Opinions: Tascam M-2524 mixer
Lars Hamre
I'm thinking about buying a M-2524 but I don't know much about this
mixer. From the specs it seems ok, 24ch, 8sub, MIDI muting, etc.
Do you have anything good or bad to say about it?
-= Lars =-
Falk
The engineer(s) and designers who made this japanese tank must have been
drunk
and deaf. Its not a real inline-console. The EQ is razor-sharp Yakk!
And Its a "low noise hurricane"
I had a M-2524 five years ago. and I remember this mixer as a
6 weeks sonic-nightmare
Go for Mackie,Soundcraft.etc.
You wont regret
BF
Lars Hamre <la...@marktech.no> wrote in article
<333683...@marktech.no>...
> I'm thinking about buying a M-2524 but I don't know much about this
> mixer. From the specs it seems ok, 24ch, 8sub, MIDI muting, etc.
Crosstalk about -60dB?????
cgardner
>I'm thinking about buying a M-2524 but I don't know much about this
>mixer. From the specs it seems ok, 24ch, 8sub, MIDI muting, etc.
>
>Do you have anything good or bad to say about it?
>
>-= Lars =-
\
It also thoughtfully included RCA tape ins, direct outs and group outs
at a sizzling -10db to ensure compatibility with your Realistic
receiver and turntable.
I strongly second the YUCK! on this board. Absolute crap.
James Walker
cgardner wrote:
Hey dont knock it till you try it. Listened to any recording through
this board? Probably not. Its all what you do with your equiptment.
remember the mantra....soundsource, microphone, preamp, recorder.
If youve got a good sound and good mics you can crank out awsome
recordings on this board. I know because I recorded one, which by the
way smoke a recording I did at Full Sail on a NEVE and 24 track 2"
analog. Wonder why? The students didnt know what they were doing.
This is a serious board and you can laugh at all the suckers who pay
an extra $2000 for a +4 input.
Monte P McGuire
In article <5heam2$s...@camel4.mindspring.com>,
James Walker <truev...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>cgardner wrote:
>>>Do you have anything good or bad to say about it?
>
>>cgar...@highway1.com
>
>Hey dont knock it till you try it. Listened to any recording through
>this board? Probably not. Its all what you do with your equiptment.
>remember the mantra....soundsource, microphone, preamp, recorder.
>If youve got a good sound and good mics you can crank out awsome
>recordings on this board.
Oddly enough, I had the chance to use a 2524 last night at a radio
station for a live broadcast and I wasn't all that impressed. I used
it with the same band I had just recorded last month with the same $7K
pile of mikes and the same headphones and headphone amp for
monitoring, plugged straight into a spare stereo output.
What I didn't like:
The faders are twitchy. Around 0 to -5, they are overly sensitive and
hard to be subtle with. The gain pot was pretty twitchy too. This is
a common problem with cheap boards, but oddly enough, the Mackie
faders are quite nice in this regard. Soundcraft's faders are OK
too...
The EQ stinks. It's pretty hard and gritty sounding and not too
useful. I guess I'm spoiled by digital fully parametric EQ...
Fortunately, with the mikes I was using, I didn't need to use more
than a few bands of EQ for the whole mix. Still, the mix would have
been much better if the EQ worked better. I also don't recall seeing
an EQ defeat switch... perhaps it was my stupidity.
The preamps stink. I found the HF response to be somewhat odd
sounding. I'm using high $$ condensers on the drums and normally, you
can get a great sounding top end on the drums without doing anything
special. The board seemed to mush up the signal a lot and the LF as
well as the HF seemed to lose something. Overall, the console seemed
to 'mush up' easily with a high level, dense mix; digital mixing
doesn't do this so I guess I'm spoiled again. Then again, a Mackie 8
bus doesn't mush up that much either...
No polarity switch on the preamps!! Not good!!
The headphone amp is evil. It simply doesn't sound all that good, but
I will praise it in that it has enough voltage swing to drive AKG
K240, which are 600 ohm phones that need a lot of voltage. I didn't
use it anyways... mine sounded much better.
You can't solo aux sends. This made it impossible to set up a cue mix
for the performers; I had to ask them what they wanted and what they
were hearing rather than being able to adjust the thing myself.
Group outputs were RCA only... _very_ annoying!!
The aux sends are center detent with prefade and postfade on the same
pot; counterclockwise for prefade and clockwise for postfade. It
saves a switch and saves panel space, but it's more tricky to adjust
the aux send levels. I prefer a normal pot...
What I did like:
It had channel insert jacks, P48 phantom. It worked well enough to
get a mix done... better than nothing, although I should have brought
my old little hacked up M216, which is electrically so simple that it
can't wreck a signal too badly. It's also got nice op amps in it too
(not stock), so it does actually sound very nice.
>I know because I recorded one, which by the
>way smoke a recording I did at Full Sail on a NEVE and 24 track 2"
>analog. Wonder why? The students didnt know what they were doing.
>This is a serious board and you can laugh at all the suckers who pay
>an extra $2000 for a +4 input.
There's more to an analog console than +4 inputs... The way signals
are handled is the key and unfortunately, Tascam hasn't made good
sounding boards in a while. They seem to be stuck on features / $$
and forgot about making things sound good. Their ancient stuff that
was so cheaply built as to have almost no circuitry inside was
actually better; less circuitry to mess the signal up. I will grant
that their old boards had almost no features, making them a challenge
to use and the old faders were even worse than what they have now.
I'd recommend a Mackie 8 bus in that price range... it's still not a
great board, but it's a lot nicer than the 2524.
Regards,
Monte McGuire
mcg...@world.std.com
James Walker
>What I did like:
>Regards,
>Monte McGuire
>mcg...@world.std.com
I am not gonna argue that the Mackie 8-bus isnt a better board,
because it is. All I am saying is that whos behind it makes more
difference than what the board can or cant do. Also the 2524 isnt in
the Mackie's price range its 2 grand cheaper. Cut your teeth on this
board, if you can make it sound good than you can really shine. For
$1300 you cant beat the 2524. Also, who needs a Polarity Switch?
Get your drum mix together then hit the Mono button, if somethig
disappears move the mics around. Problem solved.
Jim Walker
SOFAKING
i did a mix for a friend, who has one at home. i thought it was real bad.
the eq was pretty hard, and the aux sends had a strange center detent.
turncounter clockwise it was pre, turn it clockwise it was post very
strange
sofaking
D.R "Chris" Christensen
I don't know who was the first to use this concept. It is an economy
measure based on
a desire to have more flexibility. This type of operational item is
different, but I don't see where it is so strange.
Is it any "worse" than a pre/post pull switch on a Trident?
What about the inverted orientation of the controls on a Gamble EX56
console?
--
Donald R. "Chris" Christensen VOICE 916-268-162 FAX 916-268-3267
Black Cat Sound Service (NOT just a Sound Company!)
Grass Valley, California 95949-7716 Email: <chr...@nccn.net>
WEB Page: <http://www.nccn.net/~chrisc>
Formerly of The Grass Valley Group, AKA Tektronix
SOFAKING
>donald wrote:
I don't know who was the first to use this concept. It is an economy
measure based on
a desire to have more flexibility. This type of operational item is
different, but I don't see where it is so strange.
Is it any "worse" than a pre/post pull switch on a Trident?
What about the inverted orientation of the controls on a Gamble EX56
console? <
ive never worked on a gamble, but the trident push pull thing never
bothered me. but the tascam aux rash, wow. once im set {pre or post}, im
set. i wont fool around with that. but i will adjust send levels during
tracking for headphone mixes, or fx levels during mix.
now i only used the 2524 two nights, but the auxes seemed VERY odd
sofaking
Peter Beckerman
D.R "Chris" Christensen wrote:
>
> SOFAKING wrote:
> >
> > i did a mix for a friend, who has one at home. i thought it was real bad.
> > the eq was pretty hard, and the aux sends had a strange center detent.
> > turncounter clockwise it was pre, turn it clockwise it was post very
>
> measure based on
> a desire to have more flexibility. This type of operational item is
> different, but I don't see where it is so strange.
>
> Is it any "worse" than a pre/post pull switch on a Trident?
> What about the inverted orientation of the controls on a Gamble EX56
> console?
> Donald R. "Chris" Christensen VOICE 916-268-162 FAX 916-268-3267
> Black Cat Sound Service (NOT just a Sound Company!)
> Grass Valley, California 95949-7716 Email: <chr...@nccn.net>
> WEB Page: <http://www.nccn.net/~chrisc>
> Formerly of The Grass Valley Group, AKA Tektronix
It's only worse the 1st time you use the board, and you try to normal all
the aux sends. Everything in pre at "10" can get kinda loud when it's
unexpected. After that it's just a feature.
Cheers,
Peter
James Walker
truev...@mindspring.com (James Walker) wrote:
>mcg...@world.std.com (Monte P McGuire) wrote:
>>What I didn't like:
>>The faders are twitchy. Around 0 to -5, they are overly sensitive and
>>hard to be subtle with. The gain pot was pretty twitchy too. This is
>>a common problem with cheap boards, but oddly enough, the Mackie
>>faders are quite nice in this regard. Soundcraft's faders are OK
>>too...
At an average cost of maybe $2 apeice ( a tech told me that)
I wouldnt call Mackies faders expensive items.
>>The EQ stinks. It's pretty hard and gritty sounding and not too
>>useful. I guess I'm spoiled by digital fully parametric EQ...
>>Fortunately, with the mikes I was using, I didn't need to use more
>>than a few bands of EQ for the whole mix. Still, the mix would have
>>been much better if the EQ worked better. I also don't recall seeing
>>an EQ defeat switch... perhaps it was my stupidity.
I wouldnt say it stinks.... just decent. Maybe your just used to
higher dollar boards.
>>The preamps stink. I found the HF response to be somewhat odd
>>sounding. I'm using high $$ condensers on the drums and normally, you
>>can get a great sounding top end on the drums without doing anything
>>special. The board seemed to mush up the signal a lot and the LF as
>>well as the HF seemed to lose something. Overall, the console seemed
>>to 'mush up' easily with a high level, dense mix; digital mixing
>>doesn't do this so I guess I'm spoiled again. Then again, a Mackie 8
>>bus doesn't mush up that much either..
.
Ive noticed that also, you got to work to get a clear mix...
however moniters and listening eviroment are factors here. I use
NS-10M so I REALLY have to work to get a clear mix, but my last
project I used SM-81 on OV and even the chinas came out nice ( I used
no compresson during tracking.).
>>No polarity switch on the preamps!! Not good!!
Hey!!! the Mackie doesnt have one either. But all you got to do
is get a rough drum mix to tape hit the MONO button, if something
disappears........Move the mics!
>>Group outputs were RCA only... _very_ annoying!!
Agreed!
so cheaply built as to have almost no circuitry inside was
>>actually better; less circuitry to mess the signal up. I will grant
>>that their old boards had almost no features, making them a challenge
>>to use and the old faders were even worse than what they have now.
>>I'd recommend a Mackie 8 bus in that price range... it's still not a
>>great board, but it's a lot nicer than the 2524.
The M-2524 is not in the Mackie 8-bus price range. Its $2000 CHEAPER.
That was my whole point on this thread. Save the two grand and buy
another MDM, or hell put a down payment on a new BMW. What Im saying
is that its the engineer that makes good recordings not mixing boards.
For the guy looking for a 8-bus console...... my advise is buy what
you can affoard and not some slick ad campaign. The M-2524 will handle
most any small project you can throw at it if your patient and have a
desire to improve your skills as an engineer.
nuff said,
James Walker
Monte P McGuire
In article <5hos9i$k...@camel1.mindspring.com>,
James Walker <truev...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>>mcg...@world.std.com (Monte P McGuire) wrote:
>>>The EQ stinks. It's pretty hard and gritty sounding and not too
>>>useful. I guess I'm spoiled by digital fully parametric EQ...
>>>Fortunately, with the mikes I was using, I didn't need to use more
>>>than a few bands of EQ for the whole mix. Still, the mix would have
>>>been much better if the EQ worked better. I also don't recall seeing
>>>an EQ defeat switch... perhaps it was my stupidity.
>
>higher dollar boards.
That's a good assessment... I'm used to high quality digital EQ, which
is much more flexible and better sounding. However, when I do live PA
mixes, it's usually on little Soundcrafts and Mackies and they are
still better than the 2524 EQ... Heck, even a Yamaha 01 that I used
for live PA sounded better than almost every cheapo analog console
that I've used for PA, as long as you're careful about gain staging.
It's widely overlapping fully parametric EQ is actually quite nice
compared to low end analog consoles.
> Ive noticed that also, you got to work to get a clear mix...
>however moniters and listening eviroment are factors here. I use
>NS-10M so I REALLY have to work to get a clear mix, but my last
>project I used SM-81 on OV and even the chinas came out nice ( I used
>no compresson during tracking.).
The comparison I made was with the same headphone monitors, the same
band and the same pile of nice mikes and it reminded me of when I was
recording in the old prehistoric days when cheap gear sounded cheap.
Back then, I found it very disappointing to use some really great
mikes and wonder what I was doing wrong with the equipment. Now I
know it wasn't me, because the same mikes with real equipment around
them works so much better.
>>>No polarity switch on the preamps!! Not good!!
>
> Hey!!! the Mackie doesnt have one either. But all you got to do
>is get a rough drum mix to tape hit the MONO button, if something
>disappears........Move the mics!
It's impossible to move a cardioid and get the same effect as a
polarity inversion. For example, if you're mixing the kick from the
front of the drum (i.e. not the beater side) and you get kick leakage
into the snare mike, which is on the other side of the kick drum head,
no amount of placement will solve that cancellation problem. I
suppose the answer is simply to mike the kick on the beater side, but
I don't want that sound or placement! A polarity switch solves this
problem easily. Another bugaboo is miswired cables that cause
unnecessary inversions; this shouldn't happen, but that radio station
had a lot of bogus and broken cables; having a polarity switch would
have made that a lot simpler and quicker to fix than having to replace
cables.
>The M-2524 is not in the Mackie 8-bus price range. Its $2000 CHEAPER.
I thought a 24x8 Mackie could be had for around $2800... is the 2524
only $800?
>That was my whole point on this thread. Save the two grand and buy
>another MDM, or hell put a down payment on a new BMW. What Im saying
>is that its the engineer that makes good recordings not mixing boards.
>For the guy looking for a 8-bus console...... my advise is buy what
>you can affoard and not some slick ad campaign. The M-2524 will handle
>most any small project you can throw at it if your patient and have a
>desire to improve your skills as an engineer.
Still, I find it really discouraging to have to work with gear that
sounds bad. No amount of effort can restore a ruined signal, all you
can do is make the best of what ends up escaping intact through the
gear. If you don't know any better, it's not as annoying, but it's
hard to go back once you hear what you're losing!
If I didn't have a lot of high $$ mikes, I'd have been on an even
lower level still and it's likely that no mix would sound as good as
what was happening in the room. And certainly not as good as what I
got, which is a lot worse than what I can do in better circumstances
with similarly priced gear! Even for educational purposes, it's
simpler to use better gear, since there are a far wider range of good
sounds that you can get with the gear. Why get frustrated when you're
still learning?
On many rock and roll songs, I sometimes use only 12 mike channels and
I'd gladly trade 24 cheezy ones for 12 good ones. Large mixers are
not easy to build at all and you definitely do trade sound quality for
either features, mixer size or cost. If cost is a limitation, I'd
vote for a pair of smaller mixers that sounded better: one mixer for
all the effect returns and one really good mixer for the EQ'ed mike or
tape channels. The reason? Small mixers sound better and they
frequently have fewer 'features' to screw up the sound. Features like
FET muting circuits that are expensive to do right, EQs that are
overly complex and bad sounding, high gain summing stages with poor
power supply and ground layouts and lots of signals flying around
internally due to the flexible routing. Simpler is truly better with
analog consoles, unless you're prepared to spend $$ for careful
layout, high quality components and sometimes expensive construction
techniques.
Sure, with a lot of tape channels and mixer channels, one can produce
recordings in the same manner that the pros do, but the sound quality
will be lacking and there's no knob to remedy that; no trick tube
preamp, mike or processor will make up for it. If there was no choice
(as it was 15 years ago), I'd say it's reasonable to choose a budget
system over nothing at all, but don't expect good results. However,
even though the Mackies are much maligned these days, they really are
very good on an absolute level and don't mangle signals nearly as
badly as some of the older style crap that used to get passed off to
home recordists.
One other possible route to go is to get some of the older simpler
boards and perform chip swaps to revive the crappy circuits. Some of
the older Tascam and TEAC stuff used some truly horrible op amps (like
4558, 1458 and even worse) and if you do a little work, you can really
improve those old turds. The good part is that they frequently used
very simple circuitry to save on cost (and to prevent total
destruction of the signals passing through such junky chips), and this
is to your advantage if you can replace the op amps with something
good. The end result can be light on features, but sometimes big on
sound quality.
I have an old Tascam 216 that I rechipped and it sounds really pretty
nice, much nicer than the 2524. It was a bitch adding P48 to the
mixer and it'll never have more buses, aux sends or other useful
features, but what it does it now does pretty well. The 216 isn't
even all that bad stock either...
A pair of 216s with new chips is still cheaper than a 2524, and I'd
take it any day... But if you don't want to solder, get a Mackie and
be happier... If you can't afford it, save your money; why waste your
$$ on junk that you'll end up hating sooner or later and have to
replace eventually!
Well, that's just my perspective... it's better to record than not to,
but I'd still try to get better gear if you can. Even if it means
giving up features or ease of use.
Regards,
Monte McGuire
mcg...@world.std.com
Yves Zimelman
On Sun, 30 Mar 1997 16:01:08 -0800, "D.R \"Chris\" Christensen"
<chr...@nccn.net> wrote:
>SOFAKING wrote:
>> (...) the aux sends had a strange center detent.
>> turncounter clockwise it was pre, turn it clockwise it was post very
>
>I don't know who was the first to use this concept. It is an economy
>measure based on
>a desire to have more flexibility. This type of operational item is
>different, but I don't see where it is so strange.
I saw this arrangement in a small (10 input) Ramsa back in 1982.
(oops! here I am talking Ramsa again... no no no <g>)
I wonder if the center detent really gives you NO send at all.
Regards,
Yves Zimelman
Monte P McGuire
In article <33412b3c...@news-s01.ca.us.ibm.net>,
Yves Zimelman <yves.z...@ibm.net> wrote:
>>SOFAKING wrote:
>>> (...) the aux sends had a strange center detent.
>>> turncounter clockwise it was pre, turn it clockwise it was post very
>
On those types of pots, the center of the track (under the detent) is
usually plated with a little bit of metal which is attached to a
grounded terminal. So, if they did it the right way, the wiper is
touching a bit of grounded metal at the center detent and thus you get
very little feedthrough.
Even though it solves the panel space problem nicely, I still don't
like the compressed range of such a pot very much. It makes it much
harder to set up repeatably, and that's extremely important for the
live sound shows that I do where several bands share the same console.
Regards,
Monte McGuire
mcg...@world.std.com
scotf...@aol.com
>
>>SOFAKING wrote:
>>> (...) the aux sends had a strange center detent.
>>> turncounter clockwise it was pre, turn it clockwise it was post very
>>
>>I don't know who was the first to use this concept. It is an economy
>>measure based on
>>a desire to have more flexibility. This type of operational item is
>>different, but I don't see where it is so strange.
>
>I wonder if the center detent really gives you NO send at all.
It is off in the center. Some later Tapco/EV mixers did this, & I think Tascam also. Some manufacturers called this a "W" pot. It meant you only have a half turn to go from full off to full on.
Another truly bad idea which, fortunately, no modern desks use anymore.
Scott Fraser