TASCAM DV-RA1000HD - An Analog Lover's Perspective

[WOStantonCS100]

Send me a disc & I'll let you know

What would you like to hear?

[Reid Malenfant]

What would you like to hear?

Damn, the $64 million question...

Well as we are just attempting to establish that the BD95 will play back your disc it doesn't really matter.

So, as you have stumped me (as I don't know what you tend to listen to normally), I'll get your brain wracking to

Just about anything, but make sure it's a good quality dynamic recording presentation.

Doesn't matter what it is, quality always shines on through

[WOStantonCS100]

Damn, the $64 million question...

Well as we are just attempting to establish that the BD95 will play back your disc it doesn't really matter.

So, as you have stumped me (as I don't know what you tend to listen to normally), I'll get your brain wracking to

Just about anything, but make sure it's a good quality dynamic recording presentation.

Doesn't matter what it is, quality always shines on through

PM sent.

[Reid Malenfant]

PM sent.

Received while I was typing my reply

Likewise, you have one of those Biff

& strangely once again so do I

[WOStantonCS100]

For those following along, Mark (Reid Malenfant) was kind enough to test out a project disc with hi-rez 24/192 .wav files I sent him made on the DV-RA1000HD, in order to see if the disc would be read and the .wav files playback on (his) Oppo BDP-95. I am happy to report that they did! It's good to have another standalone playback option for the Tascam project discs. Mark may elaborate if he so chooses.

[Reid Malenfant]

Mark may elaborate if he so chooses.

Hey Biff, yeah, I'll do that & very happy to do so to

I'm pretty sure Biff was fairly confident that music recorded on his Tascam would be readable & playable on modern universal players, but only trying it would be good enough

He sent me a very nicely recorded disc with A & B WAV files that I was easily able to navigate with the Oppo 95.

The audio quality was frankly superb, something tells me that linear tracking tonearm in no way detracts from the finished result, I was quite astonished at the low noise floor & dynamic range of the recording!

While the signal to noise might not have been as good as a pure digital recording, the noise floor was more than low enough to make it a virtual non event, it didn't matter

Not music I'd normally listen to either, but it sounded rather special so I had to inquire what it was...


I have converted PCM to HIFI video (which should be as good as stupidly fast RTR) before, but never with no errors

This thing beats them hands down, no question of what is better

What a bit of kit

[WOStantonCS100]

Price check, aisle 7: Hmmmm... it appears, upon a quick check, that the prices on these have gone up. Also, there seems to be updated firmware available: now v2.05 from v2.04 BUT... I could care less about the firmware, per se and for my purposes the machine works just fine as is. For the price hike I'm curious to know if they've switched over to SATA. That would be well worth the price hike. Somehow, I doubt it. I got mine for less than 1400 shipped to the door (a great deal IMO). Now they want 1600; about 100 more than what it generally went for a year ago.

The important stuff: I've done approx. 20 LP to DVD+/-R transfers and when listening back, although there is still that 2-3% left to go, I still easily get lost in the music; not focusing on whether I'm listening to digital or analog. This is now the sole piece of digital equipment in my main system and as such does double duty as the resident silver disc spinner. It has reacquainted me with my CD collection for the good and bad. It's easy to distinguish between "good" CD's and ones that are just horrible. Generally, speaking, the good ones utilize the dynamics the format offers, if not the resolution. This can easily be seen at a glance. The meters leap and retreat hardly ever reaching 0db. (They go from -50db to "OVER".) The loudness war tripe barely budges from -3db and often pegs "OVER". It's a shame. There's some good music out there that has been mastered like garbage. I'm preaching to the choir.

[WOStantonCS100]

As discussed, I finally got around to the "SATA Conversion". I was pushed over the edge after finding out about M-DISCs (whereas the zeroes and ones are etched, rather than burned on the data layer of the media (compatible with DVD+R, I believe)) and using special burners capable of increased laser intensity. These burners are backwards compatible with DVD+/-RW and CD-RW. Currently, I think only LG makes such a burner??? The price of the burner and the required PATA to SATA bridge combined set me back less than $30(US); or... ...next to nothing.



The optical drive in the Tascam must be a slave; so, it was necessary to get a PATA/SATA bridge than could be set to slave. Important to note is that not all of these are capable of such (are master only). A "master only" bridge, I believe, will not work at all.



The physical install was indeed quick and painless. I have not updated the firmware. It is still running the same version installed at the factory. It's nice to know Tascam didn't do anything annoying to preclude the use of other IDE/PATE DVD writers (of like speed) or properly engineered bridges. Below you can see the DV-RA1000HD running as expected on a replacement hard drive, PATA to SATA bridge and SATA M-DISC capable optical writer. I successfully played everything from CDs to project DVDs with 24/192 wav files. There was no discernable degredation of sound quality (for the respective resolutions). I also burned 24/192 without incident on DVD+/-R. I have not as of yet acquired any M-DISC blanks.



The only caveat is this. At power on, the optical drive initialization now takes a whopping 30 seconds!!! I timed it with a stopwatch (app). Without the bridge initialization was approx. 5 seconds. In computer time an increase like that is huge. However, from that point on, performance does not appear to affected whether listening, recording, searching a disc, loading or ejecting a disc. Nevertheless, for the ability to "etch" discs that will supposedly last 1000+ years (heck I'd be elated with a guarantee of a worry free half century), I can deal with it. I only "reboot" the machine, on average, once a week if that much. As my digital transport of choice (as well as digital recorder) it's on almost 24/7.

So, there it is. Next on the list is the acquisition of a SSD hard drive to replace the whirling platters. This should reduce the Tascam to silence and squelch heat.

[WOStantonCS100]

So my choices were:

a 44 pin PATA/IDE SSD hard drive (pricey, limited availability and only from Transcend or KingSpec)
a 44 pin PATA/IDE to SATA converter and a 2.5" SATA SSD hard drive
a 44 pin PATA/IDE to CompactFlash adapter and a CompactFlash card (or SDHC card/adapter)

I ended up chosing the PATA to CF solution. The CF cards are pretty easy to obtain locally (as well as online) even if not in significantly large storage capacities and a tad pricey. But, once the adapter is in place, replacing the CF card or upgrading it is ridiculously easy. In place the CF card is dead silence (of course) and is a major reduction in heat. I used to strategically place foam squares on top of the unit to quiet things down while still allowing heat to escape the top vents; not anymore. However, there's always a catch, isn't there.

Not all CF cards are created equal and not all play well together with IDE to CF adapters. The adapter I started with (and have decided to use primarily) is from StarTech. The Transcend 400x 60MB/s 32GB CF card was a great price (first hint); but, was a complete fail. It would format; however, upon reboot it would not mount for any amount of money. Subsequently the player defaulted to the optical drive while yelling obscenities and flipping the bird.



After that I tried a Sandisk, pathetically small, 4GB Ultra CF card. This worked; but, left no room to complete most projects, certainly when recording in 24/192. However, I had a good feeling about Sandisk compatibility. It recorded without issue (but ran out of space) and transferred data from it to the burner with sufficient speed not to cause errors. The card specs say 30MB/s.



Next up I tried a cheap $4 PATA/IDE to CF adapter from the auction site, just to see if the Transcend card would work in it. No such luck. Fail. Again. Time to get an RMA. I like this cheap adapter's size. Looking closely at the PCB doesn't immediately instill confidence. It also lacks the second CF slot; but, the Tascam won't utilize it and the optical drive at the same time (sees two slaves). It does fit very nicely in the machine and allows the internal Tascam/Teac interface board to be mounted normally. The StarTech certainly seems a more quality piece and comes with standoffs; however, without shaving down these standoffs, the interface board sits proud of the chassis. I have actually put the screws in underneath the interface board to prevent it from bending the pins of the CF adapter when inserting the ribbon cable. This isn't necessary with the cheap adapter though. It will be a good backup.



I settled on a Sandisk Extreme 16GB CF card. No problems or issues; formatted and booted. Significantly less capacity than a hard drive; however, the purpose of this machine is not storage, in my application of it. It is the transfer of analog to playable discs. Considering 4.7GB on a single sided blank DVD+/-R or M, mega-gig drives are needless overkill.

**BIG NOTE** I can't exactly explain why; but, the machine likes this configuration. Boot up/initialization time is now 3 to 4 seconds, max. Awesome; very happy. This is a huge improvement over the previous configuration whereas a PATA to SATA converter on the optical drive was teamed up with the 2.5" PATA/IDE hard drive (as previously stated, boot time had slowed to a crawl of a half a minute.



So, that about does it for hardware upgrades. The machine is now what I hoped it could be since I acquired it: a silent, low-heat, analog to hi-res transcription device with CD replay as a bonus.

AUDIO PATH UPGRADES NEXT?
Am I considering the Jim Williams/AudioUpgrades audio path mods for this machine? Well... maybe... don't really know. I think I'd have to hear one against mine first.

ALL GOOD THINGS COME TO AN END... ...OR GET DISCONTINUED
And so, as of this writing, the TASCAM DV-RA1000HD has been discontinued. Perhaps that is a good thing?? Per Tascam, they've replaced it with the soon to ship DA-3000 master recorder. And, as I was hoping and stated way back in this thread, includes 5.6MHz DSD. It also ditches the HDD for SD and CompactFlash slots. That's great! BUT... BUT... BUT... the optical drive has been eliminated. So, now there is no using it (DA-3000) as a backward compatible transport (for CDs) and if you want to get the files on disc, you'll need to once again employ a laptop/PC. The standalone convenience is gone. If one does burn/etch discs, you now need to also buy the Teac PD-501HR to play them or some other such unit. Is it worth it for 5.6MHz DSD? Might be. However, with this project done, I'll be returning to more analogue pursuits for a while.

Thanks for following along and I hope this information benefits whoever comes across it.

[pixel79]

This is a very old, but very interesting thread. I'm thinking of modding my DV-RA1000HD by taking the hard drive out which, like everyone's has become a bit flaky with read errors - replacing it with an mSATA SSD.

Has anyone tried putting a drive in whose capacity is larger than the original?