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Product Review: Fostex D-80 hard disk recorder

Review by: DanH (Dan Haas) kleronomos@aol.com

This user’s rating:

Product description:

The D80 is a rack mountable (3 space) 8 track hard disk recorder with a detachable controller with jog wheel and LED screen. The controller can be used with an extension cord up to 15 feet. The D80 uses a regular IDE 3.5 inch computer hard drive for its storage medium, and you can swap hard drives in about five minutes by turning a key, sliding out the hard drive (contained in a “clamshell” mount), opening the clamshell, inserting another disk, and then sliding the new disk in again. This can be cut down to about 30 seconds if you buy additional clamshells for your disks. Then you just turn the key, swap disks, and lock it again. (The key turns off the power as well! Nice touch) The D80 was my first recorder (never even had a 4track cassette) and it’s quite easy to use.

The D80 comes with a 850MB hard drive, good for 18 minutes of recording on 5 programs, “virtual reels.” I bought mine used, and he had already replaced it with a 2.2GIG drive, good for 40 minutes (that’s recording on all 8 tracks). I’m using Seagate hard drives and they work well.

Good features:

Cut/copy/paste editing is easy, as is auto punch in or manual punch in. The jog wheel is very cool for finding the tiniest spot on the recording. I even use it to isolate single notes in a guitar solo that I’m trying to learn, as it plays it slowly without changing the pitch. (I record the CD to two tracks, and then loop the guitar solo to play continuously, too, to practice leads… you can also do this to practice vocal harmonies and record a cover of a tune in exactly the timing of an original, using two tracks for the original, recording your parts on the other tracks, and then backing out the original from the final mix----sneaky, but effective!)

Bad features:

The manual for the D80 (and all the Fostex manuals I’ve seen) is absolutely awful. I would wager a large sum that it was written in Japanese and then translated by someone for whom English is a second language. They haven’t quite
mastered it. There are also great gaps as to how to use the machine in the real world. It seems to me that they assume that the user is already a recording engineer and knows everything already.

Particularly, in regard to archiving the song data, they leave you hanging. It’s expensive to have 10 hard drives and to keep buying more to archive your data. Thing is, I don’t want to erase the songs once they’ve been mixed down to stereo. I want to be able to archive the data in 8 track form, so I can do a different mix if I like, or add tracks later. They only cover one solution in the manual: backing up to DAT, which dumps two tracks at a time to the DAT, which you later put back on the D80 for re-mixing. I gave up and bought a Fostex D5 DAT machine (maybe that was their plan to begin with!) just to be sure I’d have what I need. It’s worked out well, both as an archive for all 8 tracks, and for mixing to stereo. “BigD” (a regular here at the Board) also has a D80 and he uses a Marantz CD recorder for both purposes (archiving and mixdown). With the low cost of blank CDs, and the durability of the medium, I think that’s an excellent way to go. I just didn’t want to hassle with compatibility problems and workarounds. You’ll have to ask him how he does it.

Tips:



SPECS:
RECORDING/PLAYBACK

Sampling Frequency 44.1
Quantization 16-bit linear
A/D Convertor 18/bit: 64xOversampling fifth order Delta-Sigma modulation
D/A Convertor 18/bit 64xOversampling fourth order Delta-Sigma modulation
Recording time Approx. 18 minutes
No. of recording tracks 8
No. of virtual reels 5
Recording Medium 3.5 inch. 850Mb hard disk (Supplied as standard)
Crossfade time 10msec
Frequency Response 20Hz - 20kHz

OPERATIONS
Shuttle speed 1,2,3,5,9,12,20 times
FF/RWD speed 5 and 32 times

INPUT/OUTPUT
Input 1-8 (RCA pin jack) >10K ohms or more (-10dBV)
Output 1-8(RCA pin jack)>10K ohms or more (-10dBV)
Data In/Out Optical (x2)
IEC Consumer Optical Std.
S/P-DIF In: To any 2 tracks
S/P-DIF Out: 1/2, 3/4, 5/6, or 7/8
Midi In / Out / Thru 5-pin DIN
Punch In/Out 1/4" jack

PHYSICAL
Dimensions 482 (w) x 148 (h) x 329 (d) mm
Weight Approx 8.2 Kgs (including Hard disk unit)
Power consumption Approx 30 Watts


Common price (new/used):

$600 U.S.A. used


Web resources / other reviews:
review of the D80: by Sweetwater Sound
Starsound review, with pics, front and rear:
Foxtex USA web site

Dan Haas, 2000