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All information in these pages is copyright (c) 1989-2003 by Roger Nichols. All rights reserved. Permission for personal reference only, and may not be reproduced by any method without written permission.
Finally, The New Millennium
by Roger Nichols
Zero
Well, the real Millennium is finally just around the corner. As far as I can
tell there was no year zero. Nobody started using zero as a number for something
until the advent of computers. If the first number you counted was zero, then
you could actually store something at that address. A byproduct of this counting
scheme has led me to a hotel in Key West. The hotel’s address is Zero
Duval. Right on the water. The computers at the Post Office handle the address
just fine.
Actually there are other uses for zero. My wife says that is exactly what
I am getting for Christmas. One of my favorite actors was named Zero Mostel.
Mitsubishi made the Japanese Zero. The coldest temperature in the Universe
is Absolute Zero. I asked my bartender how much Russian Vodka he had left.
He replied “Absolut, zero!”
Bits, Bits, Bits
My wife says all I do is bits. It’s 20bits this, 24bits that. I mean
what’s the floating point? Just when you thought it was safe to abandon
your trustworthy analog recorder for digital audio, the bit wars begin. It
is as bad as the ballot recounting in Palm Beach County.
I look at bits like automobiles. The nice 16bit models cruise along pretty
good, top out at the 44.1k speed limit, and get very good mileage. A tank
of bits (hard disk space) can get you through a whole album’s worth of
mixes including all of the various versions with vocals up and down.
You go to the showroom to check out the new hot rods. 24bits of power with
a top speed of 96k. You pop the extra cash for this baby and drive it home.
After a week of driving it around the block you invite your buddies over and
take it for a spin. Running at top speed with all the extra bits of power
the tank empties in 1/3 the time it did with your old machine. You didn’t
count on that extra expense, but you go out and buy extra hard disks to avoid
running out of road. Then you notice little burps every once in awhile. It
turns out that your bit pump can’t keep up with the new demand and you
have to spend more money on a hopped-up SCSI accelerator.
On your last project you only needed 57 tracks to record everything. Way under
the top end limit of the 16bit 44.1k machine. You check the page in the manual
for the 24bit 96k setup and find out that you have a maximum track capacity
of 24 tracks at 96k. There is no back seat in this hot rod. You will have
to leave some of your buddies behind. Not enough tracks.
Now you are a little wiser. You had your fun in the new speedster, and you
are looking at pictures of next year’s 192k 32bit models. You ponder
the shelf full of awards you won with your new album and wonder if it was
all worth it. Yup. Been there. Done that. You go out to the garage and pull
the bicycle off of your old 16bit beauty and dust it off. “Well,”
you think out loud, ”we’ve had some good times together. I’ve
learned a lot from this machine. The new 24bits machine is nice, but maybe
the 96k is pushing it. I could save 50% on my hard disk bill by just keeping
my foot off the (SCSI) accelerator. And I will have room for all of my buddies
on the next project.” You walk back into the house smiling.
The Migration
I’m talking about migration from 16bit to 20bit or 24bit recording. Let’s
say that you have been recording on 16bit black face ADATs for the last year,
slowly getting your first album project together. You see a good price at
your local music store on the new 20bit ADAT. You decide to upgrade to three
of the new machines.
At this point you have two choices. You can keep your project at 16bits and
work on the new machines, or you can start working at 20bits. I would opt
for the 20bit path myself. Everything you already recorded will still be 16bits,
even after transfer to 20bit tapes, but all of the new recordings will be
20bit. The overall fidelity of the final mix will be better even though all
of the tracks were not 20bit to start with.
The same principle applies when transferring from 16bit Tascam to 24bit Tascam
machines, or when transferring from 16bit or 20bit recordings into a 24bit
DAW. Make sure the destination is set up for the higher resolution. For ADAT
the tapes would be formatted to 20bit, for Tascam the tape would be formatted
24bit, and for ProTools, the session would be opened at 24bit. Place the source
tape in its machine and connect the source machine to the destination machine
digitally through the necessary cables.
If there is time code involved, then transfer the time code from the source
machine to the destination machine. If there will be more than eight tracks
of information to transfer do the transfer with the machines synchronized
to time code. There are boxes that will easily synchronize different brands
of machines. One of these may be necessary to transfer from ADAT to Tascam
or from tape to DAW. For ADAT to ADAT or Tascam to Tascam transfers absolute
time lock will be satisfactory to sync the machines. You must still connect
the time code tracks and transfer that information at the same time. When
the first eight tracks are transferred then just put in the next tape, sync
the machines and transfer the next eight tracks. After all of the tapes have
been transferred, then you are ready to record new material at the new resolution.
Word Sync
There have been quite a few inquiries on the MusicPlayer.com forum about clicks
and snaps in audio files transferred digitally into DAWs. In my experience
it is always caused by digital audio synchronization problems. This is not
time code synchronization, it is the receiving device locking to the sample
rate of the sending device.
With DAT machines it was easy. When you selected the digital input, the recording
machine locked to the digital signal coming into the digital input. When you
switched to analog input, the machine switched to its own internal clock for
sample rate reference. With most DAWs you must select the sync source separately
from the input source.
Somewhere in your software, either in the recording program itself or in a
control panel associated with the software, there is a place to select the
sync source. If you are recording via the digital input then the sync source
should be set to “digital input.” Never select “word clock”
unless you absolutely know what you are doing. Word clock falls into the expert
category of choices. If you are not sure, then select digital input as your
sync choice.
Before you can select “word clock” then you must be sure that the
sending device is synced to word clock and that the word clock source is coming
from a valid word clock source. Even with big systems with word clock cables
running everywhere you are still guaranteed a good transfer if you select
sync to digital input. Some devices have more than one digital input. Make
sure you select the input that you are actually using. If you have optical
and S/PDIF inputs, make sure that the input and sync are selected to the one
getting the digital audio.
And there you have it. Follow these simple guidelines and all of your digital
transfers will be flawless.