sync

elly-d

elly-d

Member
Hi I am setting up a little set up using fostex e-16 a tascam 8 track cassette and a pc.

I would love to sync them together (mainly the 2 tapes) but I have no idea of how this works, can anyone give me any pointers? is it even possible to sync reel to reel and cassette formats?

Cheers
 
The E16 can be made to slave to another machine, yes. AFAIK most TimeLine sync units will do this and there is also Fostex' own sync unit, but I can't remember the model number. Note that must have a high-end sync unit capable of driving the Fostex - a standard MTC sync box won't do.

The cassette unit might be slaveable, depends on the model. The 238 and 688 can, other models may not. Note that cassette doesn't seem to be stable enough to achieve a solid sync - someone on this board tried to lock two 688s together, but had all kinds of phasing issues which seem to be because the cassette tape is thin enough to stretch and throw things out of whack.

With the PC, you have two options - having the PC as master or the Fostex as master. Depends what you're doing, really. MIDI sync is easy, that has the recorder as master and the PC will chase it. For that you can use just about any old sync unit that will output a MIDI Time Code. This works best if you're sequencing - if you're using the PC as a DAW you can get digital artifacts as it has to match the speed of the deck which will fluctuate slightly.
Alternatively, if you can find a suitable high-end sync box, you can get the PC to act as master and the Fostex will chase it, and you'll end up with analogue artifacts as it has to match the speed of the DAW.
You may be able to make the deck chase MTC but it's most likely that you'll have to stripe one track of the DAW with a timecode.

In all cases you will have to stripe one track of the recorder(s) with a timecode signal that the sync unit can generate for you. This generally goes on the last track (8, 16 or 24). Recorders with Dolby or DBX normally have a way to switch off noise reduction for the sync track and this is recommended.
You may also lose the adjacent track owing to crosstalk.

Hope that helps...
 
The Fostex sync box is a 4030 and there is a 4050 controller that goes along with it. That would be the most simple as far as interfacing with the E-16 since it is Fostex to Fostex, but it is designed to sync two tape machines, not interface with a DAW. The Tascam ATS-500 or MTS-1000 are setup to interface two Tascam machines. You'll need something like that to sync the two tape machines together. Understand that the Tascam boxes will work with Fostex machines and vice-versa, it is just a matter of having or making up the proper cabling which is normally a PITA. If you bring the DAW into the picture that becomes much more complex and none of those units are really setup to interface that array. I've tried it with a Tascam ES-50. While the ES-50 was a really nice unit it, again, was designed to interface two tape machines and with the ES-51 controller and additional ES-50 modules you could sync more machines together, but this was all before people were interfacing tape transports and computer-based DAWs. The problem with the ES-50 is that it has an auto-setup process to "learn" the physical characteristics of the two tape machines, but since I was interfacing a computer with a tape machine there wasn't a second transport for it to "learn"...it would error out of the auto-setup at a point of incompletion, and with the setup not complete it hadn't "learned" the tach pulses of my Tascam 58 and everytime it would lose SMPTE from the DAW (like if I jumped the DAW to a different point in the timeline) the 58 would go into runaway fast-wind. Ugh...I'm getting anxious just thinking back to that frustrating season.

Anyway, you get the picture...bring the DAW into the picture and if you are wanting to slave the tape machine to the DAW, or if you have more than two elements to the sync array, it gets complicated.

jpmorris mentioned the TimeLine products. The Micro Lynx is the shizzle of sync boxes AFAIC. Even the base unit can take two tape machines and a MIDI device (like a DAW outputting MTC) and, assuming you have the proper cabling, you can easily select what is slave and what is master between the three and its done...BAM! With an add-on card you can interface four devices. I have enjoyed slaving my Tascam BR-20T halftrack to my computer-based DAW with no more than +/- 1 subframe error for an entire reel...chase-locking on the fly is slick and quick.

I will save my arguments for why I believe slaving the tape machine is the way to go...that is debated elsewhere on this forum in several threads. :)

The most simple solution for you if you really want to try locking the E-16, the cassette machine and the DAW together would be to set the E-16 as the master, get a JL Cooper PPS-2 or something which you can find used for a very reasonable cost, and slave the DAW to the E-16, and then look for a 4030/4050 or ATS-500 to slave the cassette machine to the E-16.

If you want to forget about syncing the two tape machines the the simplest would be to slave the DAW to the tape machine with the same type of box like I mentioned above.

I hope that helps. I believe this is the way most people do it (slave the DAW). It is indeed more simple and more affordable, but as for me and my house I will slave the deck. :D
 
Yes. One thing I intended to mention was that whether the DAW or the tape machine should be master is a touchy subject. A lot will depend on how well the DSP is designed and whether it was designed to cope with it gracefully. The Fostex can work either way so it's up to you and whether you can find a compatible sync unit.
 
jpmorris said:
Yes. One thing I intended to mention was that whether the DAW or the tape machine should be master is a touchy subject. A lot will depend on how well the DSP is designed and whether it was designed to cope with it gracefully. The Fostex can work either way so it's up to you and whether you can find a compatible sync unit.
Click to expand...

Heehee...and on the flip side the tape transport equivalent of a DAW's DSP engine is the responsiveness of the transport. How well a transport chase-locks and stays locked has as much to do with the quality of the synchronizer as it does the quality and design of the transport servo array...I believe late-model Tascam machines have some of the most responsive transports and this has been supported by others with whom I have discussed the topic that are full-time professionals that have worked with many, many machines over the years. The E-series Fostex machines, IMO, are no slouches in this area. The BR-20 series from Tascam as well as the ATR60 and ATR80 machines have some of their latest servo technology on board and the match of the Micro Lynx and the BR-20 really is impressive. You can throw the TSR and MSR machines in that lot too. MS-16 for that matter as well. Never slaved the 48 and I mention above my headaches with the 58 so I never really got to take it for a relaible sync-spin...The 48 I had had such a nice gentle way of handling tape though. I have to remember that while I am a promoter of slaving the tape transport that shoe doesn't fit for everybody and much depends on the hardware you have as well as the means. I'm not afraid of any whacky cabling needs...I've been able to source the unobtanium connector more than once. Not everybody is in that camp and it is important to note that if you are slaving a tape machine to another tape machine or to a DAW chances are you are going to have to make up some wierd cable and likely it will involve research and getting pinouts from the manufacturer or some other source, etc. It can be done, but it takes time, expertise and resources.

So, again, I hope this helps you sort things out a bit.
 
gosh, now my brain hurts. ok that seems pretty comprehensive. i am only really interested in syncing the 2 tapes really (daw is for mixdown mainly) so i will look into what has been suggested here. thanks alot for the info i will post pics when the studio is done.

cheers.
 
Sorry for the brain ache.

Let's distill it down...

If you are just wanting to sync the two tape machines then you need a box that can compare the two timecode stripes on the two machines and then control the transport of one to chase after and lock to the other.

I suggest you use the E-16 as the master since that is a much more stable transport than a cassette transport. So the only connection between the E-16 and a sync box will be an audio cable carrying the SMPTE timecode stripe from track 16 to the sync box.

I'm going to assume you have a Tascam 238 as the 8-track cassette machine. Here you will ALSO have an audio cable from track 8 going to the sync box carrying the timecode stripe from tape to the sync box.

The sync box then can "listen" to both timecode streams and compare them, and then it works to match the stream from the slave deck to stay in step with the master deck. That's where the interface cable comes into play as that carries all the transport control signals.

So if you have a Tascam cassette machine it would be simplest to have a Tascam synchronizer...interfacing the two will be easier...same kind of connectors for the interface cable and so forth. May I suggest the ATS-500? It is designed to do exactly what you are aiming to do, and it is less complex than the MTS-1000 and therefore more affordable, and I believe it can operate in a code only master mode so that you only have to have that one audio cable from the master machine to the synchronizer.

Anybody use an ATS-500 and know more about this? Am I correct about my assumption?

Other ideas?
 
The ATS-500 can indeed do a code-only lock. I'm not convinced it would be able to talk directly to the Fostex via serial so that's probably the best way to do it. The ATS does require special cables though - the pinout given in the manual doesn't have the capstan control line so it doesn't work unless you use the layout given on this board somewhere. I can dig it up if need be.

First, Elly, we need to know what model the cassette deck is. Otherwise we may end up proscribing something which won't actually work ;-)
 
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