Tascam manufactures and sells a variety of guitar and vocal trainers. All of these products are similar and work in a similar manner. They all, roughly share the same strengths and weaknesses. There are at least five Tascam "trainer" products. Here is a list with a brief description of what they do:
CD GT1 -Guitar Trainer made for use with CD's only.
CD BT1 - Bass Guitar Trainer made to be used with CD's only.
MP GT1 - Guitar Trainer made for use with MP3 files only.
MP BT 1 -Bass Trainer made for use with MP3 files only.
CD VT - Voice Trainer made for use with CD's only.
Here's my two cents. I love Song Surgeon period. When I first downloaded your program I was in desperate need of a easy looping device. My Tascam CD-GT1 Mkll was not getting the job done. Whenever I slowed the guitar part down the recorder made an underwater warble sound that got in the way of learning the piece of music. Also, what I really wanted and needed was a small loop of the intro, middle and end sections of the song.
Trying to make a loop on the tascam was a real pain let alone create and save three seperate parts. Forget it. I'd rather go back to my tape recorder.
Then one night in pure desperation I went searching for a software product that my do what I needed. I thank my lucky stars that your program was at the top of my internet search. After reading all about the Song Surgeon I decided to take the plunge and I pulled the trigger on your product. Was I ever amazed. Within minutes I figured out how to loop the song I was working on. I created and saved the intro, middle solo and the outro all on seperate retriveable loops that I created. And the sound quality was much better than the Tascam. No under water warble sounds.
Oh yeah, I sold my Tascam on eBay the next day. Now I tell everyone I know about your product even my friend who purchased the new Tascam digital mp3 player. His sounded just as poor as my Tascam CD-GT1 Mk ll.
A review of the literature and customer reviews on the Internet yields an abundance of comments. After reviewing a number of these a pattern of problems begins to revealed. This is summarized below:
The sound quality is not great, but certainly good enough for practice. There is a rapid deterioration when music is slowed. The sound is described as jerky, garbled, and underwater.
The trainer units must be connected to a computer; they are supposed to be plug and play, but they can have problems booting up, they freeze up, and the on/off button is difficult to use. On a scale of 1 to 10 the average reliability factor given my customers seems to be around 5.
They do not allow the saving of loop points. So if want to practice a song again tomorrow, you must relocated and re-set the loop points.
There is a problem with them cutting off the last few notes of a song
The MP models play ONLY mp3 files. The CD models play only CD's. Moreover, the CD models will only play original disc's not disc's that you might burn yourself.
Song Surgeon is a software product price as low as $49. It is available in both a PRO and a Standard Version. The Standard Version will do everything that a Tascam unit will do at about 1/3 of the price – and with 3X the features. In addition, from a sound quality standpoint, Tascam doesn’t even come close to Song Surgeon’s distortion free audio. In addition to pitch and tempo change SS enables you to create (and save) practice loops, has EQ adjustment, a vocal reduction function, and allows the use of either CD's or ANY of he major file formats, including .wav, .mp3, .mp4, wma – and this is only compared to the Standard version.
Song Surgeon PRO run circles around Tascam, and still is less than ½ the price. Feature-wise, the comparison is stunning when you see the differences (see the table below). Song Surgeon can take the place of one or all five of the Tascam units listed at the top of this article because Song Surgeon does not limit use to a CD or particular file format or to a specific instrument. In fact, Song Surgeon is used by musicians of all stripes. While guitarists are the largest group of users, drummers, keyboard players, violinists, fiddle players, harmonica players, etc all are using Song Surgeon. Similarly the genre of music makes no difference.
The slow down the music approach to learning is extremely valuable. Both of these products help musicians do that. However, Song Surgeon is by far the better product and better value. And, in addition for practice purposes, Song Surgeon’s new sound engine features performance/recording quality, distortion-free audio with pitch and tempo change.
Download Song Surgeon’s fully function, 4-hour, FREE demo and take it for a test drive. That’s the best way for you to determine if Song Surgeon will meet your needs.
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