Tascam DP-006

I have a fully equipped studio and play in a large international band - I just wanted something to put down song ideas away from my DAW and my iPhone - and this delivers in spades.

Small, easy to use and sounds great - obviously when I want to fully realise a recording I go to all the big gear - but for capturing the most important part - the moment of inspiration this is fantastic.

As a songwriter I feel its incredibly liberating to not be looking at a DAW timeline. There is something to be said for limitations in the context of a studio environment, returning the focus to the actual craft of songwriting.

Could do with a seperate line out / phantom XLR connection but they have the model up that addresses that issue if you need it.

Of course given the nature of the inbuilt condensers, you can easily create noisy recordings - but a little attention to setting gain levels correct for your source material alleviates this.

Highly recommended and Thomann as always were excellent.

This is my first piece of recording equipment, so I am by no means an expert. I purchased it to demo songs and for this purpose it is an excellent piece of kit. It is relatively simple to operate. The instruction manual is clear and understandable (I don't know if it's available in languages other than Englisn, though). Battery operation is a convenient feature.

Although the internal microphone isn't bad, if you're going to record vocals, you will probably want to consider purchasing a seperate mic, which brings me to my only "con": it doesn't have an XLR port. This is a minor problem and easily overcome, though.

For a beginner like me, or for someone who just wants to be able to get their ideas recorded to share with others, I highly recommend the DP-006.

And as always with Thomann, I recieved excellent service and quick delivery,

This is a great recorder for its portability and easiness to use. The internal microphones are very good quality and recording and overdubbing is very easy to achieve quickly. Recorded files can be transferred to computer easily too. The only problem i had is that i couldnt download a prerecorded Wave track from my computer to the DP006 as a guide track to record remotely away from my DAW. Even though its supposed to, the DP 006 will not read the file even though i coverted it to 44.1/16bit file and tried every which way to download it. Tascam tech support was ignorant, blunt and unhelpful. In the end I had to record the guide track through cable inputs. Very disappointed with that aspect of use. Ended up being more like a tape recorder than i bargained for.

Device on it's own is extremely small and portable.

The first thing i used it for was room recording during band practice using the 2 built in condensor mic's. The sound quality achieved was considerably better than expected.

Recording, mixing and bouncing are all wasy to do and tutorials are included in the manual that walk you through the steps.

The only negatives i encountered are that you can record either one stereo or 2 mono tracks simultaneously, no more, and that it can take a surprisingly long time to mix a stereo master.

All in all a good, easy to use product that may be a bit short on features, but at this price it's a great little toy/tool.