Well I bought the Tascam DP-004 this week and it arrived yesterday. I have owned the DP-01fx in the past (among other Tascam products), and I rather liked it. I have been looking for a portable recorder to take with me whereever I went, and was looking at the new zoom h4n, but then I saw the DP-004, and it looked like it would fit the bill for considerably less. All I wanted was something I could record acoustic guitar and vocals on...anywhere. I don't care about fx, eq or any of that stuff. I just wanted something that sounded decent and that I could record ambient textures with...the DP-004 does all of this very, very well
It seems built well enough, it's small and it looks really sharp. The built in microphones sound very decent indeed. The menu is very easy to navigate, and if you have any experience with Tascam's bigger digital multitracks, then the dp-004 is immediately familiar. Best of all, it runs on 4 AA batteries-PORTABLE!!! Really is about the size of a paperback novel.
I always felt you had to crank the inputs of the dp-01 to get a strong mic signal. That is not the case with the dp-004. The built in condensers are nice and sensitive. You have three ranges to choose from:low, medium and high. Medium does the job nicely with the inputs set a little past 12:00. Using a condenser mic requires an external mixer or mic pre, unless you have a battery powered one, like the Rode NT3, which I happen to own. You will also need an xlr>1/4" impedance adapter, no xlr inputs. The microphone setting is waaaay to sensitive for condenser microphones. Setting input to "line high" does the job nicely.
So how does it sound? I think it sounds great, using a microphone or the built in mics. The built in microphones really do sound nice and seem to have a nice frequency response. For vocals, I like to sing directly into a single microphone, but preliminary tests with the built in mics sound very decent.
So, anxious to try the dp-004 out, I headed to my garage with my acoustic and my Rode NT3. I close miked the guitar with the Rode on track1, and used an internal microphone as an ambient room mic for track 2, and recorded the guitar track (you can only record two tracks at a time0. I did the same for tracks 3&4 on vocals, then mixed the whole thing to taste. The guitar and vocals were 1 take. I know I missed the high note at the end, but whatever. All in all, as a song writing tool, I'm pretty pleased with this little unit. Thanks for checking out my version of "Blackbird" by the Beatles-it's really pitchy and I have not rehersed it too much, it's really just for illustration purposes. I have only recently started fingerpicking, but I am really enjoying learning. This is all straight out of the box, just as it was recorded.
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=935364
It seems built well enough, it's small and it looks really sharp. The built in microphones sound very decent indeed. The menu is very easy to navigate, and if you have any experience with Tascam's bigger digital multitracks, then the dp-004 is immediately familiar. Best of all, it runs on 4 AA batteries-PORTABLE!!! Really is about the size of a paperback novel.
I always felt you had to crank the inputs of the dp-01 to get a strong mic signal. That is not the case with the dp-004. The built in condensers are nice and sensitive. You have three ranges to choose from:low, medium and high. Medium does the job nicely with the inputs set a little past 12:00. Using a condenser mic requires an external mixer or mic pre, unless you have a battery powered one, like the Rode NT3, which I happen to own. You will also need an xlr>1/4" impedance adapter, no xlr inputs. The microphone setting is waaaay to sensitive for condenser microphones. Setting input to "line high" does the job nicely.
So how does it sound? I think it sounds great, using a microphone or the built in mics. The built in microphones really do sound nice and seem to have a nice frequency response. For vocals, I like to sing directly into a single microphone, but preliminary tests with the built in mics sound very decent.
So, anxious to try the dp-004 out, I headed to my garage with my acoustic and my Rode NT3. I close miked the guitar with the Rode on track1, and used an internal microphone as an ambient room mic for track 2, and recorded the guitar track (you can only record two tracks at a time0. I did the same for tracks 3&4 on vocals, then mixed the whole thing to taste. The guitar and vocals were 1 take. I know I missed the high note at the end, but whatever. All in all, as a song writing tool, I'm pretty pleased with this little unit. Thanks for checking out my version of "Blackbird" by the Beatles-it's really pitchy and I have not rehersed it too much, it's really just for illustration purposes. I have only recently started fingerpicking, but I am really enjoying learning. This is all straight out of the box, just as it was recorded.
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=935364
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