Advice would be much appreciated...

[Tifstorey]

Hi all,

Basically im a second year student studying Sound Design at University.. I have just been given an assignment and basically im a little stuck on it.. i cant really find the answers i need on the net so im hoping some of you guys can help me out here, im not wanting you to answer the questions for me but some advice would be hugely appreciated because im.. quite honestly.. lost with all of this..

Basically i need to write a technical manual on a multi track recorder which has been made up.. the spec of the machine is as follows:

24 track, 2 inch tape based multi track recorder with built in 24 track digital hard disk recording and video sync to/from an external source and compatibility with digital cideo formats to be imported into the HD element of the machine..

Now, i can kind of explain how that works and the use of A/D D/A converters, but the next part just confuses me as ive no real experience with analogue tape based machines.

You must include explanation of the following things:

Tape transport (closed, open or zero)
Explanation of heads, choice of tape speeds, recommendation of tape type etc.
Describe the processes how sound (or voltages) are recorded to tape and digitalised
sample rates and word length (Explain how this works)
Choice of audio connections (to both recording elements) - I/O cards, fixed connections etc
Any editing features you may wish to include - both audio and video (give examples of exisiting, similar systems)

Now, im not trying to get out of my assignment here by getting the answers of you guys, this is only a small part of the assignment (Need to write 2 full manuals on hardware and software), but i would really appreciate any things you have to say about the above, especially the analogue parts.

Thanks all,

Chris

[antispatula]

well, I'm not digital or analog wizz, but sample rate is the rate at which a sample of sound is being recorded, I think. Digital recording doesn't exactly record in an unbroken linear way, it's more like it takes little samples of the sound you're recording. Why then does it sound so fluent? Because of the rate, or how many time it takes a little sample in a designated ammount of time. Cd's and cheap digi programs are at a sample rate of 44.1 kh of something like that. That means in 1 second, 44,100 samples are taken! Wow! And if you think that's crazy, they've gotten to the point where you can record up to 192,000 samples per second, I THINK.

[The Ghost of FM]

Read this. Every link on this page:

http://tascamforums.com/index.php?showforum=53

Cheers!

Edit;

There are no links as the site is dead.

So much for my 1800 posts over there.

[Herm]

Looks like the tascam forum is to be no more

By the way Jeff its good to see you back on the board.

[The Ghost of FM]

Originally Posted by Herm

Looks like the tascam forum is to be no more

By the way Jeff its good to see you back on the board.

What?!

What happened?

Oh, and thanks!

I still don't really have much time or attention span to participate like I used to but I sneak my head in every so often.

Cheers to all my analog buds!