So here's a 680 problem I haven't seen discussed, or just haven't looked hard enough. I bought one last week, and used it for the first time last night....or tried to. The first card I put in, a 32GB card I've been using in my Edirol R-44, read as invalid on the 680. I figured perhaps that's because it was formatted for the 44, so I found a 4GB card, Class 8 card, that I popped into the 680 and formatted. Almost every time I started rolling last night, after a few minutes, the machine would go into pause, the counter would stop, and the display would read something like "writing time out, please press enter." After pressing enter, the display would tell me the file wasn't written.
I was powering the deck with the power supply, so I figured it wouldn't be an electrical issue, but after this had happened several times, I pulled the power supply and put in AA batteries (alkaline). Same problem. Then, I tried the power supply, while the batteries were loaded and the errors continued happening, although at this point, the deck would roll, and go into pause after about 10-15 seconds, or even sooner. Out of an hour long concert, I recorded about 3 minutes of music.
Any ideas on what might have been happening? The only thing I can think of is that it didn't like the card I was using, because there was something in the manual about using only approved cards, from the list they have online. My other though is to go to Best Buy, get a card that's on the Tascam list, and try again. I was running six mics, all phantom powered by the 680, but it didn't appear to be overloading, and the mics sounded fine when I was listening, so unless I'm wrong, I suspect that isn't causing a problem. I know there are people out there with more experience on the 680 than I have, so if anyone else has encountered this, please let me know. Thanks.