2488 Question

[ACIDBANDIT]

Suprisingly, noone mentioned the Fostex VF160. 40gig HD, built in CDR and it has knobs, however i'm not sure if they are for EQ or just for panning Anyone have any input on this DAW ?

 

[wedsr1]

Fostex?

Looks like a decent machine. But... if you want 24-bit, 24 tracks, the 2488 is great for the price.

The Fostex is 16-bit, 16 tracks. I think the knobs are for input trim. Most machines that have independent feature like knobs will say so emphatically. These advertisers make sure that they want you know what they are selling.

As you probably know, the more parts you have (like physical knobs) the more expensive the DAW will be.

Hey Double, glad to hear that the 2488 is working for you. There's hope for me then too (I think ).

 

[mrx]

Wayne -

It sounds like the 2488 is growing on you? (You had some reservations earlier.)

Looks like street price is only a couple hundred more that the Korg 12 track, but I still have that lingering feeling that once people really get into using this thing there's going to be some massive 'gotcha', like tracks floating out of sync under heavy load, etc.

 

[wedsr1]

2488 Growing On Me?

I have not had the unit long enough for it to grow on me. But from Double's statement about getting complemented from other studio guys, I'm encouraged.

I'll accept the paired track design. That was my main drawback. I have the D1600 and even with the pan knobs, once they are set I don't change them very much. So having all of the "buttons and knobs" on screen is not so bad.

 

[mrx]

Wayne -

Thanks for the feedback. I figure the days of virtual knobs are upon us, so I could probably live with the pan situation, but I took a trip over to the 2488 user forum (Dr.Who's site) and had flashbacks. The saga of 'lowboy' was enough - if Tascam is already shunting users to a non-vendor site for technical support, I can only imagine their commitment to bug fixes and feature updates. Hope that's not the case, but history tends to repeat.

Good luck!

 

[wedsr1]

Flashbacks.

KorgStudios is the best resource on the net or anywhere else for Korg Series DAW's. Korg users have had the same complaint at times about being abandoned. But I think it is the nature of the industry. They come out with a unit that works pretty good, fills a niche and then they put out the next generation of units... which by the way tends to be a fix of the major bugs of it's predecessors, accompanied by a price increase as well. We can't win.

I pretty much learned all I needed about the D1600 in that forum as well as get tech support... from people who actually use this machine.

I hope that this site and www.tascamforums.com will be sufficient as well for us 2488 users.

 

[mrx]

Wayne -

I had the same experience with Korg. (In a moment of frustration, after getting no help from US support, I emailed their office in England and actually got a manager and a product engineer to respond!) Even with Fostex, it depends who answers your call - there are a few good support reps, but most would just as soon be supporting deep friers or vacuum cleaners.

Tascam seems to be taking a more dangerous route than just offering support from under-paid techs - they find a couple early 'super users', stroke them like they're 'insiders', and basically get an unpaid tech support department. There's simply no excuse (if it's true) for them to be sending users of a new product to an outside forum for support. These indy 'user groups' exist for every vendor, but Tascam's always take on this religious tone of "Tascam invented home recording! We owe them loyalty! How dare you question this product!" - it's like the webmaster had to go through Tascam indoctrination before being allowed to fund his own site.

There's a lot of good information there, but when users start taking on the guise of Tascam employees, you end up with crap like the 'analysis' of lowboy's lock-up issue.

 

[pungod]

Thanks for all the helpful responses, guys. I see at least three of you are mastering on the PC. What mastering applications do you use? Any freeware or shareware alternatives?

So, if the general consensus is that you can't quite get Redbook quality masters out of the 2488, then to what level can you get, and how much further tweaking on the PC is needed to bring it up to Redbook, if that's even possible?

Gary

P.S.: Roland claims its MV-8000 (about $800 more than the 2488) is capable of Redbook masters. Does anyone know if this is true, or is it just more manufacturer's hype?

I've been told that the term "red book" is subjective to the point of meaninglessness.

 

[wedsr1]

MRX... good point.

Have to say AMEN to your last statement. I guess the issue is... PROFIT. They design, package and sell, we buy hoping that they are the miracle machines touted by the advertisements. They simply make a profit and then SLACK on support or turn it over to the recording guru's for no pay. It is unfortunate!

 

[mrx]

Wayne -

One thing was confusing from the comments on the other board regarding something about punch and bounce? Does that mean that if any sort of punching or comping from virtual tracks is done that the track needs to be bounced before it is a single wav for export?

(I got the feeling that many of those 2488 users were making the jump from cassett and that many of the 'issues' are just the nature of hard disk recorders.)

 

[wedsr1]

Single Wave File

Not sure what you mean.

From my experience, you can export any track to wave file format. I've not done it on the 2488 yet but on the D1600, you can export a mono wave file or a stereo wave file. You just have to make sure the you export each track from the same in and out points so that they sync when played on another computer or DAW.

 

[philboyd studge]

Wayne -

One thing was confusing from the comments on the other board regarding something about punch and bounce? Does that mean that if any sort of punching or comping from virtual tracks is done that the track needs to be bounced before it is a single wav for export?

(I got the feeling that many of those 2488 users were making the jump from cassett and that many of the 'issues' are just the nature of hard disk recorders.)

Your track should export as you have it in your pre mastered mix. If for some reason that doesn't work then yes, you could bounce it to another track and export that.

 

[wedsr1]

Exporting Tracks

Note:

Because of a bug with the 2488 (TASCAM is aware of this problem), if you have tracks that have been edited (i.e. erasures, deletions, punches, etc.), you must first bounce that track or tracks to another virtual track or tracks before you export.

 

[philboyd studge]

Note:

Because of a bug with the 2488 (TASCAM is aware of this problem), if you have tracks that have been edited (i.e. erasures, deletions, punches, etc.), you must first bounce that track or tracks to another virtual track or tracks before you export.

So the track has to be clean and free of any editing?

 

[wedsr1]

Clean Tracks

My "GUESS" is yes. That is why you have to do a bounce. Wave files need to be contiguous. If you record a track straight through without any editing, it is a complete wave file. So when you bounce, you are making the file contiguous (i.e. no fragmentation)

My guess is:

1. when edits are being done, little files are being created that are tagged with the begining and end points of these edits (don't quote me on that!) that the 2488 knows what track they should be associated with and when they should be called up when the track played back.

2. that the 2488 is pulling the data from the main track and is not automatically grabbing the little edit files created when editing when you choose to export.

3. that the 2488 does it right on playback (reading those little files) but not on export.

I've been told that an upgrade will fix it. Don't know when that is coming.

I'm just guessing here. I sometimes use N-Track on a PC and thats what it does when you do a mix down (bounce to some). It combines all the little files down to a stereo file, making one contiguous file. I think the 2488 will probably have to do an automatic bounce of a track on the fly as it does it's export to fix the problem.

Food for thought.

 

[junplugged]

Well, I did get to play with the 2488 at Guitar center last night, it was very nice to have the 24 tracks and not be on a PC. All I did was mess with the levels, soloing tracks and watch the hd light blink. The eq I used was on the stereo bus and it was 3 band. nice graph, but I'd like a bunch more points to sweep around. Maybe they exist on the other busses, or channels? I could get into that machine....

I had this 'thing' about 'knobs' on the mixer, but now I see that it's not so bad to use a jog/data wheel and do quick edits on a graphical display. Except that is's one at a time, I guess it all comes down to how accessible are the choices you need to make, are they hidden in menus, or assigned to a button, also, a big thing for me, would be to have a bunch of buttons that I can custom assign to functions for me, either globally or saved in each project file, if possible since some projects may have me using different features in different ways....

I liked that there is a 'song' button that puts up a menu fast and i used the cursor keys to pop to 'load from hd' and loaded up the first tune, pretty fast and got right to playing w/ levels, etc.

 

[mandpasbury]

It's best to run your stereo mix at 24bit to good computer based 'mastering' software where you can easily make things loud enough.

I agree with this..."pro" computer-based software will do the trick. The 2488 does a great job overall, but nothing beats computer based mastering for the home studio.

 

[RAMI]

I export tracks all the time that have been edited. It's a Wav file. You can export it as is.

 

[Trillian]

Rami - note that this is nearly a two year old thread someone dug back up (for some reason). The problem they're all referring to was fixed in the first upgrade to the software way back when.

 

[Zaphod B]

Hey, Trillian -

Whaddaya say we steal Hotblack Desiato's star-cruiser and get a bite at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe?

Oh, and try to ditch that other earthling, Arthur Dent, will you?

....you are that Trillian, aren't you?