In article writes:

http://www.tascamforums.com/

Concerning Tascam devices, you can learn a lot in this forum.
Those guys are keen enough to take the screwdriver and look
what is inside the boxes.

This forum is a private resurrection of the excellent forum that
TASCAM used to run themselves, in which TASCAM's product specialists
were active participants. Policies changes at the company caused the
forum to be removed, and the "Product specialist" job changed.

Since my dreams of being hired by TASCAM have completely evaporated,
I've not followed this new forum. Is there any company participation
at all? I realize the value of user experiences as a form of suppport
(both technical and moral) but company participation was what made the
original TASCAM forums special.

It looks like all those who run into the same problems as I
(error 01 or 02 and/or "MTR busy") are all trying to record
many (5 to 8) tracks at the same time. Perhaps the thing is
ok for "typical home-studio" stereo tracks, but that the
A/D translation on the input and/or the harddisk I/O is not
made for drums or band-recording. However, I am not an expert.

Did anyone report what the actual problem was? Did the replaced units
work as specified? Manufacturers don't like to tell customers (and
potential customers) "Oops, we goofed." There's rarely a product
recall unless there's a safety problem, for example a power supply
that's improperly insultated and there's an electrical shock hazard,
or a tendency to burst into flames. Generally software updates (if
that fixes a problem) are issued and those who learn about them get
them.

There's no more stress on the hardware whether the tracks you're
recording are simple parts or something very complex. A/D conversion
is still done in hardware and it's not more work to digitize 16th note
hi-hat hits for five minutes as it is to digitize a two word vocal
phrase every fifteen seconds. I suspect that there was a hardware or
firmware problem that couldn't be fixed in the field.

Reading about the guy who got his 2488 replaced by Tascam last
week and ran into the same trouble with the new unit makes me
thinking that I should go for another type.

The trouble with buying a product that's new on the market is that
often all the kinks haven't been worked out. I've found this more
frequently than I like when getting products for review these days.
The manufacturers don't always test the unit in every way that a user
might apply it, or they do, find something that doesn't work, and
figure that few enough users will do that so they can deal with
individual cases rather than redesign around the issue. And all too
often, the life span of a product isn't long enough for the kinks to
be worked out, or at least documented - so the second generation
buyers often get bit.

Things were better when it cost $100,000 to equip a studio. There were
still bugs, but they were usually easier and more reliable to fix, and
there was enough money in each sale to fund sustaining engineering
support.

If my dealer allows to trade the 2488 for another (Tascam,
Roland, or whatsoever) unit, I will look for simillar forums
before I make up my mind.

Asking around is a good thing. You'll find that the older products
have fewer problems, but they may not have all the features you
desire, and may cost more than the newest thing.

I had focused on simultaneous tracks, ease of use,
number of total real/virtual tracks, but neglected e.g.
extendability, quality of display, mouse or screen connectivity.

It sounds like you were looking for what you needed, and you simply
didn't get it because the unit doesn't work the way it's supposed to
work - it's supposed to record eight tracks simultaneously, and it
doesn't. Your choice is to either wait for the manufacturer to fix it
or bail out and try to find something else that works for you. I
haven't paid much attention to the latest Roland SIBs
(Studio-In-a-Box) but the early ones were quite complicated to
operate. The Korg SIBs have usually not had as many features as the
Rolands but have been more intuitive to operate.

For those of you who are interested, I will keep you
posted on how nice my dealer is to me.
I am hoping the best.

There's no reason why your dealer shouldn't allow you to exchange your
TASCAM for full credit on something else. He'd just going to return it
to TASCAM for credit so he's not losing anything, and he's keeping you
as a customer.


--
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