Uli_the_Grasso
New member
Hello Tascam users,
your precious Tascam mixer might sound nice, but also completely break when just an output is severely over-loaded.
I serviced a Tascam 24ch inline console which must have been from around ´98. Someone had connected the output of a 100W loudspeaker amplifier to a line output of the Tascam. An op-amp chip was literally blown, shortcutting the power supply, rendering the desk useless. This could happen only because Tascam was too scroogy to equip the outputs with current-limiting series resistors. Just 100 Ohms would have given the shutdown circuits within the op-amp chip a fair chance and would have prevented the welding of the power supply, i.e. only one output channel would have blown instead of the whole desk. Also for reasons of self-oscillation and RF behavior, i.e. sound quality and defects when bad luck strikes, it is not good practice to wire the silicium directly to the jacks.
And REAL mixing desks have output transformers. Servo-balancing is o.k. for inputs (except for particularily hard environments as big live concerts), but it is a PITA for outputs (being instable and causing ground loops).
This desk was a nightmare to service, nearly impossible to open that bloody thing. That took two hours. And then we had to rest that huge thing (two feet high and four feet long) in disassembled state on its rear panel like the tower of Pisa wanting to fall to one side or the Golden Gate bridge shaking in the wind; crap on a junkyard.
Just remember: Semi-pro is not pro.
your precious Tascam mixer might sound nice, but also completely break when just an output is severely over-loaded.
I serviced a Tascam 24ch inline console which must have been from around ´98. Someone had connected the output of a 100W loudspeaker amplifier to a line output of the Tascam. An op-amp chip was literally blown, shortcutting the power supply, rendering the desk useless. This could happen only because Tascam was too scroogy to equip the outputs with current-limiting series resistors. Just 100 Ohms would have given the shutdown circuits within the op-amp chip a fair chance and would have prevented the welding of the power supply, i.e. only one output channel would have blown instead of the whole desk. Also for reasons of self-oscillation and RF behavior, i.e. sound quality and defects when bad luck strikes, it is not good practice to wire the silicium directly to the jacks.
And REAL mixing desks have output transformers. Servo-balancing is o.k. for inputs (except for particularily hard environments as big live concerts), but it is a PITA for outputs (being instable and causing ground loops).
This desk was a nightmare to service, nearly impossible to open that bloody thing. That took two hours. And then we had to rest that huge thing (two feet high and four feet long) in disassembled state on its rear panel like the tower of Pisa wanting to fall to one side or the Golden Gate bridge shaking in the wind; crap on a junkyard.
Just remember: Semi-pro is not pro.
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