Tascam DP 24 SD Master Comp

[Tyros]

Hi
I was wondering if anyone had the same problem that I had last night.
I was working on about 8 tracks .Took them in to Mixdown Mastering.
I then got the Mix as I liked, Then went to full Mastering mode to use the
Master Comp .And after much adjustments and fiddling The Tascam locked up .
Could not start or stop or index to a point ,go back to the start or end.
The only way I could get back control was to Turn off the Master Comp.
On the Master Comp screen there are 3 Parts .Low Med. High.
I had All 3 parts switched on and was adjusting them on the Fly.
Is that maybe What I did Wrong ,Dont have all 3 parts on At one time.
I admit I know very Little About Compressors.
Im hoping this is not a Fault because my unit is way out off warranty.

Hoping its pilot error
Thanks in advance .
Tyros.

 

[-mjk-]

You have to exit the compression screen to record the master track, but it shouldn't "lock up." You can leave the compression on of course (that's the point) but exit the compression screen to record the master track. The compression is either on or off. It's multiband or single band depending on your choice.

 

[Tyros]

Hi ,and thanks for responding.
May I ask When you are Mastering Within the Master Comp Screen,Do
you Fiddle With the settings Whilst The track is Playing Or Stop and Adjust
Then press play again.Can a Compresser be used and Adjusted While the Track plays.
My Comp seems to say No..
Looking Through the Manuel I can find Nothing About This Odd behaviour.
Thanks
Tyros

 

[-mjk-]

hi Tyros,

I realize that I didn't really answer your first question properly. The transport controls do not operate the same way in Mastering Mode as they do in Multitrack and Mixdown modes. The only operations you have available in Mastering Mode is REW, F FWD (press and hold each) STOP+REW (To Zero), and Stop + F FWD (To Last Rec), Stop, Play and Record. None of your marks are available as cue positions in Mastering Mode. You can use the Jog/Data wheel to position the track though.

If the Comp or EQ screen is active, you cannot press Record to apply the effects to the Mixdown tracks. But you can play them back all you want until you get it how you like. Then exit back to the Mastering main screen and press Record.

You make adjustments in real time as you're listening to the track. That's the only way you can hear what's going on. EQ and Compression are fully adjustable and may be turned on and off at will to hear the difference. I suggest using the library presets as a starting point.

 

[Mark Richards]

went to full Mastering mode to use the
Master Comp .And after much adjustments and fiddling The Tascam locked up

Tyros,
Unit Freezes:
The first cause to consider for the freeze is the SD card. Is it on the approved list? How long has it been in use? How full is it? What's the size of the song you're working on?

Next is the firmware. Is it the most current?

Next is the complexity of the song. Lots of edits? Lots of overdubs? Lots of punches? All of these create snippets of files that the firmware has to manage.

When you are Mastering Within the Master Comp Screen, Do
you Fiddle With the settings Whilst The track is Playing

Adjusting Master Multi-compression Parameters While Recording
As mjk said, before recording you can Play the master and adjust the parameters to your liking. Then exit back to the main Mastering Screen. You have to be in the main Master screen to start recording the final master.

After you press the Record button, and recording starts, if you press the Comp button the Compressor screen opens up and the parameters also can be adjusted on the fly in real time while recording the final master.

 

[Tyros]

Thanks for the help guys.
I have the same Mix ready to try again.
The card is a samsung 16 gb that has worked fine from new ,
was formatted in the machine Full format
and has not thrown up any other errors ,damm this is anoying.
love this machine but this sort of this is not helping .lol.
Looks like a change of card might be the way forward as it seems
you can adjust on the fly so to speak.
Am trying a Mix shortly will get back to this thread and let you know what happens

To all you good people THANKYOU
So glad there is help just a click or 2 away

 

[Tyros]

Hi guys
I have just done a new Master Mix using the same stems ect ect .
And all went well ,I did not sit for 2 hours fiddling with the Master Comp this time
so maybe that was it,Honest 2 hours of non stop twiddling with the parameters
May have had something to do with it,By the way the song still sucks . o well !
Will post if it happens again.
And yep im getting a fully approved sd card
A huge thanks to all .
Tyros

 

[-mjk-]

Tyros, all SD cards "work fine" until you hit the wall on something. The majority of users are hobbyists and record only a few tracks without much punching in or complicated bounces. My card worked fine too, as long as I was recording single passes. Then it failed when I was recording lots of punch-ins as I would on a tape machine. 6 tracks later, I hit the limitation, whatever it was, and I couldn't continue. Like some users, I began to question the usability of the machine. I can understand why some might think the main board is bad, or want to exchange the machine. If the machine really was so poorly designed, no one would be able to use it for anything at all. That goes against logic, and Tascam's reputation. Research and forum discussions with other users put me onto the SD card issue. Now, my DP-32 is more reliable than my 3M M79 24-track recorder. It's becoming apparent that many so-called "defective" DP machines simply have SD cards that are not performing properly.

 

[-mjk-]

Hi guys
I have just done a new Master Mix using the same stems ect ect .
And all went well ,I did not sit for 2 hours fiddling with the Master Comp this time
so maybe that was it,Honest 2 hours of non stop twiddling with the parameters
May have had something to do with it,By the way the song still sucks . o well !
Will post if it happens again.
And yep im getting a fully approved sd card
A huge thanks to all .
Tyros

Turning knobs doesn't write anything to the card in of itself. Before you press Record, you're not doing anything more than playing back tracks and adjusting parameters the machine is designed to manipulate.

 

[Tyros]

Hi guys
I bought a new and approved SD card .full Format in the Tascam.
Reimported the tracks I was working on ,took them through to the Master Mix
So far All good,Did a Mix,Went through to Full master mode Added Some Master Comp
And the Tascam locks up About half way through.
Might have to try another card .At some point I will get one that works.
Thankyou to all for the assistance,Will order a new Card later from a different Store.
Thanks again .
Tyros

 

[Tyros]

Hi
Thought i might try an earlier firmware ver.
Maybe 103 might work more reliably .
Tyros

 

[Sam Trenholme]

Try using the 1.05 firmware with the DP-24SD.

 

[Tyros]

Hi
I have now tried all past and up to date,that is the 105. firmware.
It took ages to Full format
copy
import
Then Master to the point when I could use the Master Comp
On each atempt the Master Comp Locks up after a very short time...33 seconds for Ver 105.
104 ...133 seconds .
I do not know why the machine is doing this and I wish it would stop and let me enjoy
recording my crappy music.
It could be Pilot error If thats the case I wish I new what I am doing wrong.
Sorry if my first post was a bit Whiny ,just wish the machine was more reliable.
I am going to contact Tec support and see If they have any Idea what happening

Thanks
Tyros.

 

[Tyros]

Hi
Here is a utube vid of the problem im having
Sorry that vid picture and sound is poor ....but should be good enough.

 

[Sam Trenholme]

Where are your “in” and “out” marks located? You can find this out by tapping the “Locate in” and “Locate out” buttons while in tracking mode.

For mixdown and mastering, the “in” mark needs to be before the beginning of the song, and the “out” mark needs to be after the end of the song (a mix ends as soon as the DP Portastudio hits the “out” mark. Yes, this is a silly design decision on Tascam’s part).

 

[Sam Trenholme]

MJK knows this of course, but for the lurkers: Because of how the DP portastudios lay down tracks, the way to handle it when the machine can no longer handle too many punch ins is to use audio depot, export all of the tracks, then import them again in to a new song, so that the punch ins are no longer fragmenting the tracks in the song. Repeat as many times as needed — it’s digital, after all.

This is akin to what Donald Fagen did when recording his albums on the early 3M digital machine; when there were too many overdubs, causing digital errors, they would copy the tracks over to a fresh spool of tape.

 

[Tyros]

Hi
The song is 6Min 35 s The reason you can,t see the end point is because the machine wont finish the recording,so the song ends up at 33 s .I do know that the Master screen needs An.. In point And An.. Out point,In fact if you try to record without setting these it throws up a message.
No punch in Marks are set No punching in or out Done.
In fact not a lot of adjustment went in to these recordings Mostly because I wanted to try the SD cards Out.
I Do understand the Idea of Fragmented Files messing up Sd cards But I thought That was after extended Edits and Adjustments.
There Is only 2 Song files On the card. The Default Song And the one I added.

Thankyou For you Help.
Tyros.

 

[Sam Trenholme]

Let’s look at this video:

• The song is 33 seconds long, which means we can only apply compression and EQ to the song for 33 seconds. If you want the song to be longer, 1) Put the “in” mark before the beginning of the song 2) Put the “out” mark after the end of the song 3) When mixing the song, do not hit stop; just make fader and mute adjustments as needed while mixing the song. The entire song needs to be played while mixing it; otherwise, the song will be cut short. (Once the song is over, one can optionally hit stop so we don’t have to go all the way to the “out” mark before doing further processing.) I only hit stop when mixing a song after a fade out has been done.
  
• In the menu which then pops up, we can normalize the song, or apply compression and EQ.
  
• Once we apply compression and EQ to the song (at the 3:27 point in the video), by hitting record and playing the entire song, we need to now hit “mixdown/mastering” so that the changes are saved. This will make us leave the mixdown/mastering screen and take us back to the mixing screen.
  
• At this point, go to menu, go to USB, and transfer the file to your computer.

Personally, I leave any processing after making a mix to the pros; the only process I apply myself is a simple normalization of the song. I used a professional mastering engineer to master my last album, and will use one again for my next album. The rates are reasonable and the quality is far better than what I can achieve using just the DP Portastudio’s built in compression and EQ.

 

[-mjk-]

MJK knows this of course, but for the lurkers: Because of how the DP portastudios lay down tracks, the way to handle it when the machine can no longer handle too many punch ins is to use audio depot, export all of the tracks, then import them again in to a new song, so that the punch ins are no longer fragmenting the tracks in the song. Repeat as many times as needed — it’s digital, after all.

This is akin to what Donald Fagen did when recording his albums on the early 3M digital machine; when there were too many overdubs, causing digital errors, they would copy the tracks over to a fresh spool of tape.

I normally clean out the original tracks and import back to them, in the same song - but yeah, consolidating the Frankenstein tracks. Then I Delete Unused.

 

[Mark Richards]

Tyros, forget about going into Master Mode right away.

You first need to affirm that your song plays all the way through the 6 minutes 35 seconds after you've recorded the mixdown.

In other words, in Mixdown mode:
1. Set the IN Point of the song (Mark Set + IN Buttons simultaneously).
2. Go to where the song ends (at the 6min 35sec point)
3. Set your OUT Point for the song (Mark Set + OUT Buttons simultaneously).
4. Press the Record Button.

The song will play all the way through from the IN Point to the OUT Point, recording your stereo master wav file; and then stop automatically at the 6 minute 35 second OUT Point. If it doesn't behave that way you haven't set your IN and OUT points correctly.

[EDITED- thanks for catching my error, mj (post#23 next page)]
NOW go to Master Mode.
Look at the total song time at the top right of the screen in white numbers under the song name and indicated as "Total Time:". It should indicate 00:06:35

5. Press the Play Button.

Your song should play all 6 minutes 35 seconds. Master Mode uses the stereo wav file created in Mixdown mode. Master Mode knows the exact length of the song. The IN/OUT points are no longer relevant and are ignored in Master Mode.

6. Rewind, turn on compression and/or EQ, press Play, choose your parameter settings.
7. Rewind, press Record to print the compression and/or EQ to your final master.