Tascam DP-01...reviews?

[invader3k]

Hey all. Our band has been around for quite a while, but we are thinking about recording a new demo CD of some of our cover songs. We've done two demos in the past...the first one was kind of sub-par, due to our guitarist's very old Yamaha 4 track not being that great...plus we didn't have a great idea of what we were doing. We also did another one, recorded to a computer that turned out much better, but that one featured our old lead singer, so we figure it's time to do another one.

I'm looking at possibly getting the Tascam DP-01. The price seems right, and I actually did own one of the Tascam mk tape units before, and it seemed fairly easy to use. I'm wondering if anyone else has used this unit to record a demo, and how the results turned out. We don't need it to be high end studio quality, just something to record a CD to pass out to bar owners, etc.

My other thought was using my laptop (newer one purchased a couple months back with Windows Vista), but I don't know much about using a computer to record anything. I'd have to get some kind of recording interface, but I don't know what.

 

[bassbrad]

I've been using a Tascam DP-01FX for a couple of years now and am quite happy with it. Sure there are limitations with 8 total tracks and only 2 track simul recording but the quality is there and I have had no problems recording and even some simple mixing on the unit. I really like the portable DAW because many of my guest traks were recorded at remote locations or other players studios.
Consider the DP01FX for the phantom powered XLR inputs, IMO the input stages are better and offer a lot more utility. The EFX suck but the master reverb is useful especially for monitoring your progress.
For more complex mixing or for more tracks it's easy to fly wav files into your pc and compile things there.

 

[4Mal]

I have a Tascam 788 that I've used for a few years. It was the precursor to the DP-01. It's actually a little more capable but the cd writer is outboard so it's not as sexy... it rturns out pretty nice sound quality at 24 bit / 44.1

I'm in the process of migrating all those Tascam projects to Pro Tools - which is a little painful but possible - which makes it a 6 in simultaneous field recorder. The sound quality ofthe Tascam tracks on the ProTools rig is really, really good - Better than I expected actually. That say's a lot about the quality of the converters that Tascam is using.