When I was shopping for such toys, I repeatedly heard from
several sources that the Fostex was a wonderful machine, but
still had a few bugs.
TEAC's porta-one ministudio, on the other hand, is one of the
most brilliantly designed units on the market. In terms of
quality to price ratio, ...monster. The spec. sheets tell
most of the story. Moreover, it is quite compact and more portable
than the Fostex, and the prices are in the same ballpark (Fenway:
less than $500).
So, by all means, gander all over the TEAC before buying.
The most amazing coincidence is that we die exactly at the ends of our lives.
Tim Snyder
princeton!fisher!tim
What about the new Yamaha MT1X portable 4-track ? It has features
pretty similar to the MiniStudio, except can record on all 4 channels
at once. Sells for about $450. Any comments/opinions ?
Also, does anyone have any experience with the Tascam 234 4-track deck
sans mixer-board? It runs at 3-3/4 ips, and sells for about $700.
They all, of course, have dbx.
--
Sunil
UUCP: ...{harvard, seismo, ut-sally, sri-iu, ihnp4!packard}!topaz!mohan
ARPA: Mohan@RUTGERS
Sure. The MT1X is a sound engineer's nightmare. Aside from the obvious
fact that the controls and indicators are a jumbled, illogical mess(especially
if you happen to be a trained studio engineer and are used to various
brands of equipment at least attempting to exhibit some form of a standard
controls and indicators setup), the compensation for various forms of audio
inputs is very poor.
My experience relates from a weekend video, where most of our time was
wasted on trying to get our levels to compensate for various mic's. I'll admit
that the final out to the vcr was a little touchy, but we had very few problems
working around that. The dealer who rented this fresh-off-the-shelf garbage
assured me that it was very easy for an experienced engineer to setup and
record with it. We proceeded to spend the next 26 hours trying to reveal
the well-hidden secrets to recording with it. By Sunday afternoon we had
declared the project a flop, and all due to one simple compensation problem.
And yes, we did everything from preamping to line-mic diddling, with no
avail.
Of course, actual mileage varies with the engineer and conditions,
but in my opinion, you get what you pay for.