When coming into a new position at any location where you are the lead tech I strongly recommend looking at EVERY system in every venue of your location. This last week, I was introduced to a room that I have never been in that had an audio system installed in it. I for one didn’t know the room existed nor even had an audio system installed.
There sat a NEW Tascam DV-RA1000…
Installed in the audio rack that held the mixer was a digital CD/DVD audio recorder, the Tascam DV-RA1000 which is a high resolution audio mixdown recorder that can record 192kHz/24-Bit audio to a DVD or normal resolution to a CD.
The unit was not connected to anything and wasn’t even plugged in! This CD recorder was much better quality than the Tascam CD-RW750 which we have been using to record our sermons for years. The DV-RA1000 includes internal DSP for limiting/compression and EQ not to mention a lot of different inputs both digital and analog. So, I decided to remove it from the old rack and place it in the Worship Center where it can be used on a weekly basis!
The largest benefit was the time it takes to finalize the CD. With the Tascam CD-RW750 it took about 1.5 minutes to complete a CD after the recording has been stopped. The Tascam DV-RA1000 takes less than 30 seconds. Also, the time it takes the unit to stop recording and be ready to record a 2nd track is much less time.
Moral of the story…
All in all, it was a great decision to switch to this unit, but even better is that I didn’t have to spend any money as we already had this. I just had to find it! So the moral of the story is that you need to look in all of your rooms/systems/venues and document every piece of gear you have.