Hi all,

finally I decided to go for a Tascam 2488 to record my drum tracks.

I record everything dry because I want to force
myself to focus on the quality of the drumsound
itself, not on the effects. So I tuned my kit and
improved the sound of my practise room and got
everything together.

Micing was as follows:
- Bassdrum (D112)
- Snare (Sennheiser MD409)
- Toms 10" and 12" (Beyerdynamics M400)
- Toms 14" and 16" (Beyerdynamics M500)
- HiHat (Sennheiser BF530 - bad idea, I know)
- Overhead (some crap to be replaced by a condenser mic)

Any comments on this are welcome. But that is not my problem.

So I have mapped 6 input channels to 6 tracks. Then
I recorded a few bars and checked/corrected the position
of the microphones etc. until it sounded ok. My test
recordings were up to 3-4 minutes. I played over
this again and again.

When I started recording a song, the following happened:
After 42 seconds the counter stopped and it was impossible
to stop the recorder. The harddisk was not working. The red
"record" light in each of the 6 channels was on and it was
not possible to turn it off. It was not possible to shut down
the system. The click was still clicking, even when I pressed
stop. At the end I had to power it off without doing a real
shutdown.

Repeating this procedure the next time it stopped at 1:20,
then again at 0:42, then at whatever.
I did another try with only 5 channels recorded simmultaneously
and it stopped after 2:40; perhaps the unit cannot manage the
high I/O when recording 6 tracks? That would be a shame, as
this was the only reason why I bought this thing.

Does anybody have an idea what could have happened here.
Of course I will also talk to my dealer, but that is not
possible before end of next week. I don't think I can stand
the pain for so long ;-) Any ideas??? Formatting the harddisk?

Thank you
PC