A FAVORABLE WIND

No Shave, No Sandwich

The new Digital Audio Tape standards, now that I've had a chance to think about them, have some worrisome aspects. Will the industry actually come out with both stationary-head (S-DAT) and rotary-head (R-DAT) formats? That would set digital tape back several years, while customers and manufacturers trod nervously around the possibility that they might be backing the wrong format. And if R-DAT wins, will it have the same tape-handling problems as today's most popular rotary-head systems--VCRs? With today's audio decks, tape handling is quick and easy. Punch in the mode you want, and you get it instantly; the tape stops or starts in a fraction of a second, and it takes about one second to rewind one minute's worth of tape. VCRs are sluggish by comparison. Press "Play" and it takes several seconds for the tape to wrap around the head drum and synchronize its tracks with the positions of the heads. "Fast" forward takes about 3 1/2 to 5 minutes for two hours' worth of tape, long enough for you to shave or make yourself a sandwich, but plenty boring if you're waiting for the winding to end.

Since the first R-DAT prototype I saw was at Sony's labs, back in the spring of '84, I expressed this concern to Marc Finer, Sony's product communications manager.

He says that R-DAT probably will predominate, but that its tape handling will be quicker, if anything, than that of today's Compact Cassette audio system. (This I gotta see, but probably won't be able to check until late '86 or early '87.) R-DAT's fast tape handling is due to miniature rotary-head assemblies and track-locking circuits.

Marc also told me a bit more about the DAT tech standards: All DAT machines will be able to record and play with a 48-kHz sampling rate, raising the frequency range available to well above CD's 20-kHz limit. All DAT decks will also be able to play tapes recorded at a 44.1-kHz sampling rate, but will not be able to make such tapes themselves.

Manufacturers may, if they wish, provide 32-kHz playback too.

Why all the sampling rates? The 44.1-kHz rate will allow easy production of prerecorded digital tapes from the same master tapes that are used to make CDs; DAT's inability to record at 44.1 kHz will ensure that home users won't be able to make direct digital copies of CDs.

The 32-kHz sampling rate will allow playback of prerecorded tapes made from masters originally intended for the 8mm PCM market, should there be any available.

The 48-kHz rate will allow direct dubbing from studio masters made with 48-kHz sampling. I see that as a potential security problem for studios (beware the employee who brings his pocket DAT recorder "for listening to tapes during lunch hour"), but no avenue to home piracy-home listeners have no access to studio master tapes or playback decks.

The main home uses for DAT, however, should be in dubbing existing records (including CDs, but via the analog domain) and in live taping (which few amateurs do). The fidelity should be more than high enough for either application, since the 48-kHz sampling rate allows recording of audio frequencies up to a theoretical 24 kHz (22 kHz in practice). That's more than CDs or the vast majority of microphones can deliver. It's nice to have a recording medium which is better than the material you're recording. But will people (other than audio nuts like us) be willing to spend their money for this? Time will tell.

Going for Baroque

One of the things that make life in the audio industry so enjoyable is that so many audio people are drawn to it by a love of music. Those who do make money from audio often give some of that money back to music.

The best-known example of this is probably Avery Fisher Hall, part of Lincoln Center in New York. Another recent example is the E. Nakamichi Foundation.

The Foundation was funded by Mr. Nakamichi's estate (with a bequest of Nakamichi Corporation stock now worth $20 million) "to encourage the propagation and appreciation of baroque, classical and other musical forms." To date, the Foundation has underwritten the broadcast of Music in Time, a PBS TV series about music history; a number of concert and lecture tours throughout Japan by European artists, and the dissemination of video and audio tapes of these lectures to Japanese secondary schools. Plans are underway for the E. Nakamichi Baroque Music Festival at UCLA in June 1986. The Foundation also intends to support musical competitions, concerts, and lectures in the U.S. and Japan, and to help music students from each of the two countries to study abroad.

A monument of deeds can be as worthwhile-and enduring-as a monument of stone.

Thin AES Back when I still did live recording, I relished my annual visit to the Audio Engineering Society's convention. The exhibits were full of equipment I could use, and almost afford: Two-track tape decks better than mine, handy little mixers, better microphones, noise reducers, and so on. Now, my interests and the recording industry's have diverged.

It's not just because I'm no longer actively recording-I still would, if I had the time. But the emphasis at today's AES exhibits is on equipment that's of no interest to the amateur recordist. The pro world has gone multi-track; most new tape decks and mixing consoles for pro use are therefore far more elaborate than I could possibly use (or house), even if I could afford them. Small mixers tend to be built for live-performance use, with built-in amplifiers or foldback circuits which I'd have no need for.

Only the microphones have remained what they were, the main changes being improved performance, often smaller size, and prices which seem to have just kept pace with inflation rather than skyrocketing beyond it.

Still, last fall there were some pro products which attracted me:

Studer introduced a special "QC" version of its A725 CD player, which is, in turn, a pro version of the Revox B225 (reviewed in Audio, September 1984). Near as I can tell, the standard A725 differs from the home version chiefly in having rack-mount ears and additional, balanced-line outputs. The QC version adds some digital outputs, providing access to the data stream coming from the disc, the audio data just before D/A conversion, the subcode data, and the block-error rate counter. Though it's designed for such purposes as quality control in CD plants, the unit is also ideal for audiophiles who want to compare the quality of various discs or simply to snoop among the subcodes.

The Electric Valve Editing Co-Professor (from Electric Valve Communication, here in New York) allows you to use widely available video editing equipment to edit PCM tapes made on such popular PCM converters as Sony's F-1, F-501 and F-701, the Nakamichi DMP-1000, and the Sansui X-1. (The PCM processor must be modified for use with the editing system.) Crossfade time is 8 mS, and editing accuracy varies from 16 to 33 mS, depending on your other equipment. The crossfade time compares favorably with analog-for a 45° splice on 1/4-inch tape at 15 ips, it's 17 mS But the editing accuracy is less impressive: I've shaved and even transposed edits 1/16 inch long on 15-ips tapes, equivalent to just over 4 mS. I suspect I'd find the digital system a bit coarse for really hairy work, though fine for such relatively undemanding jobs as splicing two takes together at a rest in the music.

Monster Cable showed its Prolink series of plugs and cables. These bring audiophile cable design into the pro area, where balanced lines, three-conductor XLR plugs and 1/4-inch phone plugs replace the unbalanced lines and RCA phono jacks we're used to at home. I especially liked the XLR connectors' emphasis on easy soldering and all-captive parts.

Monster's reference to "those little pieces with those silly little screws that always seem to get lost" hit home with me-between XLR plugs and phono cartridges, there was probably a quarter pound of screws in the last rug I discarded.

Not every item that piqued my interest was related to recording. For example:

Sound Ideas, of Toronto, now has a sound-effects library on CD. I've used a lot of commercial sound-effects LPs in college and Off Off Broadway shows that I've done sound for, and surface noise has always been a menace, ever ready to dispel the audience's illusion. With CD, that problem's gone. What's left is the problem of paying for it. The 3,000 effect library takes up 28 CDs and costs $1,450. That's larger than the production budget for many shows.

Two pro-equipment manufacturers have sidled towards the home market. Aphex Systems, best known for its Exciter, showed a decoder for surround video sound (though apparently not truly Dolby compatible), for SQ quadraphonic recordings, and for SQ-8, an eight channel enhancement of SQ developed by Aphex. The AVM-8000 can be set up for correct imaging with anywhere from three to eight outputs connected; there's also a subwoofer output.

EXR's Exciter, similarly named but otherwise different from Aphex's, is now being made available to manufacturers as a module for incorporation in audio components. It is claimed to add "a crystalline clarity, intelligibility and separation to an audio signal without changing its tonal quality or phase integrity." Exciting claims, those.

Since I'm also a computer buff, I was intrigued by the IED Audio Control System (from Innovative Electronic Designs of Louisville, Kentucky), which puts large stadium or institutional sound systems under the control of a Sony microcomputer.

I'd like to see something like that for home use, only far cheaper, simpler, and designed for use with any home computer; it will come, someday, but I'm not holding my breath. I was also interested to note that there is now a Broadcast and Communications area on Compuserve, a computer communications and information service.

I heard about, but did not see, a 2,500-watt amplifier called The Beast, from C Audio. It's presumably designed for large-scale (e.g., rock-concert) sound systems, but would not be as absurd as you might think for home use. I once calculated that a worst-case home system (a large, softly furnished room, in which loud music is played through very inefficient speakers) would require at least 2,000 watts per channel to ensure that no musical peak would ever be clipped by the amplifier.

(What the speakers would do with all that power is another problem.) And that was before the Compact Disc, with its higher peak-to-average level ratios.

(adapted from Audio magazine, Mar. 1986; by IVAN BERGER)

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