Tascam 70D - Any reason not to purchase?

sbeecroft

sbeecroft

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Stephen
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Hi,

I am after an external recorder to use in conjunction with an XLR mic to record sound as well as putting that sound back onto camera to make syncing easy - but leaving me option to keep that sound on occasion.

After a lot of research I have come to the Tascam 70D. It seems to do everything I need at the price range I am wanting to spend.

Before I make this purchase has anybody got any experience of the device and would give me any reason not to purchase this? Sound is not really my area of expertise or experience so hope I am not missing something obvious that another product could do for me better.

If anybody needs any further information to help them make a comment then please ask.
 
I've just gotten a DR-70D after having owned a DR-40. Preamps are great compared to the DR-40, which is about equivalent to a Zoom H4N. They've got a good amount of gain and are pretty clean considering the price and size of the thing; generally I've found with it that unless I'm in a particularly quiet location the ambient noise will be over the noise floor of the preamps (depending on the mic used of course).
Some people have reported higher levels of noise using the output back into the camera, however if you're using it for sync only (which should almost always be the case) then that's a non-issue. I found that using the line out only gave me information in the left channel, but using the headphone output and monitoring via the camera was fine.

For my needs it works really well, and for anything more demanding I have a FocusRite 18i8, but that with a laptop is an emormous footprint in comparison. It ultimately depends on the sort of work you'll be doing however.
 
Thanks very much Tom for your reply.

As a relatively inexperienced sound guy can I just ask to expand on
TomTomTom said:
generally I've found with it that unless I'm in a particularly quiet location the ambient noise will be over the noise floor of the preamps (depending on the mic used of course).
.
Click to expand...
Is that a good thing? apologies for the lack of understanding about what you mean here.
 
sbeecroft said:
Thanks very much Tom for your reply.

As a relatively inexperienced sound guy can I just ask to expand on

Is that a good thing? apologies for the lack of understanding about what you mean here.
Click to expand...

If you're in a room that has some background noise, maybe a computer running or a road outside or something like that, then often that ambient noise will be louder than the noise of the preamps. It's not a good thing per se, because it means you're still not getting a clean recording, but I'd always take background noise over preamp hiss.
 
Right I understand. Thanks for explaining that. Can I ask where you bought yours from?
 
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