I had a chance to try a few different things out with my Tascam. Last week my good friend Ari and his brother Zac were busking in the main square of the Jewish Quarter. I grabbed my TASCAM and my AKG C1000S condenser mic and carried it out to 'the Rova' along with the attendant mic stand and cables. For some reason, I get a real kick out of walking around with huge headphones on and tonnes of odd cables hanging out of every pocket. I've attached the recording I made by plugging the AKG into the mic2 port and recording at mid gain around level 9. This sample was only very lightly treated. All I did was load it into Audacity, crop out a nice chunk, fade it in and out and normalize it. Other than that, it's unfiltered and unequalized. Note the way I strapped the TASCAM to the stand. Have you all noticed the little notches on the back of the TASCAM at the top edge? Do you think these might be grommets for a tripod adaptor or something? That would be great, but even better would be a leather or hard case that gives access to the buttons and controls. But for those like me (ie, the budgetarily challenged), rest assured that you can have success by following this simple maxim: "'Strap 'er to the stand with a big ole' rubber band!" Passover is in full swing here in the Jewish quarter. Earlier tonight, a band of Breslover Chossidim came with their gear and bopped around to their famous brand of Jewish Rock/Klezmer. Not wanting to pass up the opportunity, I grabbed my TASCAM in great haste (before it even had time to bake!) and ran out to the square to grab a few clips. My second attachment is a sample that I took using the built in mics at low gain at 10. The TASCAM was placed on a table of books that the chassidim were giving away for a donation to charity, about 5-10 meters back from the PA. Back in the lab, I loaded the file into Audacity. From there I tried to treat her in the manner that Bass Clarinet suggested. I used Audacity's built in EQ to lower the gain at 4500Hz, I also ran Paul Nasca's Bass boost plugin at 120Hz to a gain of 4dB, and then I applied the LADSPA convolution reverb (stereo) plugin using it's default values. The end result came out sounding pretty good, for what it was, but I'll let you all be the judge of that. As far as feature requests, I'd love to see the following: The Ability to record clean, and playback with effects. The Edirol R-09 does this, I believe.It would also be great to be able to access the menus while plugged into USB (non-trivial?)I also would love to have the suggested NOMIX option, which would turn my DR-1 into a real powderkeg of creative potentialWith all those, and especially the last suggestion (NOMIX), I would recommend the DR-1 to anyone - hobbyist, student, or professional.RecordingtheRova.mp3 Rocking_the_Rova.mp3
