SPEAKER_1 Hello, and welcome to another Double Dutch Rudder podcast. I'm your host, Cory Miller. And as promised, I am doing a quick review on the TASCAM DP004. It's an older piece of tech. It came out about, I think, 15 years ago. And you'll be interested to know I'm actually recording this episode on the TASCAM. I'm going to do all the post-processing in Audacity. Just because that is a free audio editing app. And I think for anybody who is looking to get something like this for podcasting or anything like that, you may have limited budget. So Audacity is a great audio editing tool. Anyway, the DP004 by TASCAM is a digital... DP stands for Digital Porter Studio. And this one is a four-track. They currently have a six-track, which has two mono tracks and two stereo tracks for a total of six tracks. And then they also have an eight-track. They haven't refreshed those in a while, so I'm hoping that they'll refresh those soon, because there are some competitors that have come out with something, some things that are actually quite compelling. I could give these a run for their money. But anyway, back to the DP-004. Like I said, this came out about 15 years ago, and it is a four-track. It has three-band EQ on it, so you can do some editing on it. It can be a little difficult. Basically, you've got four volume knobs, four pan knobs for left and right. You have two quarter-inch inputs, no XLR inputs. I'm actually using an adapter for my usual podcast microphone. And it also has two on-board microphones, so if you don't want to use a microphone at all, it's got some right in the front, and they actually sound great. I may try and get a little audio from that later, but probably not, honestly. In any case, you have two input volume knobs to gain stage your inputs, and you have a master knob, and you also have a headphone volume control as well. It has a line and instrument switch on it as well, depending on what input you're putting in. Now, the good thing about this is you can record four tracks separately, and one of the neat things about this is it does have a bounce mode, so you can record up to four tracks, then bounce those tracks down to two, and then you'll have two additional tracks. One of the drawbacks for that is it is essentially a destructive edit, so you don't get to keep those individual tracks as themselves. They end up getting mixed down to two or one, however many you're mixing and where you're mixing them to, and then all those are on one track, and they're all mixed together, so you can't separate those out at that point. So that is kind of a drawback for this device. You can also mix and master on this. It does have a mixing and mastering mode. You'll just put it into your mastering mode, get your levels set and your panning set, and you can output from this. It outputs in wave format. It does not do MP3. You will have to go into something like Audacity or whatever DAW that you want to use to do post-processing and exporting it as an MP3. I believe right now the DP-006, which replaced this DP-004, is going for about $170 right now. In my personal opinion, I think that's a little bit expensive. I think for as old as these devices are, it should be closer to $100, maybe $130 at most, because again, mine is, I want to say it's about 15 years old. So it's an older device, and I believe the DP-006 came out maybe 11 years ago. And so the prices on these need to come down, in my personal opinion. Hopefully they will. Like I said, there actually is another device out there, if you're looking for something that's a little bit more flexible and where you can save each individual track and transfer those to your DAW, or whatever you want to use. There is a device out there right now called the Zoom R4. As the name implies, it's a four-track recorder. And the great thing about that, it has a bounce function as well, and it has a separate track for that. And the good thing is, is when you do bounce those tracks, it does save those tracks individually, as well as the bounce track. So you can essentially take four tracks, bounce it, add another four tracks, bounce that, add another four tracks, bounce that, and you can basically have infinite tracks at that point. And you can just keep adding and adding, and you get to keep those original files. Another issue with this as far as being in the modern age is most recorders can also double as audio interfaces. This one, the Tascam DP-004 can't. Like I said, the Zoom R4, that one actually can be used as an audio interface. It also has an onboard mic. It also supports XLR microphones. So like I said, I'm kind of hoping that Tascam at some point will come out with something similar, because what I usually record these podcasts on, the Tascam Mixcast 4, is an awesome device. And I think that can take some of the smarts and the know-how from that and put it into a new kind of compact four-track recorder. So hopefully, within the next few years, they'll do that. Again, I think to me, kind of the essential things is it's got to be able to double as an audio interface, being able to keep each of those individual tracks, I think is important for any musician, even if you're just sketching out ideas. I think it's important that you can take that and just build on it. And if you want to take something like that and actually take those original tracks and turn it into a song and not redo them, you need to be able to have those individually. So I think that's really important. And with that, I think we're done for this week's episode. I know it's a short one. This week's episode, this month's episode. Anyway, I know it's a short one. Anyway, reach out to me on Facebook. You can also go to ddrpodcast.com. Reach out to me there. You can also reach out on our Mastodon instance. That's social.ddrpodcast.com. Let me know if there's anything you want to hear me talk about.
Ep. 28