Tascam or Radar,,,whats the difference?

[PT User]

Anyone seen this Tascam unit yet. I seen this and said to myself be nice to downgrade to a mbox and still us PT on the side, along with this Tascam unit.
Nice price too. Curious what others think? Looks very tempting


http://tascam.com/Products/x48.html

Eddie

[Henchman]

Originally Posted by PT User

Anyone seen this Tascam unit yet. I seen this and said to myself be nice to downgrade to a mbox and still us PT on the side, along with this Tascam unit.
Nice price too. Curious what others think? Looks very tempting


http://tascam.com/Products/x48.html

Eddie

Or upgrade.
Still go with the Mbox for compatabilty, but buy a Nuendo set-up with some UAD-1 cards maybe a powercore firewire, a Dual CPU or Dualcore Athlon64 based computer and still have money left over for a nice European vacation.

Now that is a kickass system.

[Lawrence]

Uh oh! You didn't say the "N" word did you?

Seriously though IMHO Nuendo (or SX) are not only more than capable of being the center of any studio (world class down to bedroom) but have the most logical interface of any daw I've ever used or demoed.

What more could one need?

Lawrence

[krou]

This is too weird....
In the past week or so, I've heard countless people tell me how much both Cubase SX 3 and Nuendo 3 totally kick ass, even on OSX. It's the one program I have yet to try, and not that I need to, but man I'd love it if they had a demo available at Cubase's site, which they don't. As one guy I met the other day put it "beautifully bridges the gap between Logic and ProTools".

[kudzu]

Originally Posted by PT User

Anyone seen this Tascam unit yet. I seen this and said to myself be nice to downgrade to a mbox and still us PT on the side, along with this Tascam unit.
Nice price too. Curious what others think? Looks very tempting


http://tascam.com/Products/x48.html

Eddie

THE DIFERENCE ?........CONVERTERS.....RADAR NYQUIST @ 96K/24bit r about the best u can get....absolutly ROCK SOLID reliability 2 boot

[Lawrence]

Originally Posted by krou

This is too weird....
In the past week or so, I've heard countless people tell me how much both Cubase SX 3 and Nuendo 3 totally kick ass, even on OSX. It's the one program I have yet to try, and not that I need to, but man I'd love it if they had a demo available at Cubase's site, which they don't. As one guy I met the other day put it "beautifully bridges the gap between Logic and ProTools".

Nuendo/SX are things of great beauty.

The thing that confuses people about SX/Nuendo are the ads with all of those windows open. They say they prefer the "single window interface". What they don't realize is that's an ad and that's what ads do, show a lot of crap.

You can do everything you want in the main screen. The interface is just that clean.

Lawrence

[Ziggy!!]

Originally Posted by kudzu

THE DIFERENCE ?........CONVERTERS.....RADAR NYQUIST @ 96K/24bit r about the best u can get....absolutly ROCK SOLID reliability 2 boot

Excuse me if this seems a little out of place, but how can you even think about stating the difference of 2 products when one isn't even released yet!?!?!?!

It's one thing to say Radar has great sounding 96khz/24bit converters, but to say its the fundamental difference between the two is beyond niave... its ludacris when one isn't due to be released until Summer.

[Lawrence]

Originally Posted by Ziggy!!

Excuse me if this seems a little out of place, but how can you even think about stating the difference of 2 products when one isn't even released yet!?!?!?!

It's one thing to say Radar has great sounding 96khz/24bit converters, but to say its the fundamental difference between the two is beyond niave... its ludacris when one isn't due to be released until Summer.

Uh...

I think we can safely assume that the X-48's converters won't be in the same class as the Radar's although I'm sure they'll be very usable and maybe even pretty good. They couldn't do 24 ch's of "great" for $3999. The option would cost more than the unit itself.

That's a pretty safe bet. Go out and price 24 ch's of "great" converters and you'll see what I mean. Radar's converters are pretty damn good by all accounts.

Will they have a 24 ch. "high quality" expensive option for AD/DA that will be on par with something like Radar? Doubt it. We'll have to wait and see. It would cost a lot of money.

Lawrence

[GPl]

Well then, that kinda puts this post to an end then if the tascam isn't even released yet. But I can vouch for the radar quality.

I would wait till the unit is released and someone has had a chance to use it, otherwise you'll get more or less the same answers as above...which I can understand

[Lawrence]

[Ziggy!!]

Originally Posted by Lawrence

Uh...

I think we can safely assume that the X-24's converters won't be in the same class as the Radar's although I'm sure they'll be very usable and maybe even pretty good. They couldn't do 48 (or maybe even 24) ch's of "great" for $3999. The option would cost more than the unit itself.

That's a pretty safe bet. Go out and price 48 ch's of "great" converters and you'll see what I mean. Radar's converters are pretty damn good by all accounts.

Will they have a 24 ch. "high quality" expensive option for AD/DA that will be on par with something like Radar? Doubt it. We'll have to wait and see. It'll would cost a lot of money.

Lawrence

`

You can take any "whitelab coat" approach you want but im sure there are many people out there like me who have an openmind and would rather let there ears be the judge than a group of forum members passing judgement on a product that isn't even released yet...

[Henchman]

Originally Posted by Ziggy!!

`

You can take any "whitelab coat" approach you want but im sure there are many people out there like me who have an openmind and would rather let there ears be the judge than a group of forum members passing judgement on a product that isn't even released yet...

Especially coming from a bunch of folks who tried to convince us that 888's sounded great.

[Drumsound]

Originally Posted by Lawrence

Uh...

I think we can safely assume that the X-48's converters won't be in the same class as the Radar's although I'm sure they'll be very usable and maybe even pretty good. They couldn't do 24 ch's of "great" for $3999. The option would cost more than the unit itself.

That's a pretty safe bet. Go out and price 24 ch's of "great" converters and you'll see what I mean. Radar's converters are pretty damn good by all accounts.

Will they have a 24 ch. "high quality" expensive option for AD/DA that will be on par with something like Radar? Doubt it. We'll have to wait and see. It would cost a lot of money.

Lawrence

I think the $3999 price is with digital I/O only. Analog I/O is an "accessory."

[Sir Dingo]

This question was proposed over at another forum...Here is one very good answer:

As for the X48... It seems like a great box! I believe it will retail for around $5000 and street for around $3500 so it is not targeted at the pro market. The X48 is also not just a recorder like RADAR. It is an entire studio in one box and replaces the higher end SX1. It will do recording/editing, mixing and mastering and supports tons of plugs. Basically it will replace your entire recording studio(excluding microphones and monitors) for $4k to $5k. RADAR on the other hand, is designed to work with a high quality dedicated mixer & effects. A typical RADAR project studio will run you $10k to $20k for the RADAR, $30k to $100k for the mixer and $20k to $30k for the effects for a total range of about $60k to $150k for everything.

In fact, the X48 is a Windows XP PC running DAW software. You can now buy the functional equivalent of it on a PC for under $3000. So if I was in the market for a DAW I would definately compare PC DAWs with the X48 on a feature for feature basis. One disadvantage of the X48 route is that you don't get a removable drive whereas you can configure the PC DAW with a removable drive in one of the 5 1/4 bays. It also would have been nice to see a SATA port on the back of the unit as all parallel IDE drives(including all current firewire drives) are going obsolete. All MAC G5s and all new PCs now ship with SATA drives only so that makes the X48 obsolete before it's even shipping. I think it is targeting to ship by the end of the 2005 so if it comes out by January 2006 we'll be able to judge more accurately how fast that obsolescence will be.

Very fair and sort of says it all IMHO.

Dingo

[Lawrence]

Originally Posted by Drumsound

I think the $3999 price is with digital I/O only. Analog I/O is an "accessory."

I know. My point was that if you went out and bought 24 ch's of converters that were considered "great" it would be more than $3999.

Lawrence

[Lawrence]

Originally Posted by Ziggy!!

`

You can take any "whitelab coat" approach you want but im sure there are many people out there like me who have an openmind and would rather let there ears be the judge than a group of forum members passing judgement on a product that isn't even released yet...

I'm not taking a whitelab coat approach. The simple fact is Radar (as far as I can tell by what I've heard) has great converters. That's one of the many reasons it costs so much more than an HD24 or Mackie HDR. The price is justified because it sounds fantastic. It's conveters are top-notch.

If I told you "Tascam is making an 8 channel rackmount converter unit that will cost $1000" you could reasonably assume that it wouldn't be as "good" as a top of the line Mytek converter without even hearing it. Does that mean it's not that good? No. It might be really good. It'll probably be better than what I use now.

The point was you don't often see equipment that has singular options (1 converter card) that will cost more than the equipment itself although a mfg could certainly do that if they wanted.

Again, who cares? You can make good music with just about anything. I was just saying that the guy who made the original assumption "It's the converters" had a reasonable basis for doing so. He might be proven wrong but it's still a reasonable assumption.

I'm taking off the white coat and waiting until it's released.

P.S. In the spirit of disclosure that quote Sir Dingo's quoted was written by someone who works for the company who makes Radar I think. Doesn't mean it's wrong though, just to let you know. And he's making comparisions about the "functional equivalent" of something that not released yet. How does he know what the "functional equivalent" of an X-48 is?. Now there's an assumption that may not hold water. .

Lawrence

[Henchman]

Originally Posted by Sir Dingo

This question was proposed over at another forum...Here is one very good answer:


In fact, the X48 is a Windows XP PC running DAW software. You can now buy the functional equivalent of it on a PC for under $3000. So if I was in the market for a DAW I would definately compare PC DAWs with the X48 on a feature for feature basis. One disadvantage of the X48 route is that you don't get a removable drive whereas you can configure the PC DAW with a removable drive in one of the 5 1/4 bays. It also would have been nice to see a SATA port on the back of the unit as all parallel IDE drives(including all current firewire drives) are going obsolete. All MAC G5s and all new PCs now ship with SATA drives only so that makes the X48 obsolete before it's even shipping. I think it is targeting to ship by the end of the 2005 so if it comes out by January 2006 we'll be able to judge more accurately how fast that obsolescence will be.

Very fair and sort of says it all IMHO.

Dingo

Again, this person completely misses the mark.
For one firewire drives can be used with it, so who cares what drives are inside.Most people I know are currently using Firewire drives for everything.

Furthermore, it uses an embedded version of Windows, so it's going to be alot more reliable.

And the fact that it is a single box with everything contianed, makes it very attractive to folks travelling around. Take a look at the size of the average rack if you were to have a portable 48 channel DAW.

Hmm let's see, would I rather have a huge rack with separate I/O to haul around. or a single box.
Try putting together a rig with 48 channels of Analogue I/O and see how much it costs.

[drew]

that was written by Barry Henderson, the president of iZ, the makers of Radar, for what it's worth.

[Sir Dingo]

Originally Posted by Henchman

Again, this person completely misses the mark.

Ummmm....actually, I think the point is that this is simply a PC running windows, with a 48 track limit, which even my DAW doesn't have.

The X48 is obviously a product aimed at the audio hobbyist. But it's certainly a step down from the failed SX1. And as with almost all Tascam products released in the last 5-7 years, it will have mediocre sales figures, and by this time next year they will have stopped the production run, which will be shortly followed by Tascam abandoning any or all after sales support and updates for the product. Wait 12 months for the close out sales, street price $1199

The X48 will probably be interesting for home recordists with Wackie HD recorders who want more tracks. That's about it. I don't think Mutt Lange will be trading in his HD system anytime soon, do you?

Dingo

[Henchman]

Originally Posted by Sir Dingo

Ummmm....actually, I think the point is that this is simply a PC running windows, with a 48 track limit, which even my DAW doesn't have.


Dingo

It's easy to simplify things that way.

RADAR is just an Intel machine running Beos.

A TC6000 is just a PC running NT

A Digi Venue is just a control surface running XP.

A Euphonics Sytem 5 is just a PC running NT

People seem to be buying these expensive pieces though.

And why would the Tascam be considreed any less than a RADAR? Who's editing sucks.

[jackmac]

And why would the Tascam be considreed any less than a RADAR? Who's editing sucks.


I am one that never judges a piece of equipment before I hear it in my own setup. Although, I think that one could logically come to the conclusion, based on past performance and past comments from users about both companies current products, that the Tascam would be less than a RADAR in terms of sound quality, reliability and support. So I don't find it unreasonable to predict Tascams upcoming product to fall short in those areas I mentioned. Editing may be a different story since the RADAR's editing is limited. I respect your opinion on the editing. My opinion on the editing is that it has limited features. I didn't purchase a RADAR for its editing, I purchased the RADAR for its amazing ability to capture and reproduce sound.

[Revelation]

Originally Posted by jackmac

And why would the Tascam be considreed any less than a RADAR? Who's editing sucks.


I am one that never judges a piece of equipment before I hear it in my own setup. Although, I think that one could logically come to the conclusion, based on past performance and past comments from users about both companies current products, that the Tascam would be less than a RADAR in terms of sound quality, reliability and support. So I don't find it unreasonable to predict Tascams upcoming product to fall short in those areas I mentioned. Editing may be a different story since the RADAR's editing is limited. I respect your opinion on the editing. My opinion on the editing is that it has limited features. I didn't purchase a RADAR for its editing, I purchased the RADAR for its amazing ability to capture and reproduce sound.

I agree with you 100%. First of all though Radar has great converters, how long have they been around? I know that with technology getting better all the time, we are getting better products all the time for the same price you paid for higher end gear several years ago. With so many studios not making much money these days, it seems that the Tascam product is giving you one hell of a deal for what it can do. Unless you have the top 100 artist coming into your studio, I dare to say the converters of the Tascam vrs. Radar's would make as much difference as the quality mic's, pre's, EQ's, monitors, recording rooms, and your experience in getting a great sounding recording would be. The conveters are just one part of the chain, and if you have very good converters, if everything else is top notch, the Tascam may be a good option

[Bluzzi]

I think the x48 price does not include analog converters and maybe not even digital IO.

The 48 tracks is a simultaneous limit not a track limit (ie: you can have 55 tracks but only playback 48 of those at one time).

As for the converters, reserve that for your ears to decide. Things are getting so close in th edigital world that we are starting to critique infinitessimal improvements.

I think the x48 will appeal to someone who was looking at getting 2 24 track HD recorders like the Mackie/Alesis/Radar. There is also the cost factor....Radar is much more expensive!

Of course this is Gearslutz!


Jim

[midnightsun]

One major difference between TASCAM and RADAR is that you can get the President and CEO Barry Henderson on the telephone if you have a problem or question.....and does his know his stuff? You bet! TASCAM makes decent stuff but their support sucks big time. TASCAM orphans their products on a moments notice. I own an SX1 that that TASCAM boasted was the "future." They promised upgrades that would include going up to 96 khz. They also promised pluggins, etc, etc. When they dropped the SX1 it was a shock that a company would be so dishonorable. I have to confess that I really like the SX1 never the less. I also own a RADAR II. though I purchased this from Otari and not iZ I have gotten more help from iZ with my RADAR II than I have from TASCAM. I consider my time valuable. I would pay the extra money to get the RADAR just knowing that the company gives a shit and that they are doing their best to provide ongoing service. There is no other company like them in the recorder business.

This threat contain a lot of speculation from people with crystal balls. Caution... don't believe what TASCAM says or prints about a product. They have lost credibility in my book. This doesn't mean that I will never buy another TASCAM product. I also might find myself shopping at Walmart. If service matters I won't shot at Walmart of TASCAM.

[Bluzzi]

To re-enforce the above I have never read or heard a negative thing about Radar.

Jim

[blackcatdigi]

Originally Posted by Lawrence

Uh...

I think we can safely assume that the X-48's converters won't be in the same class as the Radar's although I'm sure they'll be very usable and maybe even pretty good. They couldn't do 24 ch's of "great" for $3999. The option would cost more than the unit itself.

That's a pretty safe bet. Go out and price 24 ch's of "great" converters and you'll see what I mean. Radar's converters are pretty damn good by all accounts.

Will they have a 24 ch. "high quality" expensive option for AD/DA that will be on par with something like Radar? Doubt it. We'll have to wait and see. It would cost a lot of money.

Ever used a Radar?
According to Jim Williams from Audio Upgrages, the converters in the Alesis HD24XR are the same as the Radar Nyquist 96K. The Alesis streets for $1999.

Carry On.