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Audiophile recording and playback - Tascam DA-3000


Hi, some months ago I bought the Tascam DA-3000 recorder, having used a small Korg MR-1 for some years. I mainly record from my vinyl rig (Lyra Atlas – SME V – Hanss T30 – Aesthetix Io Eclipse – Einstein The Tube mk2).

I have found that even with the hassle of very big files (one LP = almost 3 GB), the dual speed DSD sound is superior to anything digital I have heard so far.

In my rig, analog blows digital out of the water, but this is the best candidate.

In a former thread, someone asked, is the Da-3000 ‘audiophile’ level. The answer is a clear yes.

This is the first digital recorder I have owned (after some DATs and others) that does not make me ashamed that my old analog and much-modded Revox A77 stands in my loft. Also, for some, the Tascam may be a good investment since its DAC may outperform the DAC you already have. I had a Stello DAC that went out the door.

However, some aspects of the Tascam are problematic, and others can probably be improved.

A first issue is connectivity and ease of use. It would be great if the Tascam could record to a hard disk, or at least play back from it. The manual says a hard disk can be connected through the USB port. I bought a Seagate Wireless Plus 1 TB hard disk to try. However, the Tascam won’t recognize it, even when I reformatted to Exfat (instead of NFTS). Perhaps it would be recognized if I reformatted to FAT32, but then I would not have any use of a big hard disk, the limit is 32 GB I think. So I am back to recording to my 32 GB Sandisk SD card, eight LPs or so, with hand written notes, what track is what title, and then carrying the card and paper to my main PC, naming folders and transferring the files. BTW this was very slow, 19 mbps, since my card reader was not USB 3 compliant, I changed, and now it is much better, 84 or so mbps.

The ideal would be to have the Tascam drive as a unit on my home network, this is why I bought the Seagate wireless, but as stated - no success so far.

Experiences with the Tascam (or similar), in this and other respects, are welcome.

Note that, the problems so far are minor, for me, compared to the benefits. The sound is usually much better than what I get from CDs or the web (excepting some SACDs). I can bring my analog rig around, so to speak, playing back on the Korg Mr-1 (or the Tascam itself, which is light weight and semi-movable). I think that DSD playback will become more easily available in the future. If Pono had included DSD, I would have bought one.
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mre28m5's avatar
mre28m5
36 posts
 
The Belleson SPZ’s arrived today and I installed them. In response to a question from me,  Belleson support contacted me last weekend and kindly offered to include insulator kits at no extra cost. That’s great customer service. Insulator kits are Mouser p/n 532-4880.

I used the screw insulator insert from each kit over the original heat sink screws. The kit also included an insulator sheet identical to the originally installed 78/79XX tab insulators, which I used. If I had to do the installation again, I would use both the original and the Mouser insulation sheets. It can’t hurt.

I suppose that the insulators aren’t needed on the SPZ78 because the tab of the TO-220 is at GND. However, the center tab of the SPZ 79 is the unregulated input, so isolating the SPZ79 is necessary. I wonder if I ordered a different part or if Belleson changed their design recently. (?)

In any case, the unit works post-modification. I haven’t had a chance to make any recordings yet. Can’t wait to hear the results. Turntable is being set up at the moment.

@dgarretson... Thanks for doing the R&D. I hope you won’t mind if I ask a question or two re: the capacitor mod at some point in the near future.

dgarretson
2,587 posts
 

@mre28m5

Glad that worked out for you. I had forgotten that I used insulating shoulder washer Digikey p/n HS418-ND to float the Belleson metal tab from ground.

Now that the audio board mods are breaking in, I’ll take a shot at tracing the circuit on the power board. Tascam uses four 2200uf and 6800uf Panasonic FK filtering caps that are keepers, but there are two Suncon 100uf filtering caps that appear to be at output of the Belleson regs and three small Jamicon electrolytics that may be worth replacing. IIRC, Belleson recommends a higher capacitance than 100uf at output of the SPZ-- which is why I increased filtering capacitance at the downstream op amps from 22uf to 100uf.

If you try the audio board mods, be gentle with the wide, flat ribbon cable. It has many tiny foil traces, several of which began to fray and peel back a mm or so during reinsertion. The solution was to use long sharp scissors to trim back the ribbon a tad and restore clean traces. As this type of cable is not designed to survive many reinsertions, it’s best to get all ADC mods done in one pass.

The Panasonic FM electrolytic coupling caps for the ADC should have their .01uf film bypass caps placed on top and soldered point-to-point to the legs of the FM cap before mounting the FM to the PCB. There not enough room to do the bypassing as an afterthought.

dgarretson
2,587 posts
 

Just an update that I replaced the remaining stock Jamicon and Suncon electrolytic caps on the power board with Panasonic FC. This produced a modest improvement in SQ in DSD128 recordings, but worthwhile given the small effort of removing the power board once more. I think this is the finish line for the Tascam.

This little project has progressed in parallel with SACD rips via PlayStation 3. With a decent cartridge, tonearm, turntable, and phono stage as analog source for DSD128 recordings(in my case Stanton 981LZS>SME 3012R/Kuzman 4P>Luxman PD-444>modified Pass XP-25), vinyl recordings on the modified Tascam DA-3000 are on par with DSD64 SACD files. Playback for all files is QNAP TVS-882>SOtM modified D-Link EN switch>SOtM SMS-200 Ultra>SOtM USBultra>Esoteric K-01X, with all components synchronized to a Stanford Research Systems Perfection 10mHz rubidium clock and powered by a four-rail Paul Hynes SR7 linear power supply.

In short, the Tascam is a sleeper and a killer.


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o_holter OP
950 posts
 
Reporting from using the Tascam unmodified.Comparing my vinyl rips with Tidal. The rips are better. Comparing to sacd on an oppo player results are more equal but even here  the vinyl recordings are best.
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o_holter OP
950 posts
 
I had 250 gb of files on my Seagate wireless plus disk, recognized by Tascam OK. I transferred 50 gb more, from my pc to the disk. I reinserted the disk in the USB contact on the Tascam. Result? The disk was no longer recognized. It came up with Root and Playlist, or just garbled letters "L – L", when I pressed Browse. If I select it the Tascam hangs and must be restarted. I upgraded the firmware from 2.00 to 2.02 but it did not help. I tried a Quick format on the Tascam, but again, no help. I had to do a Full format, which went fairly quickly (20 minutes) this time.

Is the Seagate compatible with the Tascam, used as a music library, for playback? This is the second time the disk has failed, after transferring files from the pc to the disk. It could be semi compatible, and still work OK, if I had known more precisely why things go wrong.

After the full format, I copied ten LP recordings, 38 gb, to the disk (ca 6 minutes, from my pc). The Tascam read the disk (5 minutes) and played the recordings OK. My best guess is: the Tascam stops recognizing the disk (requiring a full format) , if 1) some size limit, maybe 250gb, is reached, and / or 2) too many files are copied in one batch. I don’t think there is any physical disk problem, it seems to be a FAT limit, or how this is implemented in the Tascam. Too much – too many files, whatever - and the whole disk must be reformatted.

I give it a new go, copying 20gb of files. Does Tascam recognize it? Yes, so far, no problem. Another 30gb is copied. Is OK? Yes.

Windows recognizes that the disk is 1.8TB, Tascam thinks it is ca half that size – 860 gb. So it is obvious that some limit is reached, already in the disk info. For now, with 90 gb of files, it plays OK. That is, ca 20 LPs, in double dsd format. Not too bad. But not very convenient, either. Copying 20gb of files and then make the Tascam reread the disk takes me 15 minutes.

This makes me wonder if, even if Tascam can “also” do playback, I should use it only for recording, and then get some trouble-free device able to playback dsd files from my pc hard drive (over ethernet). I use a Squeezebox Touch in that role today – with upgrade so it can do 24 / 96 pcm, and the DSDPlayer plugin. However this outputs dsd downconverted to pcm. The Tascam must use SPDIF input and the recording format must be pcm (not dsd) for it to work. And the sound is notably poorer, more congested and dull, than true dsd from a disk or card connected to the Tascam.
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