I don't know much about this, but this explanation seems unlikely to me. First of all, there is a specification for SD cards that Tascam's engineers should be taking into consideration; the device should be designed to work with any card that lives up to that specification. Moreover, the host device can query the card's performance, so a well-designed device would tell you, beforehand, that the card had insufficient speed. Four channel, 24 bit, 96 kHz audio puts out ~ 1.1 MB/s and the file allocation table maps how the chunks of data will be reassembled afterwards, so (after formatting in the host) the card should be essentially agnostic to the number of files (mind you, we're talking about the difference between 2 and 4, not 2 and 4 thousand) as long as it can write fast enough, which means anything class 2 or over. I am sure there is some detail of this I don't know or understand, but class 4, certainly, should be easily able to handle this application. Assuming the host device works correctly...
1. It's a $200 deck. Made for camera audio. We're assuming that it will be competition for a 744. That's crazy.
I don't think it is unreasonable to expect a device marketed as a four channel recorder, even an inexpensive one, to, uh, record four channels...
Personally, I think Tascam didn't do it's due diligence here. Just my take, but it seems like they buy up anything they can and flood the market with a LOT of different models, most of them inexpensive. How thorough do you the think the design and testing are? By contrast, look at Sony or Marantz or Roland. Unless I am miscounting, those companies have put out the same number of devices per decade as Tascam per year...
I had made up my mind to buy one of these, but not anymore. It's not just the glitch, either, it's also the condescending response...