Tascam DM3200, any real world experience?

[Matt82au]

Hey anyone using one of these desks? How do you find it runs, both as a mixer and with Pro Tools? Any known issues or troubles? Digital mixers seem to be so very competivly priced these days

[CharlesL]

I am completing a new studio with HD|2 and the TASCAM DM-3200.

If you are used to mixing on an analogue board, you might need some "getting used to", with such digital consoles. (especially multiple pages, multiple functions of the same knob..)

I tried using it as a control surface (it connects to my Mac via USB, which is quite neat, ie. I don't need extra MIDI I/O devices for it). HUI Emulation works, but its' difficult to know which fader controls what, because the "scribble strips" is on the small little tiny monochrome LCD screen.

It also doesnt control Pro Tool's on screen plugin parameters.

my monitoring outputs is fed via TDIF (from 192 I/O) into the DM-3200, and in turn it feeds my 5.1 Genelec monitors and another pair for near fields. I am also using the surround option card.

There were a couple more disappointments with it, but I think it's what we can afford now. (it's cheap, but doesn't look cheap)

check out the DM-4800, it's bigger (but not sure if it's better..)

Regards,
[Charles]

[Matt82au]

Thanks for the reply!
Mind if i ask a pretty silly question?
The tascam (in Pro Tools remote control mode) do allow you to bank through the faders... So you aren't limited to just controlling the first 16 channels, is that correct?

[FrankLP]

...There were a couple more disappointments with it, but I think it's what we can afford now. (it's cheap, but doesn't look cheap)

Hi Charles,
Can you expand on this? Does the board "feel" cheap or are there problems somewhere? I'm trying to decide between the DM3200 and the Yamaha 01v96.

[CharlesL]

Thanks for the reply!
Mind if i ask a pretty silly question?
The tascam (in Pro Tools remote control mode) do allow you to bank through the faders... So you aren't limited to just controlling the first 16 channels, is that correct?

Yup. it functions just like a HUI, except that it cannot control plugin parameters

[CharlesL]

Hi Charles,
Can you expand on this? Does the board "feel" cheap or are there problems somewhere? I'm trying to decide between the DM3200 and the Yamaha 01v96.

No, it doesnt feel cheap at all. In fact, because of its size ("footprint"), it looks expensive and "pro" in my studio

with a yamaha, i believe you get this "softLCD" feature whereby you can mirror what you see on a computer/VGA display IN COLOUR!! but with the DM-3200 (and 4800), it doesnt do that. closest equivalent was this tascam companion app that comes with it, and it takes still/graphics snapshots of the screen in B&W. it's good for keeping a snapshot of your screen settings, but with the tiny LCD display, we wished it would output a coloured version of it to a spare computer monitor (just like tha Yammys..). We are even prepared to folk out extra dollars if they can come in an expanasion board !!

next, the talkback mic is useless! I needed a "concealed" talkback mic and i thought the one that is built in is great because you don't see a mic sticking out on your console. But it is real noisy and TOTALLY NOT USABLE!! so we are using the traditional dynamic mic (SM57!!) sticking out on our desks..

The analog inputs "loses calaibration" over time. ie. if i send my PT main outs using analog out from 192 I/O to a pair of input channels on the DM-3200 for monitoring, and if i calibrate a reference tone (-20dBfs) and route my Dorroughs (40-C2s) via the main outs of the DM-3200, I could calibrate it to 0VU today, but when i come back tomorrow (or maybe hours later), it doesnt show 0VU on my dorroughs anymore!! + or - 1dB !!

thus i had to resort to using TDIF outs from my 192 as my main PT outs into the DM-3200. (The DM3200 have THREE TDIF ports, which is actually a good thing.. 1 gets connected to our 192I/O, another gets connected to our DA-88)

my friends' studio is using the DM3200 also, and have the same issues with the analog connections as well.. so i'm not alone..

I planned to use it as a surround monitor too, thus i bought the expansion card, but inorder to "stay calibrated", my other outputs need to go though TDIF too.

the little LCD screen also looses its image regularly too (i heard its due to heating issue, but there are many ventilation holes around, and my room is very cold, so i'm not sure what causes it). the workaround is, to turn the contrast knob a bit once in a while and its fine ... (it occurs to my friend's too)

I think the list can go on, BUT as mentioned, for this price, we shouldnt complain "much".. (although there are some little features (some mentioned above) that we would like implemented / fixed), and as mentioned again, it looks PRO and great.

The on board preamps sounds decent, and due to $$$ for constructing my new place, there is not much left for additional mic pres, so i have been using DM3200's onboard pres, and i thought they sound decent !!

some of my clients feels excited when they see some faders move during playback, and to some of them, it already makes their money worth

it has the SONY RS-422 pin that controls our beta SP decks too, which is cool for capturing videos. because our decks are in a machine room, we used to hit PLAY and then run to our rooms to hit capture, but now we do not need to run anymore. but recently, I've acquired Machine Control for PT, and it seems to do this better than the DM-3200. (some times we need to reboot the DM-3200 if it gets turned on first before we patch the RS-422 control in our machine room - the decks are shared, so we cannot patch it permanently..)

and speaking of reboot, well, another issue that i just thought of is, i have never seen a mixer that needs to be shut down like rebooting a PC, but for the DM3200 you need to shut it down properly or it will "complain" when u boot it up the next time.. (ie. before you turn off the power, you need to shut the DM3200 down with CTRL-ALT-SHIFT on the DM3200)

not sure if this helps... anyway, that's my comments..

Regards,
[Charles]

[jeremy glover]

Thanks for all the info.
Anyone else using the TASCAM DM3200 with Pro Tools?

[29CountsNY]

I am.
I have used it with the FireWire card once Avid opened Pro Tools to 3rd party interfaces and I'm still using it with HD Native.

I prefer it because it is near 0 latency and I can just leave my buffer set at higher settings and never need to change it unless I'm recording some VIs and need to have a quicker response.

I toy with the idea of buying a second one and leaving it in the box in case this one dies because there really isn't an equivalent, that will allow me to continue to use PT|HD with the I/O I want. I use the TDIF connection into my 192's and the upsampling of the 192, and the fact that the TDIF connections on the Tascam are 96k allow me to work in 96k like I prefer to.
If and when i have to replace it I will probably end up with an analog board or maybe a Yamaha dm2000. But I am leaning towards a TOFT ATB when the time comes.

[noah330]

I had a DM-3200 from about 2006 or 7 until last year.

I never had any problems with it and it worked great with ProTools.

I ended up getting rid of it and switching over to a Command 8 because it was just too big to justify keeping and I switched over the the Omni for my monitoring.

I don't miss it, but I would also have no problem giving it good marks. I didn't think the firewire card sounded as good as my 192 but YMMV.