Creating Without Complication – The TASCAM Portacapture X8 opens up new doors for the creative community

Tascam Portacapture X8

Musicians are a truly adaptable bunch. During the pandemic, with venues shuttered and tours canceled, scads of artists took their stage acts online and gave hunkered-down communities a bit of a respite from quarantine.

Indeed, even in non- and (hopefully) post-pandemic times, large numbers of musicians have used the connectedness of the online world to give lessons, collaborate with people across the globe, share reviews, insights and innovations and build a community beyond their own local scenes and communities.

All it really takes to get started is a decent smartphone with a decent camera; plenty of creators are producing excellent content this way. But the production firepower available to the average guitar player with an internet connection is truly incredible. Naturally, one of the companies making this firepower accessible is TASCAM.

TASCAM, of course, revolutionized the home studio. Instead of trucking on down to a local recording service and plunking down some cash for a couple hours of recording time, musicians could now fire up a PortaStudio unit whenever inspiration struck and follow their muse. Now, creators essentially have the power of a professional broadcasting studio right on their desktops and the capability of a fully outfitted film crew out in the field.

One of the newest tools TASCAM is putting in the hands of creators is the Portacapture X8 multi-track handheld recorder. If you’re familiar with TASCAM’s other handheld offerings, you will already have correctly predicted that it’s a compact, user-friendly unit that offers pro quality sound, and you’d be right. But the Portacapture X8 really cranks things up a notch by offering a versatile feature set that can adapt to and support whatever content you happen to be creating.

It features an intuitive, 3.5 inch color touch screen that will look and feel familiar to anyone with a smartphone (which is basically every nowadays, I’m pretty sure). Using it’s Launcher app, you can select the creation mode that’s right for you, whether it’s podcasting, audio capture for films, demo music, or finally starting that ASMR channel you swore you would fire up during the height of the quarantine (yup, there’s an ASMR preset!).

The Portacapture X8 has two built-in large diaphragm condenser mics that can be configured in A-B or X patterns, plus six XLR/TRS combo jacks and can handle multi-track recording from each of those inputs simultaneously. That’s a tremendous amount of power for creators of any stripe. Plus, once you get it all captured, you can go in and add studio polish on the fly with built-in compression and reverb functions. This is major boon for creators that like to fine-tune the details and produce a highly professional product and also easy enough for newer creators to take advantage of.

But one of the things that impresses this writer the most is the Bluetooth functionality. I imagine a scenario like this playing out: I’ve got an acoustic guitar and a large room (perhaps a church, auditorium or, I don’t know, Luray Caverns) and I want to take advantage of the acoustic features of that space for my tune.

Because I can control the Portacapture’s X8 Launcher app remotely via a smartphone app, I can position the X8 wherever the built-in condenser can snag the audible results I’m looking for. Then, I can position a small diaphragm mic (powered via the Portacapture X8’s available phantom power capability) in front of my acoustic to capture more string-to-string detail and clarity. All I’ve got to do is run a cable to wherever I’ve chosen to sit, based on how the guitar sounds in the space. Then, maybe I run a dynamic mic somewhere just for the heck of it.

I don’t have to sacrifice the positioning of the guitar, the built-in mics or anything else. I can just use the Bluetooth capability to start recording or tap into whatever functions I may require from the X8. Then, I can load it up into my favorite DAW via USB or I can mix it right on the Portacapture X8 itself!

If you’ve ever thought of diving into the world of online content creation or just want to make a solid long-term investment in an easy-to-use field recorder, the Portacapture X8 definitely checks both boxes. It’s loaded with more than enough capability to keep pros and full-time producers happy, which means greener creators will have a unit that can easily grow with them. At the same time it’s a nice, unfussy piece of kit that new users will find familiar and have no problem getting up to speed on. Through the capabilities of the Portacapture X8, anyone can share their creativity with the world.

Click here for more information, and enjoy the video below!

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