A Couple of Recorder Bargains

T

TheDingo

Veteran
I went shopping for a new "affordable" digital recorder and noticed a couple of bargains on the market right now...

Tascam DR-680 8-Track Portable Field Audio Recorder : $440

Fostex DC-R302 3-Channel Audio Mixer and Stereo Recorder : $600

The DR-680 was selling for $650+ not that long ago, while the Fostex DC-R302 was priced around $1,100.

I ended up buying the Fostex unit because I wanted something simple to operate under pressure, and I like the build quality. It's not Sound Devices build-quality, but it looks pretty rugged.

I am very curious to see what the noise-floor is like with the Fostex unit, as the pre-amps are supposed to be pretty good.
 
The Fostex unit arrived today and I had a chance to play with it. The build quality is great, better than I expected. ( based upon physical appearance it's close to what I expect from a Sound Devices unit )

The pre-amps in the unit are good. Not as good as my SD MixPre-D, but still very good for a low cost mixer/recorder.

Testing the noise floor of the Fostex was interesting. Below 150 Hz, it scores about the same as my Tascam DR-100 Mk2 did, which is around -80 dB RMS. But for frequencies above 150 Hz, it's about 10 dB quieter, which is a noticeable improvement compared to the Tascam DR-100 Mk2.

Overall I'm very happy with the unit. My only minor quip is that there is no recording time display, so you can't tell how long you've been recording, or how long any of your stored recordings are. Seems like a silly oversight for an otherwise well made recorder.
 
Good prices for sure. B&H occasionally has those unannounced sales and usually only last a few days. I picked up a 680 in April or May at one of those sales. Don't know how they can sell em' that cheap, my contact at Full Compass stated it's below dealer cost.
 
TheDingo said:
My only minor quip is that there is no recording time display, so you can't tell how long you've been recording, or how long any of your stored recordings are. Seems like a silly oversight for an otherwise well made recorder.
Click to expand...

So pressing the "DISP" button will show the recording time, which is ok, but I wish FOSTEX had been able to work the time indicator into the standard levels display.
 
Ran one more test. If you plan on feeding the audio from the FOSTEX unit to your DSLR, then I recommend using the RCA ( -10 dB ) output instead of the MIC output. Connected to my GH3 with the camera audio level set to 1, I can easily record with a noise floor of -60 dB RMS or better. ( the MIC output was giving me a noise floor of -40 dB RMS with my GH3, which was very noisy on playback )
 
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