- Built-in Stereo Electret Condenser Microphone
- Records to SD or SD-HC Card Media
- 2GB SD Card Included
- USB 2.0 Jack for Transferring Files
- 3.5mm Stereo Mic Input
pros:
great price ($175 guitar center)
small
light weight
records any combination of 16/24bit 44.1k/48k sample rate
has built in mics
very easy to use
takes SD cards to expand recording time.
records either mp3 or wave files.
sound is directional, and records the best from directly in front.
Comes with a wind screen.
Takes AA batteries, easy to find and use.
cons:
Mic pre-amps are VERY noisy: when recording an interview or acoustic guitar, you can hear the hiss through it... lots of hiss on low volume recordings like that.
Lots of handling noise (more on that below),
NO Speaker! So you have to bring headphones to check your recordings.
The windscreen looks and feels cheap, its just a piece of shipping foam cut out to fit on top.
Buttons feel cheap,
memory card and USB access door feels cheap, I'm sure after a short while of use, it will break off.
Handling noise: any slight touch of the unit make a loud sound when using on-board mics, Poor quality limiter: the limiter cuts back so hard that when you just touch the unit, or get a loud pop from your voice, it cuts all the way down to zero, and then back up, so you get this very dramatic but short cut out of sound. Its very annoying. I had to turn off the limiter to use it, because every time i touched the unit to move it, it would cut out for a second. This was during an interview where I had the recording level up.
I was doing an interview and had to set the internal mic sensitivity to high and the gain to 8 or 9 (out of 10) just to get a good level on my subject sitting about 6 feet across from me. There was a lot of noise (hiss) too. Too much for someone picky, and looking for clean sound. Maybe an external mic would have been better, but you're still using the internal pre-amps which are very noisy.
I have to say that for the price, if you are looking for something to record band rehearsal, practice, or song ideas, its perfect! Maybe if you had a pair of mics you would get good results from a live rock concert (rock, not jazz or classical, because of the hiss in the background.... the rock music would drown that out)
So 5 out of 5 because it is perfect for what it is, but its not a solid feeling professional piece of gear with high quality preamps, its just a portable recorder for every day recording... professional sound guys would be disappointed. I would recommend this to my musician friends who want something to record scratch song ideas while away from a real studio, or someone looking to get into recording as a hobby, and play around with recordings.
Hope that helps people out there.
*** UPDATE ***
okay, i just found the Sony PCM-M10 Portable Digital Recorder. I would suggest that anyone on the fence about the Sony PCM-D50 should consider this one, its half the price. If its ANYTHING like the D50, it will be something to consider if you're looking for a bit more from the DR07, mainly a bit more in quality of the mics.
PCM-M10 Portable Digital Recorder
Buy Tascam DR07 Portable Digital Recorder Now
I finally have this fine little solid state recorder in my hands, and I must say it does nearly anything I could want from it.Sound quality, especially using the 44.1KHz/48KHz and WAV16bit/WAV24bit settings, is as good as you can get without having to fork over considerably more for something more professional grade, such as the Sony PCMD50 (~$500) or a far more expensive device (sorry, forgot the name) that costs $1,500USD.
As expected, the integral microphones are decent for recording up close, but I would definitely recommend using an external for recording bands, lecture halls, or other roomy areas where the sound source may be some distance from the unit.
That is also where this little gadget really shows its stuff, as it is configurable for condenser microphones that require a powered (think "phantom" power) jack, dynamic microphones that have their own power source (I have an Audio Technica stereo mike that uses a single AA battery to operate), and even a line in jack for recording from a mixing desk or other device with a line out jack.
You can even slow down or speed up the recordings after they are made, with no pitch change, although I did notice that the slowed recordings exhibited noticeable artifacting at the slower settings, but that is no real problem, as that feature is mainly a musician's tool for learning how to play a fast or complicated part, NOT for listening enjoyment.
The 2GB SD card that it comes with almost has the full capability of file size that this unit can handle, which is 2GB, or ~3hours and 24minutes when recording 44.1KHz/16-bit.
The 2GB card holds just over 3 hours, so anyone wanting to max out the recording file size limit will need a 4GB card.
In fact, that 2GB file size limit is the only possible area of concern for anyone using this, at least if you want to capture a lengthy performance in lossless WAV format.
I did not experiment with the on-the-fly MP3 recording it does, but if you set it to 128KBPS, you can expect over 10 times as much recording time, due to the compression ratio.
Of course, the batteries would likely give out before that ~30 hours of nonstop recording, so anyone wanting to do that would be advised to buy the Tascam AC adapter also sold here.
Oh, I also LOVE the ease with which Tascam made it to set the levels, where you simply hit the record button once, which turns on the microphones without starting recording, allowing you to listen on headphones to adjust those levels, then hit record again to start the recording.
So simple, even a young kid could do it.
As a suggestion, I would advise anyone wanting to use this for recording from a distance to purchase a decent condenser omnidirectional "lapel" style stereo microphone, with the little Griffon unit being a particularly nice one, especially for the money.
I can't wait to really put this through its paces.
***EDIT***
Update: It turns out that this handy little recorder neatly circumvents the above mentioned 2GB file size limit by simply automatically starting a new audio file once it reaches that 2GB limit on the first file, continuing on until the SD card is full, or if you press stop.
This means that you will be able to record approximately 53hours 20minutes onto a 32GB SD card!
Naturally, the way to handle the multiple files created on the fly by this recorder is to append all of them in order on your hard drive, naturally using an operating system whose file system has no such 2GB limit, which includes XP and Linux, among some others.
I have also been able to test this little gadget, and I am quite happy with the performance and quality of the recordings.
The interface is intuitive, and the controls are quite easy to use, even those for dividing files directly on the unit, which makes it quite handy for slicing off removing trailing garbage on recordings, which can then be deleted before downloading the saved portion of audio onto your computer.
Slick, great sound quality, small, and yes updateable.
Yes, there IS a small firmware update out there already for this that addresses some minor issues, and the update process is quite easy as well.
I definitely appreciate a manufacturer making their hardware updateable for future-proofing their products.
I feel perfectly comfortable in giving this five stars, and I would have given it six, if Amazon had that rating available.
GREAT solid state recorder!
Read Best Reviews of Tascam DR07 Portable Digital Recorder Here
The DR-07 does everything Tascam claims and more. It's easy to use and the recordings sound great. Used it the day it arrived to record an entire 5-hour band rehearsal. Setting it up was simply a matter of putting it on a music stand across the room and pressing REC. I never had to touch it again for 5 hours. The stereo 128K MP3 audio quality was fine and the resulting 5-hour file used only about 300MB of the 2GB (2,000MB) SD card that came with the DR-07. Took it home after rehearsal and quickly transferred the MP3 to my laptop where I sliced and diced the recording into individual song files with CoolEdit 2000. At last there is an easy way to remember how we played it at rehearsal and do a quick review before the gig. This thing is a must for an aging rocker.Other great musician features include:
adjust tempo without affecting pitch
adjust pitch (in half steps) without affecting tempo
fine tune pitch (cents) without affecting tempo
quickly mark a phrase (short or long) and loop playback infinitely
use line-in for quick and easy board tapes
camera style tripod mount
It lived up to Tascam's claim of 7.5 hours on two AA's. That may seem like a long time but I'm probably going to do the planet a favor and buy the AC adapter. I'd also like to find a reasonably priced carrying case to keep the display from getting scratched up in my gig bag.
Want Tascam DR07 Portable Digital Recorder Discount?
I shoot documentaries in HDV widescreen and with surround sound. For surround, I use the tape to record the front two audio channels from a Sony stereo microphone. For the rear two channels, for the past few years I've used a Sharp Minidisc recorder mounted on the rear of the camera, fed from an identical Sony stereo microphone facing rearward. The rig has worked great.But the Sharp Minidisc recorders, reliable as they have been, are mechanical, with spinning disks and moving heads. It was time to move up to solid-state.
I looked at a variety of compact flash-memory recorders. Prices ranged from $175 to $500. I decided to get my feet wet with a unit at the lower end of the range, and narrowed my search down to the Zoom H2 and the Tascam DR-07.
The Zoom unit looked and felt delicate, though reviews on this site and elsewhere were positive. Still, when I got my hands on the Tascam it was "Game Over" for me. The unit looks classy and well-built, the menus are expansive, the audio quality is first-rate, and even the external mic preamps are just as quiet as the ones in the Sharp Minidisc units (and the noise level when driven by an Audio-Technica AT-822 for serious choral recording is plenty low enough to be masked by hall ambiance).
Two AA cells run the thing for many hours, and Enerloop rechargeables will no doubt increase that by 50%. No proprietary flat rechargeables for me, thanks. Pushbuttons are first-rate, and are not the Zoom's membrane type.
Connect the thing to your PC with a standard USB cable, and it shows up as just another hard drive. Drag and drop your files to or from the unit. And they transfer fast--a one hour wav (~700MB) took about 2 minutes. You can also just take out the SD chip and transfer with a conventional reader, if you want. Note to Apple and others: this is how things should be done--generic cabling, generic file formats, maximum flexibility.
Chip can be any size, including 32GB. Wow; 50 hours of continuous 44.1 wav recording. 500+ hours of mp3 recording.
All in all I'm a very satisfied buyer. Imagine, for under $200 you can buy a recording device with specs that would have been considered state-of-the-art 20 years ago.
UPDATE 8 Jun 09:
CAUTION CAUTION CAUTION CAUTION
The Tascam shares a fault with the Zoom H2 (and perhaps all other solid-state inexpensive recorders)--when you are recording from an external source, the incoming signal apparently goes through a stage or two before the level is adjusted by the level control dial on the side of the unit. In other words, if you bring in a hot signal and expect to control it by just turning down the recording level dial, the signal will nonetheless overload the first stage(s) it passed through and will clip.
I spent some time trying different setting and arrived at this empirical observation: if using the mic in port, the sensitivity (high-med-low) setting MUST be set so that the level adjust on the side is at least "5" (the dial is calibrated from 0 to 10). Any less and you're guaranteed a signal that will be clipped. At a "5" or greater the full range of the scale on the display can be filled before clipping. At a "4" setting, the signal will clip if greater than about -12db.
I still love the device, but this is in my view a design error. A signal that doesn't hit the end of the display scale shouldn't be clipping, regardless of the setting of the recording level dial. As mentioned, this is apparently a common issue across different products, but still should be fixed.
I don't know if this issue affects the line-in port. I assume it does, but have not been able to find a line-level signal strong enough to require a "4" setting.
The unit has a handy "lock" knob , that prevents unintentionally pushed buttons... There is no built-in speaker. This is maybe a drawback for reporters that use it as a microphone recording device.
As a pure mp3 player , for which I initially bought this unit, it is an incredible performer... and you can change the SD-cards, so I have an unlimited number of possible tracks in my reach.
The overall audio quality of this small unit is simply stunning !
Price/performance ratio is very high. Thank you Tascam.
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