TASCAM DP-006

[Tootler]

Tascam DP-006
http://tascam.com/product/dp-006/overview/

It's basically an upgrade of the DP-004. 64 did a review of the DP-004 here and the main features are much the same.

Essentially it's a six track no frills recorder. The six tracks are arranged as two mono tracks and two stereo pairs. The stereo tracks can be set as mono to give four mono tracks should you wish.

It's compact - about the same size as the DP-004 so slightly larger than the BR-80 or MBR. I found mine fits nicely in a foam lined bag I got for a 7" Android tablet and never used which makes it nice and portable.

It has two 1/4" Jack inputs both can be used as mic/line and there is a switch to change one of them to take a High-Z input for a guitar. There are two inbuilt condenser mics. These are of good quality and can be used as two mono mics or as a stereo pair.

There are no built-in effects or virtual tracks so it's a basic no frills multi track recorder which is what I was after. I already have a BR-800 so did not feel I needed the built in effects. OTOH, it's about £30 - £50 cheaper than the BR-80 which was also a factor for me. So what you get is a good quality multi track recorder at a reasonable price.

It takes SD/SDHC cards up to 32 GB and is supplied with a 2GB card. The card is inserted through the battery compartment so it's not a straightforward job to remove the card and put it in a card reader for transferring song files to a PC. You have to do it using a mini USB lead (one is supplied). I connected mine up and my Linux PC found it straight away, so transfer of files is not a problem. Song files are stored in a proprietary format and need to be converted to *.wav for transfer to a PC. This is done internally in the machine and is a bit slow but it works.

There are some basic editing functions: clone (ie copy) track, erase track, cut a section of track insert silence and silence part of a track. There's multilevel undo and you can copy the current state of a song to the memory card.

One feature I've already found useful is a standard camera tripod socket in the base. I've already used this with a table top mini tripod to angle the recorder towards me for recording.

General verdict. This will be a useful basic MTR which is small enough to be portable. It will fit in a gig bag pocket or a gear bag no problems. The claimed battery life is pretty good. Recording quality with the built in mics is good. It essentially allows you to record and mix but if you want to use effects, you need to transfer your song files to a DAW for further work. Conversion to *.wav is slow but it works. The Boss Wave Converter is much better and quicker, though I can see no reason these days why they don't just record to *.wav directly and save all the hassle of conversion. Large capacity memory cards are widely available at a reasonable price, after all.

Overall I am pleased with it so far. It should be a useful complement to my BR-800 both portable and useful for simpler recordings. A fair proportion of my recordings are simple acoustic ones and the extras in the BR-800 are not needed in that case.