 1.5 years now, no complaints. For band practices I have two guitar cabs miced with SM-57s, a pair of condenser overheads for the drums, a direct line out from the bass amp, and a line out from the vocal mixer for a total of 6 channels. I record those 6 channels each as mono in Adobe Audition 3 and then mix it down later. Works great. I've taken it on location to a few band performances and it worked fine though I never used more than a pair of on-stage condensers and a PA vocal feed in those situations. I don't have enough of an ear to tell how the preamps compare to higher end gear.