Tascam SD-20M

[Bo Deadly]

You guys / gals should check out the Tascam SD-20M. It's a stereo 96 kHz 24 bit SD recorder in a 1U rack. It targets the PA recording crowd like churches but I have it hooked into my patchbay just to capture dry tracks and perhaps more importantly the footswitch (separate purchase RC-3F or RC-10 remote) is nice when you get really into your folk singer routine and want to quickly capture the moment without futzing with the puter.

And at $300 (got mine for $228) its a relatively inexpensive device for a high-res recording. Most of the "multi-track recorders" that would normally be used for things like what I'm doing are only 48 kHz. In practice that's fine for just about any purpose IMHO (most of the old DAT recorders are 48 kHz) but more is always better right?

So just throwing this out there. I've been using it for a few months just to capture creative moments and bounce tracks off the tape machine and find it to be very straight forward and fun. No overdubbing on the SD-20M though.

http://tascam.com/product/sd-20m/

 

[Tubetec]

Another option I was looking at recently was the cymatic Utrack24 ,388 euros ,24channel recording ,but no abillity to overdub which is a bit crazy ,surely all this would have required would have been to turn those leds on the front panel into record arm switches.

 

[Bo Deadly]

It is strange that forever the basic building blocks of recording have been recorders that can play select tracks while simultaneously recording on others such as tape machines and dat recorders. Now you actually cannot play and record digital tracks without a computer. At least not seriously. Most (all?) of the stand-alone multi-track recorders that support overdubbing are these mixer, all-in-one, eq, aux sends, fader, table-top style units which, in a way, doesn't make any sense because, even though I want to do tracking on an SD machine, the computer is obviously vastly superior for mixing. The UTrack24 is exactly the right form-factor being a 1U with standard transport controls and D-Subs on the back. But then they leave out overdubbing. They were so close and yet they left out the one critical thing that would make it a complete stand-alone unit equivalent to what people used for a half-century before computers.

 

[Tubetec]

Its a real shame they didnt implement overdubbing alright , fair dues to cymatic but it still seems like a bit of an oversight leaving it out . A 1U rack with a decent analog front and back end and some computer processing for effects ,it would be a real neat portable set up ,who knows maybe cymatic will look into the possabillity of making a fully fledged multitrack machine next time out .

 

[Bo Deadly]

Nah, I would skip effects. Again, that's mixing stuff. Keep the peas and carrots separate.

 

[john12ax7]

There used to be more standalone recorders with traditional features.  Alexis hd24, all the fostex d series,  but no longer.  There might not be a big enough market for overdubbing, laptops might be the most used recording device.

Even radar went to hybrid system that could run pro tools.

But I agree it would be a nice feature.