Digital Multitrack Recorders/DtDs

Digital and analog It records onto hard disks (40, 80 gb or more), 2 hot-swappable caddies. 16 bits and 24 bits / 44.100 and 48.000 Khz (there's a more expensive 96.000 version, too) It can take all sort of mics, but consider a preamp for +48V. 8, 16 and 24 simultaneous tracks in groups of 8 only. UTILIZATION Relatively easy setup but it's better to study it before the session. Nothing replaces your mileage! No effects nor internal sounds, it's a recorder, period. The user's manual is downloadable and clear enough. SOUNDS The converters are good, if you consider their value for money. The same goes for the transparency. Good dynamic response, but not enough because it depends on all the hardware you use with it (microphones, preamps, etc.). For example, a digital recording + Berhinger ADDA 8000 preamp (yes, yes!) + Audio Technica AT 2020 mics (indeed!) + ART wordclock (absolutely!) + good cables and connectors = excellent results to record acoustic sounds. Different strokes for different folks, depending on your budget. OVERALL OPINION I've been using it for about five years. There's simply no equivalent in terms of value for money and the number of tracks-functionalities. Awesome sturdiness and reliability. The Fireport is pretty effective to make relatively fast track transfers. A good competitor to soundcards in terms of reliability. Small capacity hard disks (40 gb) are more reliable. The removable hard disk caddy system us very handy. Consider connecting your gear via the wordclock BNC, it's very stable. In conclusion, it's a good hardware unit that you can optimize choosing adequate hardware. The HD 24 can be rack mounted. Don't skimp on the quality of the cables and connectors (multicore, adat, bnc, etc.).

Unit was purchased through Sweetwater, the IO cards were purchased through American Musical (sweetwater was out of stock). Originally my studio was looking to get one of the new ADAT HD systems. After some further research and some solid convincing by the sales rep at sweetwater, I made the purchase. Total purchase price including the AIO cards was around $5000 This has got to be by far the best hardware based recording system out there. The graphical editing capabilities do things that even ProTools doesn't do! At the time of purchase there was a drive limitation of 32gigs (internal and external individual drive capacity) Since then there has been a BIOS update (purchase) that enables the unit to take up to a 180 Gig drive or so. The interface is plain and simple. The learning curve on it was near nothing. After fooling around with if for about 2 hours I could whip through the options and settings with no trouble. The clarity of the IO cards seriously rivals the ProTools hardware interfaces. The unit has a very clean natural sound to it (not tinny or "digital" sounding at all) and thats at any resoultion all the way down to 16bit 44.1K. A 10/100 ethernet card is included to transfer files to any computer in the studio for mixdown, or editing (ie pitch correction) You can also easily fly files from any other application or recording system (that uses wav or aiff format)using the network card. There is also a SMPTE generator and reader card built in which has worked wonderfully while doing video sync. The fan is a tad noisy... Some additional onboard wav manipulation features would be nice (like reverse or phase reverse) but since its software based... the possibility is always there for a future release. The unit is built like a tank. There chassis is metal all around and held together with about 2 dozen or so screws. Any studio (pro or home) should seriously take a look at this unit before investing in top end converters and other HD systems. The compatibility and ease of use will astonish. Even hardend veterans of the recording studio will appreciate it's tapemachine like interface and behavior. Price is a little steep, but the quality is certainly there! This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com

I'm a beta tester for Timeline Vista, the company that developed the MX for Tascam. I plan to purchase this unit when the testing is complete because I am very impressed with it's performance overall. This hardware has got a V-8 under the hood! I tried doing home recording using soundcards and building my own DAW using over the counter software but even with lots of memory and a reasonably fast system I ran into problems with dropouts and freezes that were too huch hassle. With the MX-2424, I can do a ton of editing on a 24 track, 24-bit 44100 or 48000 Hz project and it never gives me a hiccup or long delays. I could record at 96000 Hz sample rates too if I wanted to but for me that's overkill. The analog to digital converters are very high quality and give great sound. The latest feature, a new GUI called MX-View, hasn't been released to the public yet because it's in the beta test phase, but I can tell you in all honesty, it's incredible! You can run the MX remotely with meters and do your tracking then do editing super fast. You can record many virtual tracks and quickly compile the best takes from each track to a new virtual track. You can render all your clips when done editing to make it easy to import into other music software at a specific time or if you use Logic Audio you'll soon be able to spot audio directly utilizing the Open-TL standard. If you don't have a digital mixer the MX-View software lets you do volume automation and you can mix down to two tracks to burn to a CD on the SPDIF output. I may take my tracks back into an audio program on my PC to add effects later but I can get a ton of work done using this new GUI and the MX-2424. Before they had the MX-View GUI they had a product called ViewNet which didn't have all that many features and was slower so I wasn't using the MX as I am now. It would be nice if it could work with IDE drives instead of SCSI because the SCSI drives cost more but I guess it probably wouldn't be able to perform as well as it does with the SCSI. This thing is rock solid! The buttons have a good feel and with the thousands of times I have pushed them I have never had an error where the button didn't work right. As I said before the sound quality is excellent and the synchronization and clock are so good you'll want to use the MX as your clock source. The unit will lock to just about anything and apart from the music industry this product is also heavily used in film-making and audio dubbing. Multiple units can chase one another to enable real-time recording of many instruments such as recording a full symphony. The MX-2424 competes with a couple of other products some for less money and some for more but it is purchased by professionals over the other units available because of it's quality and reliability. When previous owners get their hands on the new GUI, MX-View they just aren't going to believe all the extra features that have been added and how well it works. If you want to work quickly and feel confident in your recording hardware to keep up with you to get the work done without problems, then you have to evaluate the MX-2424 for yourself. You won't regret it! This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com

The Tascam DA-88 is an old eight track DAT machine. These used to be pretty popular before the DAW age and you can still see some floating around out there. Of course, this is pretty obsolete technology at this point, but it's still worth discussing a bit. The DA-88 uses digital audio tape that can handle recording eight tracks at a time. It's an all in one system that's rack mountable and takes up about four spaces in a traditional casing. UTILIZATION I don't have too much experience using the Tascam DA-88, but the studio I work at does indeed have one. It certainly doesn't see very much use but it was recently brought out for some tests to see it's state. I think the owner of the studio is going to sell it and he asked if I would test it out. I didn't find it to hard to navigate around it as it's easy enough to playback tapes and shouldn't be hard to record right over them as well. I can't say that I know anything about a manual for the DA-88. SOUNDS The sound of the Tascam DA-88 is by no means bad at all. In fact, it's a pretty good sounding medium as it's digital just in a different form. The problem with DAT really comes with editing and manipulating. If you recorded on this and transferred it to Pro Tools it would be easy of course, but using the DA-88 as an all in one recording device is not exactly convenient by modern standards. So while it sounds good, in the modern day it's really not worth using. OVERALL OPINION While good for it's time, the Tascam DA-88 is pretty obsolete at this point. Those who do still have them have most likely been keeping them in storage for years as it's just not reasonable to work with in the day of the DAW. If you're interested in learning about it and can find one super cheap it would probably be fun to mess around with, but not really ideal for modern recording.