Upgrading the old AW16G to be SILENT!

[TalismanRich]

About 20 years ago, I bought my first digital recorder, the Yamaha AW16G. It was a nice unit once you got the hang of the workflow. I used it to record several songs, and set it up at band practice a couple of times to get recordings. I recorded a middle school jazz concert. It was great. That recorder was actually in the basement when it flooded, was underwater for at least 2 hours. I rinsed everything in distilled water, and let things dry. I had to vacuum water from under the LCD screen and replace the CD drive, but it eventually came back to life. By that time, I had already bought my AW1600 for replacement, so it basically has sat since 2009, except when I dumped some practice sessions to CDRWs and put them in Reaper to play with. I got about a half dozen tunes fixed up and mixed from there.

The limitation of it is that it doesn't have USB, so backups are not easy. You have to use the CD burner. Plus it only had a 20GB hard drive, so if you did 8 channels for a few practices, it filled things up pretty quickly. There was talk on the Dijonstock forum about upgrading it to use memory cards, so a few years ago, I bought an IDE to SD card adapter, thinking this might be a fun project someday.

Anyway, today was the day. I spent about an hour getting the CD burned for the upgrade, found all the parts I needed and disassembled the AW. The stock drive is a 2.5" Hitachi Travelstar 20GB, a standard laptop drive for the day.

The replacement was a generic IDE to SD card adapter purchased from Amazon. A fresh 32GB SanDisk SDHC card was used. It was basically plug and play. Pull the HD and plug in the SD adapter. I put in the CD with the OS files, held down the proper buttons and the screen greeted me with CHECKING HDD then LOADING OPERATING SYSTEM. In short order, it was finished. I rebooted and got the Yamaha screen and it was ready for song #1. I plugged in a guitar, set up to record to track 1 from input 8 and hit record. Absolutely quiet and very fast. I renamed the song and saved the file, shut down and fired it back up just to double check. Everything is working perfectly except for the power switch. I used a switched outlet to turn if off and on..

I might keep this thing set up just for quick recording. I won't use it for anything important, but it works. I have a nephew who is learning guitar, bass and saxophone. Maybe he would like it with a pair of Behringer C2 microphones.

 

[ecc83]

I am probably being thick Rich but is there any reason you could not have just replaced the HDD with a bigger one?

Ref the C2s. Son and I have had two sets between us and one of them was noisy. Be fine on a belting singer but too noisy for classical guitar. Otherwise they are a bit of a steal but check 'em soon as they arrive!

Dave.

 

[TalismanRich]

Small IDE drives are getting scarce, an SD card is easily swapped to give new storage, solid state memory is faster than a spinning hard drive, and it doesn't make any noise. Those are 4 good reasons to convert the drive. Plus I just wanted to see if it could be done.

As for the C2s, I got them last year cheaply. I wasn't really interested in the microphones, but rather the case, mounting bar, foam covers and clips. The C2s are similar in size to my Rode M5s, which don't come with a case. All the accessories would have cost more than the C2s! I tested them, and they weren't terrible. I prefer my Rodes and AKG P170s but in a pinch I could probably tweak them to make an acceptable recording.

 

[ecc83]

Small IDE drives are getting scarce, an SD card is easily swapped to give new storage, solid state memory is faster than a spinning hard drive, and it doesn't make any noise. Those are 4 good reasons to convert the drive. Plus I just wanted to see if it could be done.

As for the C2s, I got them last year cheaply. I wasn't really interested in the microphones, but rather the case, mounting bar, foam covers and clips. The C2s are similar in size to my Rode M5s, which don't come with a case. All the accessories would have cost more than the C2s! I tested them, and they weren't terrible. I prefer my Rodes and AKG P170s but in a pinch I could probably tweak them to make an acceptable recording.

Gotcha! These are a good step up on the C2,..https://www.thomann.co.uk/lewitt_lct_040_stereo_bundle.htm?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=1581403909

I bought son a pair last year and he uses them all the time now on classical guitar. I have had a pair of AKG P 150s for ages...pretty good.

Dave.

 

[PorterhouseMusic]

Fun project. And best of all - it worked!

I had bought a kit many years ago to upgrade my Roland VS840 to a fixed hard drive (from a zip drive). And just never got around to completing the project.

Think 20GB is limiting? Try 500MB zip drives! And noisy! Anytime I used a condenser mic - the machine had to be in the other room.

Anyway - yeah - well done!

 

[Slouching Raymond]

Well done Rich! That should give it a new life.