Tascam MixCast 4 Podcast Station Hardware Review
A review of the Tascam MixCast 4 reveals significant engineering flaws despite its sleek form factor. The device lacks a headphone monitor for the final compressed output signal, forcing users to record without hearing their actual levels. Additionally, the eight programmable jingle buttons are restricted to single memory banks when using multi-track recording mode, a limitation compared to the Rodecaster Pro.
tascam mixcast 4· roadcaster pro· podcasting gear· audio engineering· noise gate· phil spector· hardware recorder
00:00 where this needs to come out. Stop eating our dogs! I'm a mess. In the morning everybody, I'm Adam Curry! Wow... Well from Northern Silicon Valley as The Zephyr just goes by, I am John C. Dvorak. No, no the train went by fine. Oops! Oops! Oops! Okay there we go sorry oh man I need everyone's patience for just a second new gear i'm messing it all up I had everything so perfectly rehearsed okay yeah
00:55 So you went out, I'm gonna jump into this. You went out and got the new Tascam podcast special. Yes, the pod... The P1! It's the Tascam MixCast 4 actually Oh, they had three before this I guess yeah nothing ever caught my eye until this one. It's very similar to the Roadcaster which of course all is a derivative of the Podcaster Pro Which and I have just your steps back in your lips? Yeah because you're so you're overjoyed. Yeah, I am totally jitty
01:36 Yeah, that was the original design that I came up with, with Sergine and we tried to make that happen. And we have one device which is... No production but we have one device it was super fun! So i really wanted to try this out and they came close they came closer than then The Road Guys But they've, they've... Well you never got a Rode did ya? No no I didn't get this one didn't come to me for free either but i never wanted the Rode because they had no noise gate on the USB channel which is the only way that I could you know get you sound decent. What here's the here's the stupid... What?! Here's the thing that it so weird
02:12 When you record, it outputs with... which is the way the chain is supposed to work with a final compression and limiter after the end signal so that you have a nice smooth kind of, if someone bounces up or down in the levels. It's going to sound nice and smooth on the recording but you don't get that in your headphones! It's only on the actual recording. So you don't You don't actually know where your levels are. It's really... so you know- Can't you put a headphone, or jerryrig a headphone jack somewhere between the real output and the recording? Yeah no it doesn't actually do that
02:58 But you can't you do that yourself with no extra gear. Yeah, see the only thing that I'm thinking I could do is take the output from a line out and feed that into Of course another device into some kind of compressor limiter. Okay let's stop because I know what you're gonna say yeah The idea of these things is to eliminate the need for Tons of different devices. And it's so close because I went from eight wires, I was able to get rid of an entire screen... Uh got rid of all kinds of USB cables Beautiful. Only thing that's attached is a USB cable and one headphone jack cable, and then the microphone...and headphones That's it! It's perfect! It's exactly what I wanted but now I have to have another box to make it sound- Although I tried it out with Moe, I tried it out with Moe And the sound itself is pretty good The recording sounds itself But it's so weird like you don't get a good vibe y'know? I dunno how it sounds on your end, I'm sure it's not Does it sound different?
04:02 It's not as good. It's crisp, but it's not the big sound that you normally associate with an Adam Curry production. Right well the recording will reflect that sound but you can't get it while recording which is just insane Yeah, I know. Anyway that's so... Well of course the- I don't understand this obviously a missing piece to this puzzle but i would assume that they before before they designed this thing, since it was for podcasting. I would make the assumption because he makes an S out of you and me but I would make the assumption that someone from the engineering department at Tascam big company. Yeah yeah oh they thought about it. Would have called you and said you know you're like the podcasting guy doing this 2.0 thing can you just listen tell us maybe give us a little feedback we don't need a lot we don't need to report we don't need a big document just maybe say something
05:02 And then so did they do that? No, of course not. It doesn't make any sense because you would have worked for free Of course I would I would have loved to help them design and baffled by this phenomenon well part of it is because they still believe that podcasters all want to Do the big multi-track recording every track is recorded separately and and oh it's just fabulous, and you can tweak and arrange every little bit. But if you just want to get something on the air and boom-boom-boom... Oh man! Difficult
05:40 But, you know it's software so they could upgrade it. They could fix it somewhere Anyway so Troll Room thank you very much for being here and producers please run a recording on the stream because in addition to reducing the gear The workload is reduced because it has an onboard recorder which is hardware Which you don't trust already Of course I don't... Hey man this is the maiden voyage of course I don't trust it Crazy stuff. Can't you run it? Hold on, last question if it is indeed... You can't run your own backup recording yourself? Yeah I could run from the line out of course. So you can't?
06:27 Here's one other thing and then I'll stop about it. The thing that is baffling to me, because i was very happy It has you know eight buttons and you can load up... You can load up jingles the way I- I always like having the God voice Yeah, so it has eight buttons and you can program I think it's from ten different memory banks. Doesn't the road have eight buttons too? Yes it does! And so I'm like okay cool... Why would they both have exactly eight buttons? Because that's- why not ten buttons?! I agree, I would like to have sixteen
07:11 But okay, so they have eight buttons and you can load up different memory banks. So I spent an inordinate amount of time yesterday loading up every bank—here's the donation segment here's the opening segment—so i can run it all from this but if you record directly to the built-in recorder you can't switch between memory banks that's only if you do the Phil Spector wall of sound recording all tracks at once What? Yes! I'm telling you. Anyway, i'm going to make this work...I will figure it out because its worth it. It's worth for the form factor alone and while im figuring it out...
