Portacapture X8 Locking Up Mid-Recording - will not respond to UI or physical buttons.

[quangdog]

I recorded a concert tonight, and after finishing performing, I got off stage and went to stop the recorder, only to discover it was locked up an hour and 23 mins into the show... roughly halfway in.

I had rechargeable NiMH AA batteries installed in the unit (freshly charged) and additionally had an external little USB power bank plugged into the USB port on the portacapture. I use this setup nearly every week at rehearsals with no problem, but it did do this one other time about a month ago - locking up about 25 mins into a rehearsal. When it did it that time, I could not find any way other than pulling out the USB cable and popping out the batteries to get the unit to shut down...and I lost the recording. :-(

Losing a recording of a rehearsal is one thing, but losing an entire concert ... well let's say I'm really hoping someone here has any ideas how I may be able to save this recording. I left the unit powered on with the AA batteries in it while I drove home. When I got home, I plugged it into a wall-based USB-C power supply, and removed the internal AA batteries. It is still powered on, and still mildly warm as though it may still be recording.

I use a high-quality SanDisk 256 GB SDXC card with it. I re-formatted the card after the first time this happened. I have not formatted it since then.

When I started the concert tonight, I checked and the unit reported it had more than 32 hours of available recording time on the card.

Here's a little video I shot showing the unit, how it's completely non-responsive but still powered on, etc:

Anyone have any ideas how I can a) save this recording and b) prevent this in the future?

Thank you!

 

[-mjk-]

Stupid question: In it's present state, can you connect to it with USB and see the SD card? Hopefully the show has been spread across several files. It should only be the last file (the one it's currently locked up on) that you would lose.

The problem is, the thing is locked up - man what a thrash! But, typically those handheld recorders will properly shutdown when they run out of battery. They know when it's time to close the file and shut down. I've never lost an audio file when my (another brand) handheld recorder shuts itself down when it runs out of battery. I was going to suggest that you unplug is and let it run down and close the file, but it acts like a brick at the moment and most likely will not properly shut down. Tough call.

It's very worrisome that the recorder has become unreliable. Nothing worse than not being able to trust your recording gear! As always, we suggest that everyone keep their devices updated with the latest firmware. I'm guessing you keep it updated. I would definitely report this to Tascam.

Please post a followup with the outcome. Really sorry to hear that man.

 

[quangdog]

Thanks, @-mjk- - yes, I do keep it updated to the latest firmware. I've only had this recorder for a few months - I think I picked it up from B&H back in March or April... I also thought about just leaving it running on battery power until the batteries died... but given how bricked it appears to be, I'm trying one other thing first:

The memory card said it had around 32 hrs of time left on it when I started recording the concert last night.... I assume when this thing runs out of recording time (though I've never tested this) it'll stop recording an should pop up a notice about running out of space. I've decided to leave it plugged into the wall adapter until it's been at least 32 hours from the start of the concert (tomorrow morning some time).

If it is still locked up with no change at that point, I'll probably switch it to battery power and let it run until the batteries get low and it shuts itself off... assuming the firmware is not locked up to the point it can no longer managed to even check voltage level of the batteries, etc.

I'll update with outcome as things evolve... and you can bet I'll be reaching out to Tascam about this.

 

[-mjk-]

My guess is that it's not recording anything. That's been my personal experience with lockups. But your plan is a good one as you have absolutely nothing to lose by trying it. Looking forward to hearing a good outcome.

 

[quangdog]

I wanted to come back with an update:
I left the recorder connected to USB power for well more than the 32 hours of recording time that was left on the card. It did not shut down or change state at all. I then re-inserted batteries and unplugged the USB power. It stayed powered on, still locked up. I left it that way until the batteries died a few hours later, and the unit powered off.

I pulled out the memory card and popped it into my computer. I found that the unit recorded until it locked up, but nothing after... so I have almost the first 90 minutes of a 2ish hour concert, but I lost the last half hour. Disappointing, but there's nothing I can do about it.

I contacted Tascam, and heard back a pretty basic response:

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"I would suggest trying some tests with the unit while powering it over the batteries or via a PS-P520U power supply. I would also suggest trying the unit with a different SD card. If the issue is something that can be re-produced then I would have it looked at by a service technician."

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I did do a bunch more testing, and here is what I wrote back to Tascam:

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I wanted to report back with some of my testing and findings, as I suspect there are some improvements that could be made via a firmware update that may help solve this problem.

Some quick background: I use this X8 every week to record a 3 hour long rehearsal, as well as to record concerts every few months. I use Eneloop NiMh rechargeable batteries, which generally are able to record a full rehearsal while still having some battery power left… but one time the batteries died about half way through a rehearsal (could be that I did not charge them, or I could have some older Eneloops that need to be replaced, etc). I was not thrilled the recorder stopped, but I consulted the manual and read about using an external power supply.

While I’m recording, the X8 is mounted on a tripod and is moved around the room fairly frequently. It needs to be portable, so I can’t really have it connected to an external AC power supply plugged into a wall… but I have a variety of USB power banks that are capable of delivering > 1.5A@5V, so I starting using one of those. The first time it locked up was while using this external battery bank. The second time it locked up it was also using this battery bank. I’ve done a bunch of testing just using internal batteries, and the unit functions fine - the lock up seems to only happen when connected to the USB power bank.

In doing all this testing, I’ve learned a few nuances of how this unit operates when it has external USB power vs running on batteries. Most notably, the backlight seems to draw a fair bit of current, and from the manual, I see that "The backlight always stays lit when running on USB bus power.” - and this is true, I can’t get the backlight to turn off when I have it connected to an external power bank. I *could* enable power saving mode, but then I lose phantom power on the 2 XLR inputs I use… and I need that phantom power turned on for a binaural mic that is also mounted on the same tripod.

So, I’d like to suggest the following: When the unit is running on an external USB power supply, please allow the backlight to be adjusted just like when it is running on internal batteries..there is no good reason that I can think of to force the backlight to stay on while connected to USB power. Secondly, if there were a “Power Saving With Phantom Power” mode that implements all the other power saving measures, but leaves phantom power enabled - that would be ideal.

I suspect that the sustained current draw of having both phantom power and the backlight lit while running on an external power bank was too much for the power bank and it was not able to keep up.

At any rate, thanks for getting back to me, and for now I’m going back to only using AA batteries to power the unit, and keeping a close eye on the battery level throughout recording sessions to ensure the unit has not shut down.

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I don't have my hopes up too high that they'll make any firmware changes, but if they do it'd be ideal for my specific use case.

 

[-mjk-]

Wow.... Thanks for the update. I hope they listen and implement those changes!

 

[katakis2024]

I experienced the same problem in an unattended recording a week ago. The GUI was mostly unresponsive, and I could only get it to power off by removing USB power and the batteries.

However, "WRITE TIMEOUT" was visible on the screen. This suggested an SD card failure, and that turned out to be the case.

When the card failed, the recorder locked up as OP described (or the lockup caused a permanent card failure? Seems less likely). Force restarting by removing all power sources appeared to work, but "FILE CLOSE" appeared when stopping recording. The "FILE CLOSE" error (although not the initial lockup on "WRITE TIMEOUT") is repeatable with this failed card. Recording works fine when using a replacement card in the recorder

I've imaged the SD card but was not able to recover the take with standard file recovery tools. The failed SD card claims that writes are succeeding, but read back fails. Write attempts on desktop confirm this. Quick format on desktop also fails. Even a full format failed.

I guess this may be why professional grade audio recorders and cameras support writing to two SD cards simultaneously. I still have camera and phone audio from my recording, but I'll be running a backup audio recorder in future.