Tom Duffy

PM sent.

Noted, and this will be fixed in the next firmware version (currently in testing) for the DR-680 and DR-680mkII.

Although it would be designed differently now, when the DR-680 was created, that input was designed only to be used with the 12V AC power adapter, so it has no monitoring for gradual voltage decay that would happen when you feed it with an external battery based supply. As you note, If you always have internal batteries installed, the auto-switch over mitigates the issue.

We consulted with Fred Ginsburg a number of times to define a list of things to fix or add in the HS-P82, and it is on our roadmap, but that's all I can say right now.

I only have an anecdotal report that a Y cable works for controlling two units from one PS/2 keyboard, but for simple F-key usage, I would expect it to work fine. The PS/2 5V line is derived from a dedicated regulator, so tying 2 units together via that shouldn't be detrimental either, though separating them would be safer, so the keyboard is powered from only one.

Because the accuracy of measuring the incoming timecode signal would be no better than the accuracy of the camera free-running. If you do it once just to get the speed, how long do you measure over? - you'll need many (tens of) seconds of stable TC to get a good lock. If you can design the camera to modulate its frame rate in real time to keep up with the tiny variations as time goes on, you could get it to work, but the rest of the camera is not going to behave well... At TASCAM we designed such systems in the MMR series and X-48 recorders, because there is a niche need to lock to analogish and film systems, but the future is in (rock) stable frame rates. Also, black burst or trisync video is usually fed in as well, negating the need to rely on the LTC input's jitter. For a camera system without BB, you just create more problems.

For consideration - the TASCAM DR-10SG is a DLSR mounted compact mono shotgun with recorder. In stock now.

What's the self-discharge rate? That was a problem with a previous attempt at this style of cell. The Switching Power Supply circuit is always ON ...

I bought one of those 6800mAh for experiments. The charging is superslow (e.g. > 12 hours), mainly because the battery has no temp sensor, so can't be fast charged. OK for their intended use, stationary supply for a lower power load.

Yes, the TASCAM DR-701D is using CEC to see when the camera goes into record or stops, and the Timecode over HDMI is encased in there as well. We're doing a lot of tweaks to get each of the popular cameras to be recognized seamlessly - and talking with the camera manufacturers when they need to tweak things on their side. I use HDMI-CEC at home as well - when I turn off/on the TV, the AV receiver turns off/on as well, and it passes through volume up/down commands from the remote (which is pointing at the TV) to the AV receiver. Sony of course calls it something else (Bravia Link), but it's all CEC on the wire.

5 TASCAM devices on sale this week, a collaboration with B&H for the NAB show The sale ends 4/22 today at 7.30 EDT, still available on their website: DR-60mkII, DR-70D, DR-701D, DR-44WL and DR-10X

With 24 repetitions of the inventor's name in the press release, I think it's safe to say this is an officially licensed implementation, rather than a freebee from the expired patent. Nice show of respect.

While the DR-10C can power a lav mic, that's a few volts @ microamps, enough to bias the capsule and power a single FET transistor (that is working as a impedence buffer, not an amplifier), the DR-10X XLR version would need to supply at least 10mA at 48V, because those mics nearly always have active amplifier stages in them. That's what is beyond the range of a AAA's capacity, on top of the recorder itself. Passive Y in this case is sufficient for microphone splitting to Tx and recorder, with either the Tx or recorder supplying 48V phantom power - that's a trick that's done all the time at concerts where one mic is feeding both Front-of-House and Monitoring mixers. Also, here's the DR-10X on a K-tek boom. If there are booms that physically won't accept the DR-10X, we'd like to know, we'll be at NAB to try them out as well. While I'm deliberately ignoring this sentence, note that it is, unfortunately, the combination of wording that triggers the "is it covered by the patent" sniff test.

Phantom power from a single AAA? That's pushing the power limits too far I think, you wouldn't like the resulting run-time. As for the XLR plug depth, I'm surprised it doesn't fit with the tightening ring fully backed off. You can remove the ring as well, that would give you extra reach, but you'd need to use some sugru or similar to snug it up again. Maybe the pole manufacturers also need to look into the need for a Y split built in, for Tx and recorder?

(I partially wrote this before, then decided not to post it, because it contains somewhat proprietary info) The big difference between SD/CF cards and SSD drives is that SSD drives have the TRIM command - this lets the product tell the flash management chip inside the media which sectors are truly un-used, and therefore can be erased immediately. For all solid state media, only sectors that are already erased can be written to at full speed, so after a couple of full recordings, most SD/CF cards exhibit severe write speed impairment (because they have to do a sector erase for every write call). - it needs a couple of passes, because the card may have kept some empty sectors in a cache for wear rotation. All built in cards tests work by writing for a short time and seeing if the worst case write speed was acceptable, so they will show false positives if the card is in a partially erased state. Even extending the test doesn't help, at some point afterwards you'll run into the "needs sector erase" phase. Ask the manufacturer if their built-in format actually does a full sector erase, or just initializes the file system. Only a full sector erase will put the card into its factory fresh state with maximum potential write speed. Full sector erase formatting can take 10 minutes for a 32GB card, we've found. Products in this category are writing multiple files at the same time to a card. Especially for SD cards, that is exactly opposite of the use case they are generally optimized for (single stream of photo or video data). Cheap computers like the Raspberry Pi are known to go through SD cards (i.e. break them) because as a general purpose Linux, there are a lot of processes writing log files, etc. SD cards are not usually designed for a lolt of wear-levelling, so once any sector hits it limit, the card just "dies". There's also the issue of the how the CPU in the product talks to the media. For CF cards, there's the issue of what level of DMA is supported (cards with greater DMA level than the processor just won't get used that fast). If the card was optimized for use only at the fastest possible speed, running it slower may cause unusually slow access. For SD cards, especially with the new Video type, the product is talking to the card over a legacy serial bit stream interface. How fast is it being driven? (may be slower than max in order to help with radio noise emmissions, or because it just doesn't need that performance). If the card is a super fast one for video, why would the manufacturer optimize the access over the legacy serial pins? That explains why faster cards are not always better. All manufacturers develop their own methods for quantifying and qualifying the performance of media in their products, and publish that data as a list of tested cards when available. Knowing this, how could going off-list in your media choice ever be attractive?

Do you mean stereo, or 2 channel? A stereo FM transmitter is going to sound bad if you feed it with 2 unrelated signals. (Because Stereo FM is transmitted with a sum and difference signal, and the difference signal requires more bandwidth, = more probability it gets interference) A friend was looking at these for "silent Disco parties": http://www.go-on.cn/_d276725082.htm

<Pedantic> The original automix patent is expired, but he developed more advanced versions as well. His name though, is not expired, and requires appropriate licensing if an entity wants to use the method described in the original patent in conjunction with his name. Mr Dugan is apparently not happy with Music Group for using his name in their product uncompensated.

The only specs that matter: Micro XLR connector for mic, 1/8" for receiver output. Channel A - 203.65 MHz Channel B - 207.75 MHz Channel C - 211.55 MHz Channel D - 215.35 MHz No companding / no diversity. Audio on the youtube video is to put it kindly, not good. According to their website: Coming soon is a true G3 competitor: http://www.saramonicusa.com/products/uwmic10_rx10-tx10-tx10 $399.95 for 2 Tx and Rx.

As always, there are levels to the question: 0. Is synchronization needed for the system to work (yes in my example, no for bag work) 1. Should two pieces of digital equipment be synchronized, or use SRC? -> SRC makes it foolproof, direct synchronization improves audio quality. (SRC built into a typical AES/EBU receiver chip has ~120dB range) 2. Does the short term stability of an external clock make an audible difference? -> most likely not, only for badly designed / legacy gear. 3. Does the long term or temperature stability of an external clock make a difference? -> possibly, depends on usage. Knowing that a recording made yesterday is within 1ppm of a recording made today may be important. 4. Does the jitter spectrum of the external clock, and its resulting bias on the sound of the converters matter? -> experts disagree. In this market, the difference is most likely unmeasurable / not significant. In the studio, differences have been heard. Personally, I'm more interested in being able to reference a GPS 1pps signal as the master clock, than a 10MHz vapor cell; GPS would mean your 48kHz is always the same as someone elses 48kHz to within a hair, and keeps you wire free.

This system would not have been possible without a proper external word clock.

AES31-3 (2008) provides the perfect open standard container for this, but since Avid/Protools only supports AAF as their chosen open format, it's not widely used. AES31-4 was originally going to be an extension of AES31-3 to encompass AAF compatibility, but it came out recently and is just an XML (easily parsed) version of AES31-3. Putting AAF support into a production recorder is a huge task. AES31 support should be easier, but unless the major DAWs support it properly, the benefit is minimal. Chicken-and-egg situation...

We had the K-Tek DR-70D case on show at the TASCAM booth at NAMM; the DR-701D fit perfectly, all you need to do is flip the direction of the top screw plate. I'll see if I can find a picture from the Show.

We love getting suggestions. They usually get forwarded to me, and I share them with the product teams back in Tokyo. The webmail is at http://www.tascam.com/contact/support/, this is just a portal that formats a message and sends it to custser@tascam.com, so it is OK to send email directly as well, but you need to be clear what you are asking about. All email to that should generate an auto-reply straight away that contains a 8 character support reference code. When we reply, or when you follow up, that will be in the subject line, so we can track the discussion. e.g. TASCAM Operational Support Request has been received - Reference: Q607EOLR If you don't get an answer within 2-3 days, you can just follow up with another email with that support reference code and we can lookup whether we had already replied, or whether we were still investigating, waiting for more info internally before replying, etc. If you didn't get a reply with a support reference code, we never got the inquiry in the first place, so you need to send again. We recently updated our phone system too, it seems to be working more efficiently that the old system.

From experience: Electrolytic Capacitors come in various voltage capabilities. 16V is a common value, above that the physical size of the part is significantly larger, so it's difficult to go on the safe side. Running 17V or 18V to a capacitor rated at 16V won't kill it straight away, but will degrade it over time, and it will fail at some unknown time in the future. At failure, you might get a short or an open, if it's a short the PCB traces might get burned up. Basically, you're gambling with an expensive out-of-warranty repair in the future.

+1 to Matt's description. source: also watched a lot of Japanese TV in the 90s. Lav mics were always visible outside clothing, even today. Headsets for the principal talent if they're just sitting off to the side "narating" the action. Multiple cameras scurrying around the action, one or two crew behind them making sure the cables don't get pulled or caught up on the set.