I've waited years to replace my Tascam 424 MKII with something digital & portable - I'm glad I did. I passed on ZIP discs, CDRs, mini-discs; all the "new" technologies. I dreamed that some day a portable field recorder/4 track would arrive - one with stereo mics and good battery life... The DP-004 is the answer to those dreams. 1) The DP-004 records very well with the built-in microphones, but allows for remote stereo recording. The internal mic trim and level display are the perfect tools for making absolutely positive you "got that on tape." Boardroom meetings to basketball games, I've recorded them all. 2) It records all weekend on 4 AA batteries. This still amazes me, but no gears, tapes, heads, magnets, or discs means no moving parts, and minimal power consumption. Plus, digital means quick and easy. Tascam has a nice menu that makes file management a snap. 3) Records to SD cards (which are cheap and easy to find). And it multi-tracks just like the Portastudios, so most of your functions stay the same (if you are old skool like me). Cutting a demo has never been easier - you take the studio to the musician! Seriously, for the price and convenience, I would recommend this recorder to just about anyone looking for a portable, pro-audio solution. I didn't even talk about the possibilities using your home computer, but that's a review in itself.

I was looking for a portable box to carry around to record guitar ideas on songs that I am working on. I play on both electric and stell and nylon strings and sing. The machine is fabulous, I was blown away by the quality of the stereo condenser microphones available with the unit, it is not an exageration: they are better than my $400 microphone/preamp setup. It records the nylon string guitar extremely well, to the point that this is what I am using from now on; I plug a cable from my electric guitar effects box directly to the unit and that also provides excellent recorded efffects. I've also just let it run in the room while I practice with my band, a 2G card can record for hours without a problem. Fantastic little box! Very easy to turn the tracks into a WAV file -assuming you have a minimum of computer skills. Not everything is perfect: the display has no background lighting, so it can be very hard to read in some conditions; you can only record to two tracks at the time, and there is no EQ on anything, so the wav files I generated tended to have a little high freq hiss that would have been easily removed by EQ. I know Tascam needed to cut corners to keep the costs low, but at least a LOW/MID/TREB eq on the final mix would suffice. But still, I'm generating a lot more tracks now than I did because the thing is so incredibly easy to use, and I can carry from place to place. Would definitely buy it again!