Hi
Having recently acquired a Tascam DR-680, I thought I would share my
first field experiences with the unit. I am currently wrapping up a
trip to Alabama where I have used the Tascam DR-680 for a couple of 4
channel overnight recordings and I'm happy to say that it has
performed like an absolute star.
Before I gush on about this recorder, it has one particular
operational quirk that is troubling and worth paying attention to. If
you pull the AC plug while it is recording, and do not have internal
batteries installed, everything you have recorded is lost. Gone. There
is no incremental file closing like the Fostex FR2-LE. It even says so
in the manual. I cannot begin to imagine how engineering thought this
might be okay, but there it is. Perhaps the techniques for incremental
file closing are challenging for the hardware architecture and the
imagined use case for this machine was attended operation.
For the unit to actually save your recording, you must either press
stop, or it must go through it's shutdown process. The good news is
that there is a clean switchover from AC power to internal batteries
so when (and only when) you have batteries installed, and the AC plug
is removed, the unit will go through a proper shutdown process and
consequently save your files. This quirk matters especially when you
are using an external battery to power the unit via the AC adapter. If
this external battery completely discharges and you do not have
internal batteries... you have been warned :). So remember to have
your internal batteries installed - even if you are using an external
battery pack! I tested the unit with some pretty seriously drained AA
batteries and it was still able to get through the shutdown process.
There are some other minor quirks worth mentioning. The headphone
volume moves in discrete increments (it is not continuous). This is
very annoying. The monitoring operation is cumbersome - soloing
requires pressing and holding a small button for each channel. The
unit by default also seems to record a master LR mixdown track (why?).
The channels that you record-enable are not saved when powering off
leaving you to deselect the LR master and any channels you do not want
to record (like 5 & 6). And finally, the backlight does not turn off
if you have the AC power plug in. What this means practically is that
if you are running the machine from an external battery, the backlight
will keep a quiet vigil, draining a bit more battery than you want it
to. But all said, these are minor annoyances, some of which can be
fixed by firmware, for a machine that performs rather nicely,
especially for the price.
There are some other pitfalls to be aware of - perhaps Paul Dickinson
can comment on his experiences here.
So on with the gushing. As reported earlier on this list, the preamps
are extremely quiet in high gain mode (-127dBu - A-weighted) and you
can tell. While I have not measured the self noise quantitatively, I
can say that using this in combination with AT4022's has produced some
of the clearest recordings I have to date. While it is certainly
possible that I have become better at my fieldcraft, to my ears, the
recordings it has been producing are outstanding and have remarkably
low noise. A real test of the unit would be to record in very quiet
situations (which Alabama is not). This is something I hope to do this
fall or in the winter.
The power consumption is also fairly reasonable. I also do not have a
real quantitative measure of the current draw, but I was able to get
30+ hours of continuous operation from a 12Ah battery. Additionally,
this unit was left outside for 2 days in little more than a plastic
bag in 100% humidity and 90 F temperatures with no discernible
performance hit.
So to wrap this little review up, I am incredibly pleased with the
Tascam DR-680 so far. While it's operating system is not great, it
definitely could be worse. If you, the operator, are very very careful
and can avoid a catastrophic file loss from pulling the AC plug, then
this machine performs admirably in some very challenging conditions. I
would recommend this machine to most anyone - even if you dont need 6
channels in the field. Now if only the cost of a 64GB SD card will
drop below $100.
I will post some recordings as soon as I have them mixed down.
Cheers
David
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