Tascam DR-70D - what do you think?

ggrantly said:
The skill of the recordist is 1000x more important IMHO.
Click to expand...

Yes, skill is main the difference between amateurs and professionals.

Mic placement alone is the easiest give-away that people need to work on their production skills.

ggrantly said:
Again, nothing wrong with cheap recorders, but there is a lot more to what you pay for when looking at pro level equipment.
Click to expand...

...But if you can't afford the pro level audio gear then you try and get by with consumer gear, and some consumer gear is noticeably better than others.
 
ggrantly is absolutely right - all gear reaches the point of "good enough for purpose" whatever the purpose may be. Imagine it's like watches/time keeping devices - once upon a time there was huge variability and watches could regularly be slow/fast by any number of minutes. Once digital watches arrived, it was game over for that specific purpose - telling time - because all were accurate to within seconds. At that point, you looked at other functions to pick the right one for your purpose. Same with sound gear. At this point, a DR-70D is good enough for recording audio in most film-related applications: dialogue, ambient sounds, most SFX sound effects, music. The DR-70 can handle pretty much any mic thrown at it. Quality of sound is not going to be what holds it back - sure, you can find some nit-picking graph or another showing how some Sound Devices or other higher end recorders might have a better noise floor or whatever, but it's not something that will likely be detectable to the human ear in blind A/B testing. So if you have a DR-70D, you can quit worrying about the quality of recorded sound, or whether it can take this mic or that mic. It's done. It's a digital watch that can keep time as well as is needed in practice, short of hi-end physics experiments with atomic clock levels of precision. Now you can concentrate on other aspects of the recorder - number of tracks, various functions you may need (say, time code), form factor, ease of use in the applications you need it for, durability, reliability, battery life and so on. For me, DR-70D is more than enough. Even the 60D (which I also have), left me nervous about being able to handle mics that needed much more gain, but the 70D is just fine. Unless I find myself needing more tracks, the 70D may well end up the last recorder I buy for my purposes. I acknowledge that f.ex. a Mix-PreD might be better in this way or that, but I cannot imagine buying it when I already have the 70D that does everything that I personally need. My recommendation is to evaluate what your needs are, and then buy the gear, and not worry about theoretical "quality" differences which don't actually impact the work in practice.
 
I have five broad assumptions for which I don't remember encountering any compelling contradictory evidence....

1) Cameras without microphone inputs are mostly unsuitable for shooting video where audio is of any importance.
Double-system audio recording to a separate device is necessary if you want decent audio, and you will have to sync A/V in post.

2) Cameras with 3.5mm inputs (including everything from $200 handicams to $20,000 DSLRs) are suitable only for "guide tracks" for synchronization purposes.
Double-system audio recording to a separate device is necessary if you want decent audio, and you will have to sync A/V in post.

3) Cameras with XLR audio inputs have workable mic preamps, but nothing extraordinary even at the highest end.
They typically benefit from using external mixers both for cleaner gain, and for better control and monitoring levels, etc.

4) The plastic pro-sumer portable digital recorders have no better audio performance than XLR camcorders (#3 above) and maybe worse.
They also typically benefit from using external mixers both for cleaner gain, and for better control and monitoring levels, etc.

5) The true professional-grade audio equipment (SoundDevices, Zaxcom, Nagra, Aaton, et.al.) is a clear cut-above any of the categories 1-4
I wouldn't even need to "compare" an SD mic preamp to anything in 1-4 above to know that it was "better".
 
Richard Crowley said:
4) The plastic pro-sumer portable digital recorders have no better audio performance than XLR camcorders (#3 above) and maybe worse.
They also typically benefit from using external mixers both for cleaner gain, and for better control and monitoring levels, etc.
Click to expand...

the audio performance of my tascam is definitely better than plugging directly into my dvx100b.
 
Wow, Panasonic are putting XLR connectors on a $500 camcorder? I will have to revise my predjudices. :-)
And the Panasonic "booth" at NAB this year was a small fraction of their traditional size. Wonder what's up?
 
Dingo said
"...But if you can't afford the pro level audio gear then you try and get by with consumer gear, and some consumer gear is noticeably better than others."

Yes, maybe. Can you really say there is a big difference in audio quality between the various Tascam recorders until you get up to the DR680 which has noticeably stronger preamps? Zoom, Fostex, Marantz; all can record decent dialogue audio. My point is, as long as the preamps match up to the mic, most of these recorders are plenty good enough for dialogue. Some will be better than others yes, but still good enough for somebody shooting with a dslr posting up to a tube, or doing smaller commercial or corporate work. Feature set and ergonomics are much more important than a tiny improvement in audio quality.

Let the comparisons continue, just don't forget that using the right mic and getting it up close is more important.

Grant
 
ugafan said:
the audio performance of my tascam is definitely better than plugging directly into my dvx100b.
Click to expand...


Having owned both a DVX100b and a couple of Tascam recorders, I would view this comment in two ways. For example a DR100 will record better audio under ideal gain circumstances than the DVX; no contest. But the DVX has stronger preamps, so when pressed under field circumstances, maybe with a low output condenser or dynamic mic, the DVX will outperform a DR100. I would never couple a EV RE50 N/D into the DR100, but it worked just fine running to a DVX.

The DVX does not compare at all to a DR680, no contest.

And in your case; your un-named mic and un-named Tascam recorder may very well work better than going direct to cam. I would counter that for basic dialogue, recording to a modern handy-cam with XLR inputs can be very adequate and much easier than external audio. When I shoot off of stix, I usually use a mixer in front of the cam and use line-in and that improves things more.

If I am on the hoof, or have extra help, that changes everything.

Grant
 
ggrantly said:
Can you really say there is a big difference in audio quality between the various Tascam recorders until you get up to the DR680 which has noticeably stronger preamps?
Click to expand...

The Tascam DR-70 ( and maybe the DR-60 Mk2 ) has quieter preamps ( by about 10 dB once you start adding gain ) than Tascam's less expensive gear. The preamps of the newer Zoom recorders ( H5 and H6 ) are also noticeably better than the Zoom H4n or H1 recorders. I own the Fostex DC-R302 recorder which seems to be the audio equivalent to the DR-70, but I can't say for sure until I do an actual side by side test.

What I do notice is that my SD MixPre-D mixer generally sounds better than everything else I own, including the DC-R302. My mics ( AT4053b, Sanken CS-1, Sennheiser MKE600 ) sound "fuller" with the MixPre-D, which is pretty noticeable when recording acoustic music and vocals.

At some point I plan on picking up a used SD 442 mixer ( around $1,000 on eBay ) to feed to the Tascam DR-70 recorder, so I can get 4 channels of SD preamps with a "good enough" 4 channel recorder.
 
ugafan said:
the audio performance of my tascam is definitely better than plugging directly into my dvx100b.
Click to expand...

If you want to disclose what microphone and what "tascam" you are talking about, it might be useful to readers here.
Else is it just a random data point of unknown value.
 
Assuming proper mic placement, I think there's a pretty big difference between different brands of lower end recorders, preamps and mixers. Just try using a dynamic mic with most of the lower end recorders out there and you can clearly hear the noise floor on most Zoom and Tascam recorders. Of course, less so when using hotter mics. I've tried a bunch over the years including Tascam, Olympus, Fostex, Sound Devices, Roland and Marantz and with a variety of mics.
 
i'm using a dr-60dmkii and a schoeps cmc6 mk41. there is noticeably less noise with the tascam than with the dvx.
 
wow, today only it's $179 at BH. that's a STEAL

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1086798-REG/tascam_dr_70d_4_channel_audio_recording.html/BI/19582/KBID/12023
 
Kind of makes one wonder why they've dropped the price so much. Overstock? I've been seeing a lot of new Sound Forge boxes hitting the used market lately which is what B&H has been bundling the 70d with over the past few months.
 
Darren Levine said:
wow, today only it's $179 at BH. that's a STEAL

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1086798-REG/tascam_dr_70d_4_channel_audio_recording.html/BI/19582/KBID/12023
Click to expand...

nice find! and it looks like its little brother, the 60dmkii is only $129. at those kind of prices we may even convince richard crowley to pick one up. :cheesy:
 
If the price drops..... It means there is something in production to take its place.
That's the way things happen.
 
OzGizmo said:
If the price drops..... It means there is something in production to take its place.
That's the way things happen.
Click to expand...

But these recorders were updated about 2 months ago, so I really doubt that it's something new. Most likely they are just moving stock. I've seen this before with B&H with other products, and the extra low price is often a one time event. ( at one point a couple of years back the Tascam DR-40 was selling for $99, but only for a few days )
 
Just sold off my olde timey Marantz 660 to get something a bit more sell-integrated with the GH's. B&H's price update was awfully convenient!
 
Tascam DR70 MkII ??? It seems that's the way Tascam works, bring out a MkII version, have a look at their website to see the product development.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top