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bonedome · 21st January 2008, 01:41 AM

Purchased and received the X48 (v.1.03) in September 2007 after tracking my record on 3 (formerly reliable) DA-78's, 2 of which died in the process. Word-clock sync was good enough to get everything over from the tapes to the X48 via TDIF...everything sync'd and sounds good.

Here are some random notes, in no particular order:

still having problems with "missing" files issues. Every once in a while the machine will just spit out an incomrehensible dialog box (something about an inability to do something with a particular inscrutable memory address) and proceed to shut down. Upgrading to 1.04 has reduced, but not resolved this issue. Frequent backups have made this a tedious but not catastrophic issue. I'm reformatting the data partition right now in hopes that maybe some kind of file fragmentation was contributing to the instability.
1.04 did resolve issue with the mysterious appearance of unwanted automation.
Tascam really had to work hard to hit the price point. The drive is really smaller than it should be. The power and track-arming buttons are ridiculous. The Celeron processor seems to strain, at least according to the CPU meter--I'm not too optimistic about how Waves plugins will perform...
I'm not too experienced with these thing, but I can't figure out how to mix "in the box" or create stems. If you can do this (render a stereo mix) it's not readily obvious in the interface.
It doesn't seem to conform to interface conventions in some minor and tedious ways. The most annoying of these has to do with how the save dialogs work. I had to learn some goofy work-arounds to keep from mucking-up my files after using "save as" to break out individual songs.
Does anyone remember the original (marketing) claims for this machine that it would do 24 channels at 24/192? I guess they couldn't figure out how to hit that mark at the price point they advertised.
Overall I like the machine as a tape-machine-style replacement with some added GUI features. A full-featured DAW it isn't.
Some quirks have appeared with regarding input assignments that I still haven't figured out.

21st January 2008, 01:41 AM	#61
bonedome Gear interested Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Dallas, TX Posts: 10	Your results may vary Purchased and received the X48 (v.1.03) in September 2007 after tracking my record on 3 (formerly reliable) DA-78's, 2 of which died in the process. Word-clock sync was good enough to get everything over from the tapes to the X48 via TDIF...everything sync'd and sounds good. Here are some random notes, in no particular order: still having problems with "missing" files issues. Every once in a while the machine will just spit out an incomrehensible dialog box (something about an inability to do something with a particular inscrutable memory address) and proceed to shut down. Upgrading to 1.04 has reduced, but not resolved this issue. Frequent backups have made this a tedious but not catastrophic issue. I'm reformatting the data partition right now in hopes that maybe some kind of file fragmentation was contributing to the instability. 1.04 did resolve issue with the mysterious appearance of unwanted automation. Tascam really had to work hard to hit the price point. The drive is really smaller than it should be. The power and track-arming buttons are ridiculous. The Celeron processor seems to strain, at least according to the CPU meter--I'm not too optimistic about how Waves plugins will perform... I'm not too experienced with these thing, but I can't figure out how to mix "in the box" or create stems. If you can do this (render a stereo mix) it's not readily obvious in the interface. It doesn't seem to conform to interface conventions in some minor and tedious ways. The most annoying of these has to do with how the save dialogs work. I had to learn some goofy work-arounds to keep from mucking-up my files after using "save as" to break out individual songs. Does anyone remember the original (marketing) claims for this machine that it would do 24 channels at 24/192? I guess they couldn't figure out how to hit that mark at the price point they advertised. Overall I like the machine as a tape-machine-style replacement with some added GUI features. A full-featured DAW it isn't. Some quirks have appeared with regarding input assignments that I still haven't figured out.