Tascam DR-10L Lav Mic Product Review
Today I wanted to do a product review on the Tascam DR-10L lav mic. I've been looking for a new lav mic for a while, since the ones I was using were from the 80's. I honestly don't know why I put up with them for so long, but when they finally broke, I figured it was time to upgrade to something, you know, maybe at least from this decade. And after a lot of research and suggestions from some trusted friends, I landed on the amazing Tascam DR-10L.
The first thing that blew me away about this lav was the sound quality. Now to get good sounding labs can cost a lot of money. So when I saw the price tag for this was $200, I had some serious doubts. However I found the audio sounded great! Not just great, but pro and I think that's partly due to the great design and quality of the stock mic that comes with the Tascam.
And my favorite part is that the windscreen is actually made out of metal and it just snaps on the end of the mic. This is great because I can't tell you how many times the little foam windscreen on other lav mics have fallen off, and I've almost lost them to the wind.
What also blew me away was in the past with other lavs, I'd struggle with picking up unwanted shirt rustling, but thanks to the metal windscreen, this guy was clean as a whistle. It runs on one double A battery, and it's super easy to replace them. I recommend you purchase several so that you have them handy so you can swap them out when the battery life dies. However, so far, this guy has had great battery life and I've found one or two batteries have lasted me in entire shoot.
But on top of that, the DR-10L also has a power saving mode that you can turn on that will automatically turn the Tascam off when it's not in use to help save batteries. So this can also stretch your battery life even more.
So the sound is great and the battery life is amazing, but there's even more cool features in the DR-10L that makes this baby worth $200 and seem like a steal. So let's get into it. So first up, it also records directly to an SD card straight in the pack, right here. And this is amazing because then you can be hands-free and wireless and not have to worry about being plugged into a receiver or anything like that.
Next, you don't have to worry about your talent accidentally bumping the record button because the record button is a slider that you have to hold up to start recording. So this prevents anyone from accidentally bumping the record button and stopping a record mid take.
Now, because it's a standalone recorder, you can't really monitor your audio while recording, though you could plug in headphones with the headphone jack and monitor that way. Maybe just do a quick check before you actually start recording. But there's also a great feature that can help with this called auto level that helps automatically level your audio so that you catch both quiet and loud audio.
And if you have a character that might be shouting in a scene, you might be worried about your audio peaking, but the Tascam DR-10L has got you covered with it's the limiter setting. By turning this on, it will help prevent your audio from peaking. But sometimes that might not always be enough, which leads me to the next amazing feature, dual recording.
With dual recording, you can record two clips of audio at the same time, one at your normal level and one at either negative six or negative 12 DBs. So if you have a character that's going to be shouting, you can set it to the aggressive negative 12 DBS, and be sure that you can capture all of their audio without it peaking. For normal recording, when I'm not expecting a character to shout but I still want the backup just in case, I like to switch it to the negative six DBs.
So I am very happy with my purchase and I plan to use this guy on many more projects in the future.And let me know what you think about this little guy in the comments. Do you think these features are lifesavers too?
Gear Featured In This Video:
➜ Tascam DR-10L Lav Mic: https://amzn.to/2Ln904d
➜ Rechargeable AA Batteries with Charger: https://amzn.to/3smVZId
➜ Micro SD Card: https://amzn.to/39tbQN0
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