Tascam DR-70D - what do you think?

I would ad that the devices on any given film may range all over the map. I know one award winning (Oscar for sound) film that had some of the FX recorded on a portable cassette deck with the stereo mic that came with the deck. It also had other FX recorded with Schoeps mics on to a state of the art (at the time) Nagra. It was quite common in the late 90's to have dialog on Nagra with a DAT safety copy, and one of the most common FX rigs was really good Mic Pre going into a Walkman DAT ot the Denon equivalent. But some sounds were still recorded analog. Animals and gunshots, explosions were often done analog on a Nagra because of the tape compression. I have stuff recorded on a Mini Disk that was used on $50+ mil. films.

Even things like Mic Pre's have made some big strides. I had a chance to pick up one of the Classic Shure three channel "mixers" once. I know that particular one had been used on many name films. It was extremely noisy compared to just about anything these days. My first professional mic pre cost around $1K, no limiter, slate mic, tone, roll off, or meters and needed 9 9V batteries. The MixPre has a lot more features sounds as good or better cost a LOT less (when you inflation adjust) and runs as long on two AA batteries!


It's good to know what the weak spots are in gear. And those weak spots may be killer for some things.

So thanks for bringing it up. I personally don't fault Tascam for using an inexpensive converter on an inexpensive recorder. I have been pretty impressed with the quality of the DR line of recorders so this obviously has not been a killer for me. But going forward it is something I will look at.
 
Wow you guys have turned this in to a male anatomy contest. There's the Internet for you. Mic selection and placement (AKA skill) is the your top priority. Brand "X" A/D converter won't fix that.

The darn thing is $300. At that price what can match it?

I am still waiting for mine.....I tried a 60D mkII and was totally happy with the sound of it, but the build quality is not up to my expectations. Tascam make fine audio devices, but don't seem to understand a shaky camera mount is unacceptable. Yes, my MixPreD and PMD661 sound full and warm, but I want to simplify my talking head work. Fewer devices, batteries and cables to deal with plus less time setting up appeals to me. The MixPreD is designed to sit between the tripod head and DSLR and in my experience is as solid as the brick it appears to be. If this 70d is not sturdy enough for my purposes it shall be returned immediately.

The problem I see with photographers is they will spend lots of money on a lens, but go cheap on the microphone. The mic / preamp chain is analogous to the lens / sensor chain. Where do you put your money? I say bodies come and go, but the picture is in the lens. Same thing with microphones. To get to the next level plan on spending at least a thousand bucks. It all changed for me after I purchased a Sennheiser MKH50. If your recordings are noisy stop blaming the preamps and look in to mics with higher output and lower self noise. If your mic generates noise the preamp will amplify it. These days most recorders are ready to capture the signal you send to it. The job of a preamp /recorder is to NOT DISTORT the audio signal it is fed. It is the job of the mic to capture and create that signal. The sound is in (or not) the mic.
 
I have to agree with Ed on this. Discussions of A/D converters and mic pre's are interesting but ultimately the quality and placement of the microphone is - to me - 90% of the issue. I've heard plenty of low price, badly positioned mics that sound terrible on a high-end field recorder such as a Sound Devices or Nagra. On the other hand, it's hard to go wrong with a good Sennheiser plugged directly into the camera input. Don't get me wrong, i love all of the bells and whistles on high quality recorders. But spend your money on a good mic and make sure you find the best placement for it on the set. The only caveat is to use a slight bit of peak limiting - which is on most camcorder mic inputs. NOT auto gain. Just something to catch moments that might otherwise distort. You'll hear plain old distortion far more than you will anything having to do with the A/D converters. If I bought the Tascam 70D for $300, I would spend at least that much on a mic. Pick up some pre-owned Sennheisers on Ebay.
 
To the OP. We are also interested in the DR-70D due to features/layout and feature set, but after having a frustrating and terrible experience recently with the DR-60D and customer service we are looking elsewhere. Within the first day of ownership of the DR-60D I plugged in a new XLR cable that came with the Sennheiser G3 and it became stuck. I contacted TASCAM via their webpage and they never responded. I tried to reach them via social media channels and they never responded. Essentially, for the last year I have had the XLR casing permanently attached to the DR-60D. The straw that broke the camel's back was when I plugged in another XLR cable into the 2nd input and THAT became stuck. This time, I now had a permanently attached 25ft XLR cable to the darn thing.

A quick search on the internet shows that this the stuck XLR is not an isolated problem. Also, the complete lack of TASCAM customer service was not unique to us. I eventually found a thread that detailed how to get your XLR cable unstuck using channel locks and essentially twisting the casing off and breaking off the retaining clip. Of course, after I did this was when we finally got a response from them. I'm still so POd at our experience with them that I don't think I'll buy another TASCAM product again. That said, their products are tempting from a price/feature POV, but all I have to do is remind myself of their complete lack of customer service support.
 
Not to say you didn't have a terrible experience, but my experience with Tascam has been very good. Even customer support was excellent. That said it's been a number of years since I needed customer support from them so things may have changed.

My problem in your shoes is that If I need any of the 70D features and/ or the form factor there really isn't anything close at less than double or triple the cost.
 
Sorry to hear about your experiences, pathlesspedaled. That's a known issue with the 60D, apparently it's very finicky with which XLR connectors it'll take (it's faulty). I have the 60D, and thought briefly about buying the 60Dmkii, but instead I bought the 70D. There are plusses and minuses vs the 60D, but so far I do find myself missing some things from the 60D... f.ex. dedicated button for phantom power on the 60D was great, now in the 70D you have to switch it on and off in the menu... PITA. I had a whole bunch of mics to test out today, and that proved to be huge bother to keep switching around - on the 60D it is a breeze. In other words, not everything on the 70D is a step forward, there are some steps back too, unfortunately. I can't say anything about reliability as yet, because I've only had it for less than a month, but one area of concern for me is the terrible front lid between the mics - it's a horrible mechanism that is just waiting to fail, and worse, is a usability nightmare, constantly getting in the way - when I was testing the mics, I had to keep inserting and taking out the SD card, and boy it got old to access it because of that stupid door design. And so on.
 
In relation to the output, I've found the headphone output a little low for my tastes (common to most such budget recorders that I've used), so monitor via my Mixpre-D.
Cheers,
Roland
 
Most budget recorders have a relatively low HP output. It's currently not stated in the 70's manual but many of the other DR series range from 20 to 50mW (x2). 50mW is barely adequate IMO, YMMV depending on other variables.
A good quality mixer with a return or an external HP amp is the logical workaround.
 
Just tested it with my 250 ohm headphone and I can hear clearly around 8-10 volume. I think it would be fine with low impendance headphones.
 
I use Sennheiser HD25-1 II headphones, which are 70 ohms, and, as I say, find the DR-70D (and similar recorders) slightly under-powered for monitoring dialogue or most effects recording: given the choice, I find running a return to a Mixpre-D for headphone monitoring so much better, though you have to be careful about not cranking up its headphone amp too high. Cheers, Roland
 
How does the HP monitoring compare to that of the DR-60D, and the mkii? I've never had a problem with hearing on the DR-60D, even at only 7 (out of 9).
 
According to the specs, the DR-60D has a 50mW (x2) HP amp. The 70' not yet stated. See #112 above.
 
20mW is totally inadequate for field production IMO. Too bad. I guess they had to keep the price low and/or a size issue.
 
scorsesefan said:
Rick, have you heard enough of the 70D to compare it to the 680? I know you own the latter...
Click to expand...
For a DSLR OMB operation the 70 is a much better suited. The 680's specs are hypothetically a little better though.
S/R: 96 vs 92dB; HP amp: 20 vs 50mW; Track count: 8/6 w/internal mixer vs. 4; Sample rate: 192KHz. in 2-trk mode), otherwise 92KHz. max on both.
 
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