Tascam DR-60D vs Zoom H6

[Johnny Wu]

Al, under setting change AA battery to lithium and you are set.

Been using the Tascam for a week now, I am loving it.

Originally Posted by Al Bergstein

No batteries come with the DR-60D and they specifically call out Alkaline and Ni-Cad in the manual. When I put in fresh Lithium batteries, that spike at 1.6 or 1.7 Volts on the meter the unit works for about 10 seconds or less and shuts off. Other equipment that I have runs fine with the same batteries.

I also tried fully charged enlopes. (sic). They came up at 2 bars.

So I don't know what to make of the unit I had, other than it's not a replacement for the SD-MixpreD and PM661 that I already have. I just don't have issues like this with them.

[Mike Leah]

Yeah both the 60 and the h6 look promising. Im debating on these two but not sure which one to get. I like the features of both so it boils down to the better preamps. They seem similar though

[Dave Partington]

I'm also looking at both the DR-60D and the H6, but am currently leaning towards the 60D.

One thing that interests me is the startup time. My H4n recorders seem to take between 16 and 58 seconds to start up depending on what size card I put in them.

While I have a couple of smaller (2GB) cards, I have a dozen or so 32GB class 10 cards. The H4n takes 58 seconds to come ready with these cards, so I'm wondering what the startup time of the 60D in particular is with larger card sizes ?

While I could buy more 2GB cards it seems a shame to have lots of 32GB cards on the shelf and not be able to use them. Sometimes startup time is important!

[Fran Guidry]

Anyone in the SF Bay Area with a 60D interested in a comparo with an H6?

Fran

[Dave Partington]

Originally Posted by Fran Guidry

Anyone in the SF Bay Area with a 60D interested in a comparo with an H6?

Unfortunately I'm around 5,000 miles away so unlikely to meet up any time soon. Spent a log of time in the bay area and wouldn't mind coming back for a while..... just not this year :(

Anyway, took delivery of the DR-60D a couple of days ago after a lot of watching YouTube,Vimeo, reading blogs etc about both DR-60D and H6.

Things I loved about the H6:

• 4 XLRs + own ambient mics

• Long battery life.

• The pots on top for adjusting levels



Things I loved about the DR-60D:

• Form factor - the way it mounts so I can see it even on a relatively high mounted camera.

• I absolutely love the ability to record dual tracks with -6db or -12db in case anyone overloads a mic input.

• The Slate button is genius, others will surely follow, and it's saved me a lot of time syncing footage to second audio in just these couple of days. It's now trivial and I don't have to rely on software such as FCPX or PluralEyes to sync stuff.

• The ability to change levels without having to dive in to menus (H4n)



---The only gotchas I have on the DR-60D (so far) are ---:

• The LCD is a little smaller than I'd hoped. It's usable and I'm getting used to it.

• The battery life is OK, but not stellar. Using dynamic mics I got around 3.5 hours from Eneloop 2500s. I'm still testing with NTG2 / Phantom power but will have those results over the weekend.

• The slate button is not an instant tone. I was hoping to be able to give two or three fast pushes to mark a take number, while keeping rolling, but there's a significant delay between pushing the button and the slate tone starting, certainly seems like more than a second. I guess it's a safety feature so you don't catch it and throw tone all over your audio, but it would be nice if that delay was configurable.

• While you can create sub folders and tell it where to save the files, and even given it some different names for files, I can't seem to be able to rename those folders. Anyone know if this can be done?

• In BWF mode, the time code and content created time differ slightly, although having timecode is awesome. Between this and the slate tone life just got a lot easier for external audio.



--- Things I like over the H4n units I have ---:

• Startup time! OMG! Using 32GB class 10 cards the H4n used to take 58 seconds to come ready. The DR-60D is ready in about 5 seconds.

• Being able to see the levels while camera mounted

• Being able to adjust the levels without diving in to some sub menu

• Being able to record the same thing at two different levels (dual mono or dual stereo mode)

• It seems to have a much lower noise floor

• I can record 4 tracks as inputs and don't have to worry about recording and throwing away the internal mic stuff which I almost never use.

[Johnny Wu]

So I decided to keep both. When doing dslr shoot I will use the tascam. And I use the zoom for mixing additional mics into he computer.