Tascam HD-P2 Portable Stereo CF Recorder

2006-12-01 05:30:18

Tascam HD-P2 Portable Stereo Recorder - A personal review by tekno.mage

Full manufacturer's information available at http://www.tascam.com/Products/hdp2.html

Even before recording high quality digital audio on a home computer became affordable, I wanted something simpler & far more portable; essentially the digital equivalent of the old-fashioned portable cassette recorder. Compact and easy to use, but without the tape hiss, limited bandwidth and unreliable moving parts of cassette tape.  My main uses for such a unit are: recording live DJ sets, recording wildlife (mainly birdsong), transfer of precious vinyl recordings to digital format, and possibly recording of live acoustic folk music.

Minidisc was a big disappointment, with it's  lossy audio compression & tiny portable recorders that were fiddly, fragile & awkward to use. Portable DAT recorded high quality uncompressed audio, but at a high price for a device reputedly not 100% reliable. Direct CD or DVD recording seemed unlikely to become portable & standalone. Some of the flood of MP3 "fashion accessories" competing with Apple's iPod could record, but only in compressed MP3 format, and were too small, too fiddly and too fragile.  There were seriously high-end professional portable recorders, but priced for large corporate budgets, so completely out of my league.  I began to understand why laptop computers were commonly used as  "portable" audio recorders...

That was until the recent announcement, by several manufacturers, of new affordable portable recorders capable of  high quality uncompressed digital audio recordings onto Compact Flash (CF) cards at prices ranging from around £250 - £900. Near the top of this price range, these products share more than a passing resemblance to the portable cassette recorders of old.

I've had my Tascam HD-P2 (cost £750) for nearly a month now, and so far I am very happy with it. Similar in size & weight to a portable cassette and just as easy to use, with familar "tape transport" controls, clear metering, built-in microphone & speaker, uses easily available media, and can be powered from 8 standard AA batteries. There the similarities with cassette end.

Recording two-channel uncompressed 16 or 24bit audio at sample rates from 44.1KHz to 192KHz provides the high quality, low noise characteristics of current digital recording. Audio files are saved in Broadcast WAV format and can be transferred  to a computer using the firewire cable or by using the CF card in an external reader. When connected to a computer, the HD-P2 is seen as an external firewire hard disk.
 
Recordings can be made from digital line input (SPDIF coax) or the two external balanced XLR mic inputs with switchable phantom power, two analog line inputs (unbalance RCA phono) or the internal mono mic. I've mainly used external mics & analog line inputs so far, although I did satisfactorily test both the internal mic and digital line inputs when the unit first arrived. A very useful feature when recording wildlife is the pre-record cache. When switched on, this automatically stores the previous 10 seconds of audio when the unit is paused & ready to record, so actual recordings capture sounds up to 10 seconds before "record" was physically pressed.

Monitoring is via stereo headphone quarter inch jack with rotary volume control, line out (digital or analog) or the internal speaker (muted when headphones plugged in). I found the built-in headphone amp more than adequate and distortion free, even at high level. All the audio connectors are standard size and high quality. The built-in mic is nothing special, but capable enough for dictaphone use or recording what's been said at a meeting. The built-in speaker is surprisingly good and certainly adequate to check your recordings.

Most analog recording functions are set by discrete switches on the top panel. Each channel can be set as either line or mic, with mic sensitivity set using -20dB attenuator pads. Switches also set internal or external mic, phantom power for external mics, 100Hz low cut filter, and built-in limiter (which seems very impressive). When in "operating mode" (ie recording or using the tape transport buttons) all settings in use are all shown on the small LCD screen, as is metering, recording time, sample rate, battery life & time left on CF card. analog levels are set using a familiar dual rotary control, with metering shown on the display when the unit is in pause or record mode. Meter characteristics (clip hold, decay rate & peak decay rate) are user definable too.

All other functions (including sample rate, bit depth, selection of digital input) are accessed by a menu system, which although not my favourite user interface, is fairly easy to use. A combination of buttons & a jog wheel is used to navigate the menus, and to select or modify menu items (there is also provision for an external PS2 keyboard to be used.) which are displayed on the LCD screen when in menu mode.

As CF & Microdrive cards must be formatted before use, using the menus is required before you can record anything. Insert a new card and the display asks if you want to format the card, & warns this will delete anything on the card.  Cards are formatted as FAT16 or FAT32 depending on the size of the card (FAT32 is used for 4Gbyte or larger cards.) Formatting is very quick, and the HD-P2 also has a built-in card test function which test what sample rates the current card can be used to record (some old slower CF cards are not suitable for high sample rates.) How accurate this is, I don't know as all my cards (even an older one from my digicam) passed as good for all sample rates and have proved to be so.

The unit has very intelligent power handling & a power display (accessed from the menus) shows the voltage available from all connected power sources. Battery power is used as a last resort if either mains or firewire connections are available, and switching power sources is transparent to the user. The LCD backlight automatically switches into power save mode when running on battery power.  If battery power gets very low, the unit sensibly saves what it is doing and shuts down gracefully. In operating mode the display shows all power sources available and how much battery power remains.  The unit comes complete with 12v mains adapter and runs for about 5.5hours on 8 alkaline AA batteries.

The HD-P2 uses the concept of Projects to define different recording setups. There is a default (user-definable) project stored within the unit, which is used for new CF cards unless you define new projects for the cards. Each Project is a unique directory on the CF card which contains all project settings and audio files in that project.  All audio files in a project must use the same sample rate, so using a different sample rate means defining a new project. All other settings can be changed manually after the project is defined. It's easy to switch between several projects on a CF card, the current project is always shown on the display when in "operating mode".  Project definitions can be backed-up or loaded onto new CF cards by connecting the HD-P2 to a computer using the Firewire connector & supplied lead.  Although Projects appear a little complicated as described in the manual, in practice they are simple enough in use.

I ordered 1Gb & a 2GB CF cards with the HD-P2, ensuring I had a couple of cards that were certain to work in the machine.  I tested a couple of old 1GB cards from my digital camera & found both worked perfectly even at the highest 192K/24bit sample rate. A 4Gb card (same make) bought cheaply on Ebay also worked perfectly. All are solid state cards. I personally don't use larger capacity Microdrive cards (which the HD-P2 also supports) due to reliability concerns regarding hard disks in portable units. At CD quality (16 bit, 44.1KHz) a 1Gbyte card allows just over an hour and a half of stereo recording.

The unit comes with shoulder strap & a leather carrying case which has clever velcro flaps allowing access to the controls. It is easy and comfortable to carry over the shoulder. Which is all very nice, but the case has no provision for spare CF cards, or even a set of spare batteries, so is of limited use - especially as the velcro flaps are not captive, and can easily become detached and lost. 

The HD-P2 has various timecode capabilities and can also use external timecodes, it has a facility to easily "re-take" recordings and allows limited built-in editing of previously recorded audio files & the audio timeline. I can't comment on these features as I have no need for them at present.

In conclusion, I was pleasantly surprised with the HD-P2, which I bought online without the opportunity of handling or trying beforehand.  Once you get your head around setting up projects, it really is very easy to use and capable of producing excellent recordings. There were no un-expected "gotchas" which seem so typical of modern digital equipment. It's light enough (with batteries fitted) to carry around and simple to operate, but it's certainly not ruggedised - so I personally would treat it gently.

Pros:
Easy to use
Uncompressed recording
Range of sample rates
Recording quality
Familiar tape transport interface
Rotary level controls
Pre-record cache
No moving parts
Full-size audio connectors
12v power source
Standard AA batteries - alkaline or rechargable NiMH
FAT32 format for larger CF & Microdrive cards
Firewire interface to computer
Phantom power for external mics
Built-in limiter
Metering with user-selectable characteristics
Ease of firmware upgrade (download upgrade file, copy to CF card, insert card in in HD-P2, unit automatically upgraded) & recovery to auto-saved previous version if needed.
PS/2 keyboard connector.

Cons:
Documentation could be better - particularly the technical specification (which contains several typos.)
Supplied case could be very much better.
Not a ruggedised unit. Protective case a good idea if available.
CF card slot open & unprotected when empty - a plastic flap or cover would protect the pins inside damage by foreign objects.
DC power connector is not locking type, so can be dislodged by accident.
Main power switch is perhaps a little too easy to knock unintentionally.

tekno.mage

Tascam HD-P2 Portable Stereo CF Recorder

Reply #1 – 2006-12-02 15:37:43

You know, the new Hi-MD units support recording to LPCM.