Musician Gears Tips lessons Musical Instrument Review

1. 

   James R. Wiley
   December 1st, 2009 - 15:41

   I purchased this unit to record music from satellite radio. It exceeded my expectations. I get 12 hours of near cd quality music on a 16 gb sdhc card. I love it!
   Rating: 5 / 5
2. 

   M. Hansson
   December 1st, 2009 - 18:32

   What’s most striking about this product is how little you get for your money. Fortunately for me, it does precisely the things I bought it for -recording myself singing and strumming and maybe add a second vocal track and a solo – but not a single thing more than that.

   Among the most striking blunders is the lack of a back-light on the display. I can’t see a single reason justifying this – nowadays even the cheapest mp3 player has a nice bright colorful screen. So it obviously has nothing to do with battery life. I can live without color on the display, but this is just ridiculous. I frequently record in more or less darkness, but now I have to have a special lamp – not good for mood! The viewing angle is also terrible.

   What also takes your frustration to boiling boint is the fact that they couldn’t even include an AC adapter. What’s up with that guys?! Most people will probably miss this as in 2009, you assume you will get at least one adapter with anything that costs 200 Euros.

   Next are the completely preposterous limitations. You can only record two tracks at the same time. Yes. I’m not lying. This is not a four-track recorder, period. It’s a two-track that lets you play four tracks back. This feels sooo unnatural and the few cases when you’d actually need it, you’re going to hate these guys. I can’t see any technical nor financial reason for such a limitation. But I suspect it has to do with market segmentation. They will happily take your money to buy an 8-track the day you need to record more that 2 tracks at once.

   The other annoying limitations are *completely* unjustifiable and I can’t figure out why Tascam want to put people off so much by not including:

   - The possibility to record to a compressed format, eg mp3, ogg, etc. This is a scrapbook recorder after all, if you have a lot to record at summer camp you want to be able to opt for a poorer quality but at least get it all in there.

   - Decent failure-handling. Listen to this: I recorded a song (yes, it was recorded and I could play it back) when I got a message saying that the batteries were low. It then refused to do anything else, so in a rage I ripped out the batteries and put in some fresh ones, waited for it to boot and found – You guessed it! – My song was GONE. Not the song itself, but there was no audio. This sounds like a bad joke but no. It’s that bad.

   - How about some features, guys? What would it cost you to put in some really simple software tricks: time strech, vocal cancelling, some looping, a simple drum machine, midi tracks? This could probably all be done in software and shouldn’t have any impact on the price.

   All in all, this machine is pretty cheap, leaces a lot to be desired. Myself, I wouldn’t mind paying a couple bucks more for at least the functions mentioned above. IMHO this machine should at the very least do what the old tascam 4-track did, but it fails miserably.
   Rating: 3 / 5
3. 

   D. Johnson
   December 1st, 2009 - 20:29

   It does exactly what it claims to. High quality sound (for the price), highly portable, pretty durable. Other reviewers have covered most of the bases, and I more or less agree with them. However.

   1: Some units produce noise/hiss/whatever you want to call it on tracks, some do not. Mine does not. I have a friend with one, his does. Hit or miss. Bad quality control, and the only reason it didn’t get a higher rating from me. Try yours out and if you get noise, exchange it.

   2: Naming new songs is pretty easy, since it does it for you when you create a new song. Rename them on your computer, since it has a keyboard and the tracks end up there anyway.

   3: Mixing/Mastering/Bouncing is kind of a pain. With the feature set and target demographic this could’ve been reduced to about. . . 2 buttons. Instead it requires setting an end point for your track manually using two buttons (hey tascam- the track ends when there’s no more data on it), then the another button to set the recorder mode, then two more buttons at the same time to use the recorder mode, then the same button you used the first time to play the master of the mix you made. Just to make that clear, you have to be in a special mode to play the stereo master of the mix you created.

   That’s without trying to bounce any tracks down and record some more.

   You can get around this by Mixing/Mastering from the raw wavs on your computer (audacity works and is free), but you really shouldn’t have to. wtf, tascam.

   4: Transferring tracks to the computer is cumbersome the way mixing is, although not quite as much of a pain. I’m not sure why, since they’re recorded to the unit as WAV files, but you have to copy the WAVs to another folder (reducing your overall SD space) so your computer can read them. Again, wtf tascam.

   5: Battery life is pretty solid. One set gives me about a days solid use. Back lights are nice, but it would actually drain the AA’s since it would have to be on whenever the unit was on. It’s also one more thing to break. If you want ambience, light a candle. The contrast is pretty good for an lcd, but. . . it’s an lcd. So yeah, the viewing angle sucks.

   6: It occurred to me that the same person complained that this unit isn’t really a 4 track, since it only records 2 tracks at once. Since it only has two inputs, I’m not sure why they thought it would do more, but it will in fact record 4 tracks. . . 2 at a time.
   Rating: 4 / 5
4. 

   Michael J Edelman
   December 1st, 2009 - 23:00

   A year or so ago I bought a Boss Micro-BR for portable and home recording, and after fighting with it for a few months, I sold it. It worked well enough, and had a lot features, like built in effects and drum tracks- but it was way too complicated to use. Every time I took it out it seemed I had to review the manual. Even when when I thought I had the functions all sorted out, it was easy to get confused, with all the menus and sub-menus. I sold it after a few months. Why couldn’t they make a cheap multitrack recorder that was as easy to use as the old Tascam cassette-based Portastudios?

   Enter the DP-004. While it’s not as easy to use as the old cassette units, it’s pretty easy- and it does a lot more than any cassette deck ever did. It doesn’t have effects or drum tracks (it does have a metronome function) but it does have a lot of knobs and buttons where the Micro BR used menus, and it has two microphones- making it a great portable stereo recorder.

   The DP-004 does have menus, but once you’ve set the parameters for a session (inputs, track assignments) you can pretty much ignore most of them until it’s time for mastering, and even then it’s not too complex. Most of the time you can just use the default settings. Live stereo recordings using the built-in microphones can be done with the DP-004 right out of the box: Punch record on tracks 1 and 3, adjust the levels, and hit the RECORD and PLAY buttons. That’s it.

   I find myself using the stereo recording function even more than the multitrack capability. It’s great for recording practice sessions (or school concerts, for you parents) and yet costs about the same as a lot of the two channel recorders.

   It’s not perfect. I’d prefer less menu functions and more buttons and switches, but I suppose that would have raised the price and made it larger. Battery life could be better, too, but an AC adapter works well at home. (Hint: Use the Sony PSP100 power supply, which can be had for a fraction of the price of the Tascam unit. ) For the money, it’s pretty hard to beat.
   Rating: 4 / 5
5. 

   Lukas A. Kaiser
   December 2nd, 2009 - 01:41

   I needed a small, lightweight 4 track to record demos. The Tascam DP004 is EXACTLY what I was looking for. I wish this thing was around when I first got into music, before I made significant investments on equipment.

   The two on board mics aren’t mind blowing but certainly great for recording demos. And there are enough inputs to plug and play for any configuration you’re looking for, on a low budget tip.

   This thing rules.
   Rating: 5 / 5

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