Tascam dm24 for live sound ?

[Dookietwo]

Hi

I did search but got mostly recording studio results .

Does anyone here use the Tascam dm24 for live sound ?

Has it held up well ? Any complaints ?

I am ready for a digital board I would like to give one a try .

Thanks for any input .

Dookietwo

[MrKnobs]

Originally posted by Dookietwo Hi I did search but got mostly recording studio results . Does anyone here use the Tascam dm24 for live sound ? Has it held up well ? Any complaints ? I am ready for a digital board I would like to give one a try . Thanks for any input . Dookietwo

 

I'm perhaps the biggest DM-24 fan on Harmony Central, so take that into account!

 

The DM-24 is one of the best under-$10,000 recording mixers I've used, and I've used quite a few of them. The sound is wonderful, particularly the 4-band fully parametric EQ on each channel, and it's very cool having a compressor and noise gate on each channel as well. I use my DM-24 every day in my studio and have had no trouble with it.

 

Having said all that, I would not recommend using a DM-24 for live work. If you're familiar with the DM-24, or any other small format digital board, you know that there is not a knob for everything, there are "layers" and "menus" and what not. Therefore it requires several actions to do what takes just one action on an analog console. You can get very fast at this after practice, but never as fast as using an analog board. I think it's important to be able to reach directly for a particular EQ or AUX in live work, so this is less than optimal.

 

Second, the DM-24 and all digital boards are computers. You know what happens to computers from time to time, they freeze or "lock up" and have to be rebooted. This has honestly never happened to my DM-24 in the studio but then again my studio doesn't have 12 large three phase AC compressors constantly cutting in and out, or a half dozen neon beer signs on the same circuit. My point is you don't want your mixer to "crash" during a show.

 

Third, I don't really think the construction of the DM-24 is robust enough to take the pounding and beer splashing of live sound.

 

Fourth, the topology of the DM-24 is not set up for live sound. Without going into detail, in a live mixer, wouldn't you want the ability to assign channels to busses and then assign the busses to the stereo (or mono) out? Guess what, you can't do that! Well, actually, you *sort of* can do that with the latest software release, but the results kinda suck.

 

Finally, given all this, you *could* use the DM-24 for live sound, with workarounds. But why would you? What is the use of all the fancy automation complexity for doing live sound? Do you need touch sensitive faders? I can sort of see a use for the snapshot automation if you're running several bands; you could recall the headliner's settings from sound check and be in better shape when they take over from the opening act. But the bottom line is you've paid for all kind of fancy stuff you don't need and you don't have some of the meat and potatoes you do need for live work.

 

I did a recent show at a huge venue using a high dollar automated house console and more than anything else I fervently wanted to turn the automation off ASAP.

 

Some time back, Tascam gave some thought to making a live version of the DM-24. I have a draft design of that board, and I suspect Phil, Andy, and maybe Mark have copies of that as well. I very much doubt (but don't know) that Tascam pursued that, since they subsequently cut back their personnel and website due to hard times. Jace, their DM-24 sparkplug, no longer works there.

 

And that's too bad. The plans I saw had some promise, scrapping unneeded features and adding in some very cool stuff for live work.

 

I'd pass on the DM-24 for live at this point, though to be fair, there were some people on the old Tascam forums that claimed to use the DM-24 for that with good results. It IS a very good sounding mixer.

 

Terry D.

[agedhorse]

I would have to agree with Terry 100% on this one. Tascam did have some promising features on their "live" version concepuals, but I have heard nothing more. The future is digital for some folks definately, the user interface must be more user (live production user) friendly.

 

I also agree with the comment about some of the automation features on the big boys. All it takes is for something to be programmed accidently and to not realize it, then have it come to bite you in the ass in a big way. Talking about needing to change your underwear... geez CPR might even be necessary if you are mixing on a big system!

[bassknave]

Still have the lit for evaluating that proposed live version of the DM-24. Had some nice features, and would have been RELATIVELY user-friendly in a live app. Too bad it never came to fruition. Of course, there'd still be that crash issue.

 

BTW, with the exception of my FX devices, I've removed all digital hardware from my FOH signal path--much warmer and more articulate. Just using Lexicon MPX-100, Lexicon Reflex, ART DMV-Pro DSPs on auxes, inserting 12 channels of analog compression on drums, bass & vox (Presonus and Behringer), 8 channels Presonus gating (drums) and a 31x2 analog GEQ inserted on the main outs--that's all.