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Audiophile recording and playback - Tascam DA-3000


Hi, some months ago I bought the Tascam DA-3000 recorder, having used a small Korg MR-1 for some years. I mainly record from my vinyl rig (Lyra Atlas – SME V – Hanss T30 – Aesthetix Io Eclipse – Einstein The Tube mk2).

I have found that even with the hassle of very big files (one LP = almost 3 GB), the dual speed DSD sound is superior to anything digital I have heard so far.

In my rig, analog blows digital out of the water, but this is the best candidate.

In a former thread, someone asked, is the Da-3000 ‘audiophile’ level. The answer is a clear yes.

This is the first digital recorder I have owned (after some DATs and others) that does not make me ashamed that my old analog and much-modded Revox A77 stands in my loft. Also, for some, the Tascam may be a good investment since its DAC may outperform the DAC you already have. I had a Stello DAC that went out the door.

However, some aspects of the Tascam are problematic, and others can probably be improved.

A first issue is connectivity and ease of use. It would be great if the Tascam could record to a hard disk, or at least play back from it. The manual says a hard disk can be connected through the USB port. I bought a Seagate Wireless Plus 1 TB hard disk to try. However, the Tascam won’t recognize it, even when I reformatted to Exfat (instead of NFTS). Perhaps it would be recognized if I reformatted to FAT32, but then I would not have any use of a big hard disk, the limit is 32 GB I think. So I am back to recording to my 32 GB Sandisk SD card, eight LPs or so, with hand written notes, what track is what title, and then carrying the card and paper to my main PC, naming folders and transferring the files. BTW this was very slow, 19 mbps, since my card reader was not USB 3 compliant, I changed, and now it is much better, 84 or so mbps.

The ideal would be to have the Tascam drive as a unit on my home network, this is why I bought the Seagate wireless, but as stated - no success so far.

Experiences with the Tascam (or similar), in this and other respects, are welcome.

Note that, the problems so far are minor, for me, compared to the benefits. The sound is usually much better than what I get from CDs or the web (excepting some SACDs). I can bring my analog rig around, so to speak, playing back on the Korg Mr-1 (or the Tascam itself, which is light weight and semi-movable). I think that DSD playback will become more easily available in the future. If Pono had included DSD, I would have bought one.
o_holter

Showing 3 responses by dtc

dtc's avatar
dtc
1,047 posts
 
Alex - the usb on the Korg is only used to transfer files. As long as it does that, and it does that fine, I don't see any issue with it being certified. To transfer files I just go into usb mode and move the files onto the PC with Explorer. Easier and cheaper than moving a card.

My Korg has the Busman input mods. I do not plan to use it for playback. I prefer to use J River for playback.

Comparing vinyl to digital, either PCM or DSD, is very dependent on the DAC. When comparing PCM to DSD people are usually comparing the characteristics of the DACs rather than the formats.
dtc's avatar
dtc
1,047 posts
 
I looked at the Tascam and decided not to get it partially because of the small disk issue. I got a Korg MR-2000 instead. Unfortunately, they are only available used. I write to the internal drive on the Korg and then connect the Korg to a PC via usb to transfer the files to the PC. Like you, I find the digital version very close to the vinyl. I am waiting until I get a DSD DAC before doing all the conversions. I want to decide if I should do it in PCM or DSD. The advantage of PCM is the ease of declicking. As far as I know there is no inexpensive option to declick DSD. I originally was looking at a unit that connected directly to the PC through usb, but decided it was better to go directly to disk and avoid any timing issues with usb and the PC.

It sounds like you might be storing the whole side of a record as one file. If you want to turn that into tracks, you might want to look at Vinyl Studio. It works with DSD files and allows you to pretty easily separate individual tracks. It connects to an online database (can't remember which one) and offers your options to identify the recording and then imports the track titles. You can then separate into tracks, which is a manual process. But you do not have to type in all the track names. It takes a little getting used to, but I can now separate into tracks in 10 or 15 minutes, depending on the album. It also will declick your file, but requires you convert to PCM first. If declicking is of interest, you might try converting to 24/192 and declicking and then compare that to your 2x DSD. There is a free trial version of Vinyl Studio that has all the features, it just does not allow a declicked file to be output. The full version is only $29.

And, yes, J River does handle DSD files. It can also convert DSD to PCM and vice versa.
dtc's avatar
dtc
1,047 posts
 
Alex - so a Schitt Loki is better than any PCM DAC :) I wish it were so. It would save us all a lot of money.

Even for a product like the Ayre, some people like the PCM better than the DSD. Different strokes for different folks. For example, I can hear a difference between PCM and DSD using the Korg as a DAC, but I would be hard pressed to say one is significantly better than the other.

Just to make things more interesting, as you know, most of the DSD DACs actually convert to a multi-bit format for final playback and some convert to PCM for playback.

Fun times.
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