Tascam DR-60DMKII – Portable linear PCM Stereo Recorder for DSLR

Excellent piece of equipment. I was worried about buying something a little more complex than I was used to. I was torn between this and something simpler like a Zoom handheld recorder. I'm very happy I chose this instead. Two XLR cables with phantom power allow you to connect microphones easily and quickly to either record two tracks or one stereo track. There's a 3.5mm jack that allows you to add two more lines (channel 3 & 4 for lapel mics or wireless mics). The dials on the front allow you to control the gain very easily and there's a clear monitor that tells you the DB. On the right hand side there's a jack for headphones for direct monitoring and lines for Camera in and Camera out (if you want to make a scratch tape I believe but I don't do this and my camera doesn't have a microphone jack so I can't comment on the success of that). I use this to record audio separately and then synchronise it with the video - the SD card is on the side and is easy to take out and insert into the PC or you can connect the two via USB. Some people have criticised this for not being sturdy. I would disagree. It is a solid piece of equipment, well put together. Would it survive being dropped from a height? Probably not, but I doubt many field recorders would. This is sturdy, well designed and easy to use. It produces very high quality, broadcast-quality audio, for amateurs and professionals alike. The only flaw is the recorder eats batteries amazingly quickly. If you get this, I would recommend also buying a ANKER powerbank or something similar. The DR60 will run for less than an hour on regular rechargeable batteries - powered by a powerbank it will run for almost a working day. You can get an AC adaptor so you can plug it in the mains, but that obviously reduces the portability of the DR. Overall, it might seem a little expensive but it is well worth it. If you are interested in recording audio for video, or recording interviews this is a must-have especially for amateurs starting out.

This field sound recorder is getting on a bit now, with several new models, but it remains an excellent sound recorder and I can honestly say that I simply love this thing. Sound quality in terms of recording is excellent, with two XLR inputs and a 3.5 inch jack input and an output to your camera too. It is fairly light, but the build quality is good, with input controls for up to three mic, assuming you use all inputs available. It has phantom power, which can be turned on or off, with a failsafe check as to whether you need power for each of the mics you use, so if you aren't using condenser mics, or otherwise powered mics, you can turn it off. All mics are different, so the controls prove a wide range for gain and you can get really clean sounding recordings; I use a range of sound recorders for film making, all of which have their pros and cons, but I can't think of anything that this sound recorder does not do well or superbly - the 3.5 inch jack, possibly is not the best, but that is about it. As it stands, this is extremely good value for what it does.

This is an incredible bit of kit given the price. The functions of this tascam unit are very indepth, there are loads of youtube videos about this unit and there are many places you can do some research. I did the same but basically you can order this with confidence. I guess one of the best features I would use is the safety track, you can set it up to record a track and another 6db lower, so if your main track is over high and distorting the secondary track will be fine, you can change the settings of this to be whatever you want. As many people have found and commented on line when you adjust the levels it is digitally stepped, but I think it very rare this would ever be a problem, You can only detect this when recording a constant tone and turn the dial, the sound you hear back is stepped. But as I say in reality you would never capture this for an actual recording.. The unit will quite happily mount on a tripod with an SLR or other camera on top, I dont think many people would use it like this so much, it is possible to get very cheap plates for the tripod with 2 mounting positions on and mount the tascam on its own next to a camera. I cant comment on battery use as I haven't used it for that long, but again portable power batteries are very cheap and many users velcro one on the back of the tascam, if you are going to do this I recommend mushroom tape, its stronger than velcro. Out the box I did find it a bit complex, might just be me, but I couldn't get the headphones to work, so for any newbies like me, you have to go into the menu and turn monitor on, you can then hear the inputs through headphones whether recording or not. I think once you get to grips with it, it will be easy for you to set up, maybe a crib sheet would be good, depending how complex your setup. Some people feed the output straight into a camera and in that way you dont need to mess about in post with syncing etc, but having done it a few times myself, its not a problem. All in all there is nothing I can say negatively about this unit, its unbelievable for the price and very professional the way it handles SD cards, I had it lock up on one but you normally format a card with the unit your using which is always good practise and I hadn't.

When it comes to budget-friendly pre-amps and field recorders there are two names that tend to dominate the conversation - ZOOM and Tascam. Having used ZOOM field recorders for several years while working in radio production it should have been my first choice when it came to freelance work and personal usage, but I was never happy with the file system used by ZOOMs. So I decided to give Tascam a chance and bought a DR-60D Mk II in March of 2018. Since then it has proven to be an absolute workhorse for fieldwork. It's been dropped (more than once - I do not recommend it), suffered through blizzards, storms and blazing hot weather, and in general been so much of a reliable bit of kit that I went and bought a DR-70D as well! I've heard some people complain about it feeling plasticky and lacking in sturdiness, which are fair points but if you want something that's basically a brick with XLR and TRS inputs then expect to pay a hell of a lot more. Now there may be some complaints about audio quality but I can honestly say that most of that will be equipment-based. Like most recording devices it will pick up what you feed into it, so if your mics or cables aren't connected properly or something has a fault then it will show up on your recordings. Unfortunately for me, I worked in 2nd-line tech support for many years in a previous life so I'm a little bit OCD when it comes to fault checking and in five years of usage there have only been a handful of occasions where I couldn't definitely isolate an audio problem - and n each of those occasions the DR60-D Mk II worked perfectly fine with alternative microphones, cables and cameras. Controls on the DR60-D Mk II are surprisingly easy to grasp and it doesn't have the annoying file system of the ZOOMs. I have to admit I prefer the smooth volume and gain control offered by the knobs on the DR60-D Mk II to the stepped approach of the DR-70D. One of the biggest plus point for the DR60-D Mk II is the fact that you can run it and any attached XLR mics with phantom power from a battery bank. It also serves as a rather good pre-amp for video production, although connecting it so that your audio feeds directly into the camera can be a little fiddly. Overall I'd say that the Tascam DR60-D Mk II is a great field recorder and pre-amp and it easy holds up well against its nearest competitors.

Tascam DR-60D Mk2 - simple to use . Menu is very straightforward. It takes SD cards - 6 minutes of audio at 16bit mono - 48k sample produced a 70MB file. You can read the blurb on the Tascam website but it can take 2 XLR mic inputs and also has a 3.5mm stereo jack socket input. You can have phantom power on the xlr inputs . It takes AA batteries but you can use USB cable ( it will prompt you to select the USB as a storage device or a power supply when you attach the cable ) Shooting Video , the DSLR built in Audio wasn't great , using a mic straight into the DSLR wasn't great either. I got much better results by connecting XLR Mic to DR60Mk2 XLR Input and then connecting a 3.5mm jack to jack cable from DR60MK2 "camera out" socket to the DSLR mic in socket. Depending on the editing application you will use , you can sync the DR60DMK2 files with the DSLR audio track Im not a sound engineer , it will doubtless do 1001 other things that I don't understand or would try to use but it will record good quality audio files for me with little effort.

Ok ish , my major beef with this recorder is the gain pots , they don’t take the incoming signal down to zero. With the pots all the way down you still have signal coming in , It did rescue me once once in an interview situation, I stuck it on the on the stage with a mic plugged into it and hit record , it got me out of a jam , battery life sucks , you have to use some kind of external usb pack , Cheap and cheerful, doesn’t feel professional

I now have the original and Mark II version of the Tascam DR60D and they are excellent. Pros: The ability to phantom power an onboard shotgun mic (Rode NTG-2) whilst separately feeding a hand held mic and mixing for event filming is very useful. The slate function with feed to the camera makes syncing the DR60-D's recording in post a relative doddle - no need for hand clapping or clapper boards at the beginning of each take, and can all be done from behind the camera. Mixing between inputs is easy with proper dials, rather than menu selection. The dual track feature is ideal for filming in environments where you don't have too much control over background noise (e.g. exhibitions). Chances are one of the tracks will get what you need! Cons: It's a bit plasticky - I'd definitely prefer it if it were an aluminium casing as I don't know how its going to fare when I eventually drop it. For this reason I tend to keep it permanently attached to my tripod / rig. It's a bit of an odd shape and will take up quite a bit of space on your rig! I must have moved mine half a dozen times now and I'm still not totally happy with it!! Overall, I'm giving it 5 stars, as I don't think there's a better option out there at the moment for my needs, but I look forward to a "pro" version in the future with a more robust casing.

I got this for an event I was running to record the sound (as a backup to two other microphone recorders). We had this running from the mixer to this recorder (no problem there), though the AA batteries I put in it died completely within the span of 5-10 minutes. As I always prepare for the worst, I had two other packs of batteries with me, which they replaced with, each time they died in that time space, and therefore didn't do it's function. I will be trying to get a refund