| I finally did a gig with an X-48 last night. Rather mixed feelings about it. Okay, worse than that... basically it let us down, so I'm relieved I had my HD24XRs as backup.
The worst "let down" was that it crashed early in the second set. We were using the DSP mixer to monitor. The producer clicked something on-screen (I don't know what, but I would guess it was a solo) and a windows error dialog popped up. And that was that. Everything locked up, including the front panel, and we had to pull the power and reboot, create a new project, reconfigure everything from scratch (which all takes rather a long time), and start recording again.
We also got into a jam early on because because it seems to be impossible to delete selected audio files. We started with a brand new machine, no audio on it, and recorded chunks of the soundcheck as normal. But we had accidentally created the project in "non-destructive mode", so winding to zero for the actual show and recording was not going to save any space. So come the end of the first 45-minute set, we had used 80% of the available disk space, and there was no hope of getting the second 90-minute set on there.
So, you'd think, "We'll just delete the soundcheck audio". Nope. You could see the soundcheck audio in the pool, but the delete button didn't work. (also, I must say, I wish takes were better named... didn't seem to be any logic to it, and establishing which file belonged to which take was a matter of guessing... unless there's some trick to it that I missed).
So we were stuffed. The only solution was to delete the entire project and use the audio from the "backup" recorders (which of course became our primary recorders after the crash in the second set!).
Other things I didn't like (maybe it's just because I'm new to the X-48, but still):
* Fiddly user interface. Trying to remember which parameter was a "pref" and which was a "sys"... And although I got by, the whole change/up/down/yes/no/home/exit system seems a bit of a mess.
* No locators on the front panel - not even return to zero. Unless I missed something.
* The space bar on a USB keyboard will stop the machine, even in record. So, you're typing in a field, you'd better not accidentally hop out of the field and carry on typing, because you'll stop recording! Also, on our keyboard, it was very easy to nudge the space bar, because it was millimeters away from the track pad, and had a bit of a hair trigger as it were.
* Very difficult (in fact, impossible?) to create a new project based on a previous one. Again, unless I missed something... I'd like to copy a project, but doesn't that copy all the audio as well? Saving a startup "template" didn't seem to work at all, although maybe we did something wrong (although we followed the manual to the letter.)
* Hardware metering is rather low resolution, and although the on-screen meters are pretty, there's no scale on them. So you never really know where you're peaking.
Overall I was disappointed with the X48. Maybe you learn to live with it. Maybe software updates will slowly improve things? Maybe it's just that the X48 is new to me. But the Alesis machines (which I like, but are not a basket I would put all my eggs in normally) were an absolute dream by comparison.
(We called Tascam's US support twice during the show to try and solve things, and they were either "at lunch" or "too busy to talk to us".)
These are of course "new user" impressions, and I'd welcome any feedback from you experienced users. I think the X48 has lots of potential, and occupies a pretty unique space, but for now, it's not saying "buy me" quite as loudly as it was.
Paul
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Paul
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