7th Grade

Stayed up late last night finishing my first demo on the recently acquired Tascam dp-02cf compact flash multitrack recorder (actually arrived in the mail yesterday morning). Very nice piece of kit for under than three hundred bucks ($260 with a 1 GB Compact Flash card & free shipping on eBay), which is probably less than I paid for my original Porta One cassette multitrack over twenty years ago.

This thing is built like a tank with a solid metal housing, and is extremely user-friendly. I was able to knock out the demo at the bottom of this post in a couple hours, though it clearly needs a lot of polishing. In fact, I think I will probably re-record the whole thing again, since this was mainly an experimental session, and I've got a cold which you can clearly hear in the vocals. Another problem I am having is the fact that this is my only effects processor at the present time!

They make a version with built-in reverb, but that one records to an internal hard drive, which of course will eventuall die, not to mention the fact that it has to make some noise as it spins around furiously trying to record your demo.

My previous multitrack recorder, the Zoom MRS-8, had way more bells and whistles, including multi-effects and a built-in drum machine, but I was constantly baffled by it. I found myself pulling out the manual and pretty much starting from scratch every time I wanted to use it, thought I was happy with the ultimate quality of what I produced with it.

My original plan was to find an interface to record to my laptop, but I spent a day with the Line 6 UX2 Toneport, and quickly realized it was not the way to go for me. The thing even comes bundled with their Gearbox guitar processing software, and a stripped-down version of the Abelton Live recording program for less than two hundred bucks. Nevertheless, I found that I had very little patience to deal with the choppy playback and latency issues I was having, so I boxed it up and sent it right back to Amazon. Unfortunately, by this time, the Zoom that it was supposed to replace had already sold on eBay, and I just felt silly going out and buying another.

Besides, I think I got a great deal on the Tascam, due to a printing error on the unit which inspired me to start this blog in the first place:

No idea how they managed to miss a typo like this! it even says "Portastud" in a few places on the box, though it just has to be an error. The whole manual is filled with glaring mistakes as well...

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