Tascam Portacapture X6 32-bit Float Portable Audio Recorder

I got this as an upgrade to my Tascam DR40 and it works great. There are a few things that I wish it had, like the XLR/TRS combo inputs, but overall it’s perfect for my needs and the audio is great.

I repeat: SOOOOO GOOOODAH!

I love how good a job it does for recording meetings and interviews. I can clearly hear the whole room. Also, you can connect the output to a computer and have it transcribe the recording for you. The sound quality makes it shine. It CAN power a regular Shure PGA58 or Samson Q2U mic. However, it DOES NOT appear to be able to power a Shure CVB B/O boundary mic. I’ve also found out that it goes through regular AA batteries fairly quickly when using Phantom power. (I use decent brand name batteries)I’ll try LiPo AA batteries the next time I switch out.The interface as can get :confusing and isn’t the most user friendly, but it’s decent.

It seems they released this product with the color touchscreen menu barely working. In early firmware, the basic "apps" were in color touchscreen, but everything else the black/white menu. And it was (and remains) unpleasantly cumbersome to switch between them, which you must do to get anything done.To give you an idea how bad it is, when you go into one of the apps, "microphone", "manual", "podcast", "SD card reader", etc., you can't go backwards to the main menu by touching a button! You have to press the physical "menu" key to get back to the 2-tone menu and then go into settings or back into "launcher" (color) to pick another app. I called tech support and asked them to put in that complaint. It's so embarrassing, that lack of home menu/back button on each app screen, I didn't even push the support guy on the WTF TASCAM!If you want to know how starved for R&D money the existing audio industry is, buy this device.That said, the device has tons of potential. I'm not going to go into all the ideas about how they can bring new life to these devices, but has to do with audio data modeling. Recording audio is a commodity. 32-bit float is not a real improvement (indeed, they're almost fraudulent in saying it will help any user of this product). What users want today is tons of charts and reports about what is being recorded. Ideas on how to maximum your gain settings or mic placement. Room acoustics. Again, recording devices with an LCD screen are 20 years old.Will TASCAM be able to do this, or will they go out of business and some young people in a garage come out with something to make me excited. I mean, again, c'mon, no go back to home on the touch screen?I'll come back and write updates as they continue to improve the device through firmware. It is happening. So I'm hoping to come back in the months ahead with good news to report. But TASCAM, if you're reading this, time to pull some all-nighters and finish the color and touch screen menu system.

Everyone knows why this thing is so great and it really is. The only problem was after two months the ¼ inch mount was dislodged and now I have a piece of metal floating around the inside of the device and no way to mount it to anything. Could only take off one star for this cuz it’s so damn good but make sure your mounting options are secure but not too tight. Only took 6 weeks to break.