Originally Posted by Master Moss ➡️

Salutations Slutz,

I have been recording with Pro Tools for the last 10 years. Before that I was recording on hard disk recorders, first a Boss BR1180, then a Korg D3200. I ultimately made the switch to the DAW because of how much more advanced the editing and mix capabilities were in Pro Tools and that's where I have stayed for the past decade.

However, over the years, I have always gotten a minor twinge of the feeling that recording with your eyes on a screen with a mouse gets in the way of creating music in a way that my hard disk multi-track recorders never did. I have no love for the inelegance of a laptop, connected to an audio interface, running Pro Tools over the standalone simplicity of a hard disk recorder.


My Pro Tools hardware, an Avid Mbox 3 Pro, finally crapped out last month after transporting it a long distance and will no longer function. So, it may finally be time for me to upgrade my recording set up.

But this has left me wondering.. Should I upgrade my DAW rig or is this a golden opportunity to go back to my old way of recording and return to a multi-track recorder?

When I looked into the possibility of returning to a hard disk recorder, I was pleased to see some new and impressively featured multi-track recorders (I was expecting for there to be virtually no market left for hard disk recorders and to have to buy used, but was pleasantly surprised to be wrong about that).

The Tascam Model 24 caught my eye. It's an all in one studio, and can work as an audio interface with a regular DAW, seemingly offering the best of both worlds.

The main doubt I have about it would be this:

Are the preamp and converters of the unit going to be an insurmountable limitation to achieving pro sound?

I can use outboard preamps through the line inputs on the unit, but there is no way to bypass the converters. Based on the price of the unit and how much is packed into it, I'd expect the converters can't be that great...

Even if I can record with less effort and be more creative with a multi-track unit, am I going to end up disappointed by cloudy, less than pristine fidelity from cheap converters from this unit?

I guess what I'm really asking is, with good recording technique, can you get 'pro' results using a Tascam Model 24 or will it only be able to reach 'prosumer' sound? Is there an obvious ceiling on sound quality for this kind of unit, or is it as limitless as the engineer's skill?

If anybody has experience using this unit compared to Pro Tools, I would love to hear your thoughts. If you know of a better option for getting pro results without recording to a DAW, I would also be interested to hear those.

Thanks in advance.

MM