Item: TAS2488MKII
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customer reviews
41 People rated this product :
7 out of 10
6 People wrote reviews
8 out of 10
"Escape from the visual DAW"
Feature:
One button mastering is nice. Getting away from a visual approach of protools style recording tracks can be liberating. It's closer to making mix tapes for your friends. I love that. The live writer is a great selling point in theory, in practice I've never used it. There are so many features for the live musician or session recording person. I have yet to use them for my style of music. 80 gb means you dont have to worry about time left in your jam session. When your all done you can export your live session to disk or usb for software mastering or out of house post production.
Quality:
I still dont get why you have the 24 bitrate work environment, and then the head room is only 44.1 or sixteen bit quality recording in frequency. Possibly the reason is to keep this box under $1000 us dollars. it made of plastic to keep it portable, other wise its appearnce looks sub par consumer grade electronics. It's (not) A Sony!
Value:
its made for musicians not audio engineers and protools snobs who sneer at this box.for sombody who just wants to get an idea down fast in this box is great for that. Recording a jam or 4x4 dj battle with mcs in your basement, it's great for that. what your not going to get is a 100,000 grand studio. But most of those big guys are dinosaurs. this unit is digital and is great for the beginner and the seasoned pro who know what they want from a production standpoint. It's very organic and hands on the mixer type of flow, departing away from the mouse and digital catapillars on the screen. Record all at once or separately. the idea is there in all of its glory.
Desirability:
the original was dorky with the greenscreen and general midi loops on board. The blue is nice, the spdif is great to have when connecting to hardware EQs and mastering boxes. this portastudio is a great way to get from just noodling to finished songs. hearing what you made sucks or is worth buying. Is great feedback and for why i purchased this box. It has more for the musican who has more gear or is going to be getting more gear. although i dont really use all of its features as sombody would for recording vocals or guitars.
Sound:
Transparent. No latency problems when compared to. It sound is broadcast quality, or a company that makes great recording equipment for the project studio or live situation. Using the spdif is great for capturing my mixes of my roland mc909. As the digital adage goes garbage in, garbage out. there are tons of guitar effects built into this box. you can also side chain external and internal effects to all tracks. The compressor and eq are average, if you need them. similar to a swiss army knife approach in recording, they are there if you have to use them, but the results are at best woody in sound.It might be better to get nice outboard gear as you go. Such as a nice tube mic pre amps,expanders, compressors,etc.
Ease of Use:
If you have never done session style recording or recording your work, get the dvd asocated with this box. The dvd will get you there faster than the manual, which is helpful but not as good as watching sombody use your box to produce songs. After the breaking in period of a few weeks. For your work flow this box is a snap to sketch out ideas. Then mix them down with other tracks in to one completed song in a hour or less. the wav editor on board is tricky, and this machine is never going to match the ease of a software program dedicated to that purpose. this porta sudio is to get away from the mouse and just press record, yet still get the same or better results. combined with a software suite the portastudio is a nice way to blend the two realms. the only catch is the hard drive and firmware are slow in moving song or tracks to the usb. since the box uses FAT for writing to disk in stead of NTFS which is faster, but is not so friendly to macs. so bring verf your band mates; go to the fridge, get six pack open and bake a redbaron pizza whilst the process of writing or transfer occurs. Your workflow on this portastudio is first to record, premaster record, mix down, then transfer to cd or usb for mp3 export. doing that in real time is tedious, so ifind its better to separate in chunks days to do all of your songs for differnt functions on this box.
Support:
I called them out in montebello, it took about an half an hour to get the answer I got, but I guess there might be one tech or two for this box for such a big audio company's call center. job burnout i guess -but the problem was solved nonetheless.
Overall:
You have plenty of room to grow with this box. It frees you from always working in software. This approach of hearing songs instead of looking at your songs approach is refreshing. In this day and age of entry level software setups such as garageband, sonar, and protools le. Why get all of that out board gear just to get the same result of this portastudio? Just press record, and listen and repeat.
Submitted: 5/7/2008
Style of Music: edm styles, electronic
8 out of 10
"This product met my musical goals and never crashed out on me."
Feature:
Comes with power chord. The EQ features and some of the effects are useful. I have only used the chorus for guitars and it's not bad but I prefer to use my own stuff.
Quality:
I've never had to move my tascam recorder so I don't really know how well it does on the raod. Nice look to it and it goes well with all my other gear in my home studio. I imagine something might break if it is dropped. A backup would be great. If taken care of this machine will last for many years to come.
Value:
Well worth the money.
Desirability:
In a dim room with soft lights it looks great. Every time I walk into my studio it makes me want to record something.
Sound:
This product sounds great, once you get a good mix and tweak it even sounds better. I had a project mastered through a company in New york and my CD sounded just as good as the big boys. This machine will help you achieve the sound you are looking for as long as you record with good mics and decent instruments. The effects are not bad either. I have owned the product before this one and I never had a problem with it crashing out. It would be helpful to have automated faders for mixing. Overall I love the product.
Ease of Use:
It's easy to use even if you have not had experience recording yet. Pretty intuitive machine. You can easily tweak your sound to almost perfection by using what's on board. The manual is self explanatory. You can also play your music back through your PA system or just some nice monitors.
Support:
Never had to deal with the company.
Overall:
I look forward to the next product with automated fader features. I will supplement it because you can never have too many recorders. I have never owned any other product so I can't compare but even with some of the not so good reviews on this product I still took my chances and bought one and I am glad I did. It met all my musical goals.
Submitted: 11/28/2007
Style of Music: Latin Jazz, Rock, New Age
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Call for 4 equal payments on most orders over $395. Installment plans available only by phone. 
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