12Apr Tascam DR-60D first impressions
I spent almost an hour hanging around the Tascam booth playing with the new Tascam DR-60D. Buttons and controls felt good and the interface seems pretty straight forward. If you’ve used other tascam devices in the past you shouldn’t have any problem finding your way around the DR-60D’s menu system. The test microphone provided at the booth sounded good from the limited amount of testing I was able to do and there seemed to be plenty of gain from the headphone jack. Buttons provide good tactile feedback and the dedicated volume knobs make it easy to adjust input levels on the fly.
Even with 4 batteries installed the Tascam DR-60D was lighter than I expected. The body has the same plastic feel of the Tascam DR-40 but overall build quality felt solid. I wouldn’t expect this to withstand a 5 foot drop onto concrete but it shouldn’t have any trouble standing up to regular use.
The headphone and line out adjustment use little roll wheels that are a little hard to get to with large fingers, but I don’t think it’ll be much of an issue as these will most likely be set and forget functions. I forgot to ask if the unit includes a neck strap or bag, but i’ll have a chance to find out when I get home. Currently my pre-order Tascam DR-60D is sitting on my front porch, so I should have a chacne to start testing it out this weekend. I’ll keep you posted.
April 12th, 2013 at 1:42 pm
I look forward to your tests, I’m eager to hear how the signal to noise ratio compares to the h4n as I’m probably one of the few who where not impressed with the h4n’s s/n ratio.
April 12th, 2013 at 4:03 pm
I’d really like to know what Auto Gain Control this unit has? What I like about the H4n is the AGC only goes down and never back up, if this units does the same I’m sold.
April 12th, 2013 at 4:29 pm
I just got home about 20 minutes ago and I’ll be opening the box and testing it out tonight, I should have some more info up this week. I don’t know many people that take advantage of AGC on their field recorder, usually they use a limiter or compressor feature.
April 14th, 2013 at 4:53 am
AGC is very handy when filming events as a one man crew. I plug my H4n directly into the mixer & DJ’s wireless mic hit record & let the H4n find a good level. If the input distorts the H4n brings the level down but won’t bring it up again so you don’t get that AGC feel of up & down. Extremely handy feature.
April 14th, 2013 at 1:41 pm
Digging through the menus, it doesn’t look like it has AGC. Instead you have a channel limiter, not quit as adaptive as AGC.
April 15th, 2013 at 1:06 am
Appreciate the feedback.
April 12th, 2013 at 4:54 pm
Looks good and has everything one would need, but it just seems too big.. Especially seeing your top image there. Makes it impossible to use on rails/rig with follow focus etc. I suppose you could have it off to the side on an arm/bracket but it would look ridiculous. So you’re severely limited with this and to me I’d probably prefer to get the slimmer &more compact juicedlink rm202 or 333 even though they have less features/knobs and don’t look as ‘pro’
April 12th, 2013 at 5:25 pm
The unit is about the size of a t2i body and roughly twice the height of a RM333. I would say mounting it beside the camera would be your best bet if you want it mounted to your rig. To me it would make more sense to use this like a traditional field recorder attached to a boom mic, record at the unit and send a stereo submix back to the camera via a wi audiolink. You can record 4 channels at the device and 2 channels at the camera if something goes wrong with the camera’s audio you can get the safety track from the DR-60D.
April 13th, 2013 at 8:55 am
Hey Deejay, thanks for all that you do! If possible, could you do a S/N ratio test? For me, this is the IDEAL rig for portable audio, but what’s most important to me is the quality of the Pre-Amps. If its in the same league as the Juicedlink preamps or the DR680, I AM SOLD!
Keep rockin’!