Tascam DV-D01U 1U Rack-Mountable Single Disc DVD Player

Tascam DV-D01U

What a great shame! This TASCAM DV-D01U unit potentially could have filled a gap in the market for a first class DVD-Audio & SACD player (SACD not supported on this model) if it were not for the fact that it sounds so coloured! Even compared to my now ancient Philips CD880 CD player (20years+) the sound is poor. Admittedly, I was comparing the sound on DVD-A to the same mastered recording of a Steinway piano recorded at 192kHz/24 bit Stereo using studio monitoring (BBC LS51A speakers and AKG240DF headphones) equipment. The unit is built very logically with good layout and nice large clear transport control. The display is not clear or very useful since it does not seem to show the \'tens\' e.g. 74 mins reads as 14 mins and no remaining track or overall time is accessible? An SPDIF and an iLink or USB would have been welcome.
I never checked the video side of the machine which, I dare say is good, but the below average sound is professionally not acceptable nor is the fact that there is no proper \'audio specification\' available which makes me a little suspicious that something unorthodox is happening at the higher sample rate of 192kHz, perhaps Sample Rate Conversion or some poor quality DAC. TASCAM UK have been more than helpful in trying to obtain full specs from Japan and did provide me with details of the performance at 96kHz/24 bit which are not spectacular! If you don\'t mind listening fatigue a brittle and glassy sound but want a reliable machine that hopefully is better with video reproduction then perhaps the DV-D01U will serve but sadly, I cannot use it, especially compared to the TASCAM DV-RA1000 which has such a wonderful clear warm and transparent detailed sound even compared with Pro Tools Professional gear when matching takes! Unfortunately it won’t play back DVD-Audio. This experience won\'t put me off TASCAM products entirely but lets just hope for a DV-D01U VERSION 2.