Teac R-10

Rare DAT recorder of the "in between" kind.

Despite its reassuring looks directly inherited from the old C-1 series and despite its timeframe which marked the beginning of sizeable (consumer) sales for all manufacturers. The R-10 could be pro but isn't and that's probably why it didn't find its public.

Launched at the same time, the R-10's broadcast version, however, sold in very large numbers : Tascam DA-30.
The latter has the same drive, the same display, the same functions but no SCMS and a really broadcast set of features and terminals.

Teac/Tascam really made only three different DAT recorders and sourced all the others from, chronologically, Casio, Pioneer and I believe Sony toward the very end (and the pro segment).
The others, the originals, all use an Alpine mechanism so they are... partly original only :)


The R-10 proudly had SCMS (this was supposed to be an advantage, remember ?), non-defeatable, and all the features of a modern consumer DAT recorder :
ABS time, manual or auto ID marking (start / skip / end), ID renumber, margin display, timer switch, coaxial and optical TOS digital terminals, two a>d and two d>a converters and an IR remote control which can also dim the display's brightness in four steps.
Shiny champagne looks, too.

Added to that were two (limited) professional features inherited from the DA-30 version : XLR balanced terminals and mechanically linked L/R input level knobs.
The bal/unbal i/os however do not have the necessary level switch to flip between pro levels (+6dB) and consumer (-20dB).

The d/a section is made of two 1bit chips (Burr-Brown I believe) with 4th order filtering : no zero-cross distortion and no phase shift (in theory).
The digital filter is an 18bit NPC with 8fs oversampling ; a/d is also dual 1bit.

The chassis is solid without being that of a Sony DTC-2000ES, even if both recorders cost the same price : pressed metal, steel plates, sideburns and a damping material glued to the top plate. The feet however are made of a ceramic composite to lower external vibrations.
PCBs are double-sided and use short paths.

Build-quality-wise, the R-10 is not an R-1 : Teac only made once, in 1987, the effort Sony or Pioneer did on all of their top-end DAT recorders until 1994 and 1995, respectively.


The R-10 was redesigned to become an R-9 in 1994 - same drive with an added jog/shuttle added, as in the widely successful SV-DA series from Panasonic and Technics, and overall ugly "melted plastic icecream" looks.

By which time the original DA-30 became a DA-30mkII : an R-9 in disguise... or an R-10 in disguise !