Tom Duffy

Clarification: That's a single unit defect, we don't have any batches of faulty units. It's certainly not normal to have units destroyed, but in this case I think the shipping + customs taxes on getting the broken units back from Canada to the US outweighs any benefit we could get from repairing and refurbishing them.

Has anybody used "Tile" like locators on their gear to track them on/off the set at the end of the day? Transmitters stuck to transmitters might be asking for interference trouble though...

Unfortunately I don't know what plans we have for DR-70D firmware updates. As always, feature suggestions and requests that are emailed to us are tallied and forwarded for consideration. Tom.

Very cool, lots of interesting data there. Having seen that, I had to find one for California. There's probably better, but here's a starting point: http://www.caiso.com/outlook/SystemStatus.html

In our industry (or any where your employees number from the dozens up to the few hundreds, not thousands), the threat of a lawsuit is huge, and is a very effective ban-hammer. An early stage of a lawsuit is discovery, that means finding out who knew what, when, and who they shared it with, internally or externally. That means the computers and hard drives for everyone remotely involved in a project are subpoened and imaged, and all paper copies of anything relevant have to be produced. That's days of work for anyone who ever talked about the project. Then you need to get your lawyers involved in sifting through it all to prevent trade secret info on other products from accidentally getting into the hands of the plaintiffs lawyers. Time is money, this process sucks the lifeblood out of Engineering staff (who will have had the most frequent and frank discussions about how a product is designed), and exposes the very real risk of leaking unrelated secret info. Settling a lawsuit or otherwise making it go away before discovery is vital to the well being of a company, regardless of the merits.

US page is up: http://tascam.com/product/dr-701d/

Official USA launch information coming later today. HDMI brings in 8 channel audio, timecode for file stamping, transport start/stop and word clock hard-locked to the camera for zero drift. Stand-alone clocking is indeed much better with upgraded parts (oscillators, not the processors) --- Tom.

Records to the internal caddy. This was a requirement for our broadcast customers. There are too many potential problems recording to external USB media. The SSD Caddy has a USB3 port on the front, you can take it offline in the menu so that you can pull files directly without removing the caddy, i.e leave the cable connected all the time. Caddy swap is possible without turning off, just stop / pull, put in next media / restart in about 20 seconds. Network FTP access is always available even during record, you could hit the split button and grab the files after a couple of seconds without stopping. MADI and Dante are the main audio connections. 2 slots, so you can have both, mixed inputs as needed, and we're doing a 16 channel AES/EBU card next. We've discussed DC power before on this and other products. For this in particular, we're not doing a lot of on-the-fly metadata editing, so it's not going to be your primary field recorder yet. It is a very strong broadcast and studio recorder as well as for specialized playback scenarios (theater / theme park) From my point of view, we wanted to create a 64 channel recorder/player that records directly to the target file format, is as nimble as a stereo one, and of course rock-hard reliable.

OK, to be extreme: On the 970, try getting to the 3rd or 30th or 300th recording of a 800 take session of 64 mono files, press play and wait for audio to come out, or even just the 30th recording of a 100 take session. For a machine that's sitting in the background automatically starting and stopping during a day's studio work, there will be a lot of files. On the DA-6400, skipping tracks forward / backwards is instantaneous, it registers you pressing the PLAY button instantly and the audio is running and audible 1-2 seconds later, much less if you're not doing full channel count. Audio start is super fast if you take a breath after finding the right track. Stop -> Rec is instantaneous, (but you can compensate on the PIX using the pre-record buffer). Rec -> Stop -> Rec is normally less than a second, i.e. as fast as you can press the buttons.

>internal generator does not support 23.976 Oversight on the spec sheet. 23.976 and 24 frame rates are 100% supported. basically LTC in at any rate. Big TV customer in Japan is using it to backstop all their ProTools rigs with no manual control required: when ProTools is recording, the DA-6400 is too. The BWAV files are ready to be pulled off and spotted back into the project as soon as recording has stopped, via USB 3 direct to the drive, or FTP, no format translation required. Tooting my own horn, but the DA-6400 is very nimble, head and shoulders above the JoeCo or PIX970 in terms of responsiveness to transport control.

Are the Powerex batteries over-sized AA's (tight in the compartment)? We had trouble with large cap batteries not contacting properly in the DR-60D, but that was fixed in the mkII and in the 70D.

OEM supplier, "Enping Embao". Found via FCC search and looking at the application docs. http://enbao.com/en/products.html?pageIndex=2&proTypeID=36025&proTypeName=UHF+Fixed+Frequency+Model My thoughts FM Radio circuit design is >50yrs old, designing to a cost is certainly not the main issue here. No companding circuitry, so the dynamic range will be no better than the Hello Kitty model. No diversity, so zero protection against dropouts. Fixed frequencies (there is a tunable version though) means that half of the channels will be unusable in any given location.. This particular model's manual states "compliant with new FCC rules", but lists only a Part 15 test compliance, which is not relevant for intentional radiators, so I take that to just mean that they are using the 600MHz band and not the old 700MHz band. For its intended purpose, DJ in a hall, you can probably find 3-4 channels that work for an hour or so. Using the tunable version, and adding a couple more features, I don't see why this couldn't become a location recording product?

The dealer won't give you a loaner while they deal with the Manufacturer? That's what I'd expect it it's a high end item. (which I'm assuming it is because you're here). The dealer must have a phone number for putting orders in, even it is via an intermediate distributor. Especially if it's a distributor, saying "no more orders until this issue is dealt with" should get some traction.

Rant: I may be old-fashioned, but isn't this part of the service that the dealer provides? They take the unit back and refund you, they have the relationship with the manufacturer, and returning unsold, returned or broken units is one part of the contract. (which is also abused, you should see the pallets of junk we used to get back from Costco, stuff we don't even make) Warranty service direct to manufacturer is a courtesy that a good manufacturer provides to increase turn-around and user satisfaction, it used to be always take it back to where you purchased it first. If the dealer gets the short end of the stick, they can choose to not stock / not recommend that manufacturer's product in the future. Too many dealers pretend they have no obligation to be the customer's solution when a problem arises. If the dealer gets the sale, but the return and refund go via the manufacturer, the manufacturer is over 100% in the hole (end user price is not dealer price).

This reminds me of something one of our previous Sales VP said when we were talking about Marketing - "sure, you could splurge and do a TV advert for a product, but you couldn't handle the volume it would generate". The kickstarter campaigns that widely overshoot their targets are an example of this as well. If you were expecting to partially hand-assemble a couple of hundred units and suddenly you have orders for 7000, you're gonna have a bad time. This gulf in scalability is what holds back anyone with a great idea but without substantial financial backing and access to real manufacturing experience. All the investment money right now goes to pure-play internet services, not manufactured goods. Except home automation stuff, that's hot right now - a lot of venture money going down the drain there. Tom

+1 on mirror's comment on mics under tables. Cuttlery noises are amplifed way too much. Bad idea.

From a quick look at the source code, the error message occurs on one of 4 conditions : Can't save the system file to the SD card (card problem) Can't save the playlist file to the SD card (card problem) The card is write protected. (Check to see if the little tab on the SD card is flipped.) and also, unable to write to the internal flash memory. (this would be a hardware problem). I'll see if we can find your email to customer support (custser@tascam.com is the only one to use)

From 1971 when SMPTE/EBU Time Code was born until at least 1990 (maybe 1996), broadcast and recording professionals only referred to Time Code. That's plenty of time for the compound noun effect to have taken place already, but it didn't - I'm guessing that these professionals maintained the original spelling because accuracy in communication is important, and those selling Time Code compatible products would be at a disadvantage or cause confusion if they started using different but similar naming. My guess is that that 20+ years was enough that people who worked in the industry under these professionals started to write about the processes, and being unware (first hand) of the origins, wrote it as they heard it, therefore bringing Timecode into the dictionary.

I have a bunch of books in my technical library here, some with "Time Code", and some with "Timecode". Anybody got a more accurate idea of when the two words became one (and why)? Wikipedia is useless here. "TIME CODE HANDBOOK" publshed 1982 "EECO SMPTE/EBU Longitudinal & Vertical Interval Time Code" - 1982 "MIDI TIME CODE" chapter of MIDI spec - sometime after MIDI spec first published in 1983 "HANDBOOK OF RECORDING ENGINEERING" 1986 - "Time Code" "RDAT" 1991 "Timecode" "TIMECODE A User's GUIDE" first published 1993 "PRACTICAL ART of MOTION PICTURE SOUND" 1999 - "Timecode"

Here's the AES paper describing the 80 channel recording setup at Kyushu University. http://www.bosc.jp/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/201210-AESE2012-Omoto.pdf

I think this is along the right lines: modding the old Radio Shack PZM microphones for 48V operation. The same princple show hold for lavs. http://www.jdbsound.com/art/art520.html

From my experience looking for office space up in the Bay Area, there are companies that own and manage a lot of commercial real-estate in an area. (you see the same vacancy signage boards everywhere). Those companies have their own sales team, so just call one of the numbers, and tell them what you're looking for. They also usually have webpages listing their inventory. I was surprised how many places they were willing to show us to find something in their inventory that fit. (and somewhat bittersweet, because that same company had purchased the building we were in previously and told us to get out in 30 days)

A few years back I saw a talk at Stanford University CCRMA about a technique that had been developed for laser scanning a record and digitally recreating the audio from the "picture" of the grooves. It worked well enough to recreate audio from a disc that had been fractured into many pieces and was obviously unplayable. Mono only at the time. The results weren't hi-fi, but as a way to recover possibly lost-for-ever sound, I was highly impressed.

How's the weight? When I last got a pair of chinese import SDCs, they were noticably heavier than my Oktavas, ATs and Rodes - cast steel bodies rather than auminium.

Agreed, with AA batteries that have been dischanged in a flash light left on are too low to be charged in a smart charger, I put them in parallel with a good battery for 5-10 seconds, then quickly put it into the smart charger where it will register a voltage again. I sometimes wish I hadn't thrown out the "dumb" charger that was just a constant current source. The NP1 should be similar, needing a way to jump start the process. An older NiCad NP1 charger (Sony models for $20 on ebay) might do the trick, but I bet the IDX would be warranty voided because of using a non-approved charger.