by Jerry Vigil
This month's Test Drive takes a look at a piece of equipment you as a Production Director might not use very often, but you'd call it one of the most valuable pieces of equipment your department has. The Fast Trac from Henry Engineering packs the power to free up a studio that's being used to dub music to cart, therefore leaving that studio available for some serious production. The Fast Trac is basically a "one-pot" console with three inputs. With the Fast Trac, any space in your station, be it a closet, a store room, or an unused corner somewhere, can become a dub center without the need for a console and large console furniture. This dub center can also be used to dub spots to cart. So, if you're short on studios and find yourself too often having to give up your main studio for music dubbing and commercial dubs, read on. The Fast Trac could be exactly what you and your station need.
Think about it. Whether you're dubbing music or dubbing spots, you only use one playback source at a time. Therefore, only one fader or pot is needed. The Fast Trac uses a pot. If you're dubbing music, you're dubbing from a CD or a turntable. If you're dubbing spots, you're dubbing from a 2-track reel-to-reel. The Fast Trac has three inputs labeled TT/MIC, CD, and AUX. The AUX input can be used for a 2-track while the other two inputs handle your turntable and CD player. The TT/MIC input will handle a mike input using an optional mike preamp. There is a fourth input on the front panel. This input uses a ΒΌ-inch jack and overrides all other inputs when used.
There are three knobs on the front panel. The first is the BALANCE control which enables control of the left/right balance of the line output of the Fast Trac. This control can be defeated with one of the buttons on the front panel. The center knob is the LINE GAIN knob used to control the output level to the cart machines. The third knob is the MONITOR level control which controls the Fast Trac's monitor output to an amp and speakers.
Among the INPUT SELECT buttons on the left side of the Fast Trac are two oscillator buttons. One selects an internal oscillator as output for setting levels, and the other selects the oscillator frequency, either 400Hz or 10kHz.
The six buttons on the right side of the panel include three used for monitor selection: TAPE/LINE, TAPE 1/TAPE 2, and STEREO/MONO. One of up to three sources can be selected for output to the monitor speakers. With the TAPE/LINE button in the LINE position, the selected input is sent to the monitors. In the TAPE position, (assuming you have two cart machines installed) the playback of one of the two cart machines is selected, and the TAPE 1/TAPE 2 button alternates between the two cart machines. The third button is a STEREO/MONO selector which can be used, even while recording, to monitor the playback of the cart machines to confirm that you are recording and that there is no phase cancellation occurring.
Two more buttons on the right side of the panel control the output going to the cart machines. When dubbing agency tapes, it's not uncommon to occasionally receive a mono tape that is only recorded on one channel. If this is the left channel, the "L" button can be pressed to send the left input to both the left and right outputs. Likewise, the "R" button will send only the right input to both outputs. The STEREO/MONO button mentioned above can also be used to check the phase integrity of 2-track mono spots on reel. If there is a phasing problem, one channel can be selected and sent to both outputs. Pressing both the "L" and "R" buttons sums the left and right inputs and sends a mono signal to the outputs.
One last button on the right side of the panel is labeled PROC IN/OUT. The Fast Trac is a well thought out piece of gear, and the PROC IN/OUT switch demonstrates this practical design. If you add compression, reverb, EQ, or any other processing to your dubs, the processing unit or chain can be connected to the Fast Trac and enabled or bypassed with this switch.
Finally, on the far right of the front panel is a headphone jack which can eliminate the need for an external amp and speakers altogether if so desired.
So, taking up one tiny rack space, the Fast Trac effectively replaces a console used mainly for dubbing. Add a cart machine, a turntable and CD player and you have a dubbing studio in a rack. But wait! There's more! On that front panel are two more buttons labeled STOP and START. These two buttons bring us to the other half of the Fast Trac, the half a lot of people on your staff, particularly your PD and the jocks, are going to love.
The Fast Trac also automates machine control when dubbing. Pushing START will automatically start your cart machine then automatically start your CD player at the exact moment it should to provide a not-too-loose and a not-to-tight dub to cart. In the case of a dub from a turntable, the turntable will start first, then the cart machine, to compensate for the slower start-up time of a turntable. Here's how it works.
Each of the three input sources has two timing circuits for a total of six. Dedicated to each input are a "Recorder Start Delay" and an "Audio Mute Delay." The Audio Mute Delay is used to mute the audio until the exact time that the audio starts. This is most useful when dubbing from a turntable. With proper adjustments, the Audio Mute Delay can eliminate turntable noise and cue burns on records by muting audio until the exact moment the music starts. The Audio Mute Delay also acts as leader tape when dubbing from reel-to-reel.
The Recorder Start Delay is adjustable from zero to two seconds and sets the amount of time that passes from the time the START button is hit and the time the cart machine starts. When you hit the START button, audio is muted and there is a fixed half-second delay before the source machine starts. With a Recorder Start Delay adjustable from zero to two seconds, your cart machines can start as early as one-half second before the source machine, or as late as 1.5 seconds after the source machine starts. (The same times apply to the Audio Mute Delay.) After some trial and error adjust-ments, each of the six delay circuits can be set up for ideal times for each source. When using a turntable as the source, the only "manual" care that need be taken is how you cue up the record. It must be cued an exact amount of time away from the start of the audio for each dub if the timing circuits are going to function properly. This can be achieved by placing "cue marks" on the base of the turntable which indicate where the audio starts (as you're cueing) and how far back you have to turn the turntable to get the desired start-up time. One mark can be made for the "Audio Start" point, another for the "33 RPM" cue point, and a third for the "45 RPM" cue point. Similarly, when using a reel-to-reel as the source, marks should be made to indicate how far back to move the reels depending upon the tape speed in use.
All of this automatic timing stuff is great, and setting it all up is the part of the Fast Trac your engineer will love. On the back of the unit there are five 9-pin connectors and two 25-pin connectors, all of the female gender. With the Fast Trac you also get the corresponding male connectors, but, alas, there are no cables, just the connectors. Your friendly engineer gets to make the cables from scratch then wire the cart machines, turntable, CD player, and reel-to-reel to the Fast Trac so that each of the units can be started remotely by the Fast Trac. No problem. Just a few uninterrupted hours with some cables and connectors, a soldering gun, two packs of cigs and six pots of coffee.
One station that has taken advantage of the Fast Trac is KXEZ-FM in Los Angeles. We contacted RAP subscriber Phil Feser, Production Manager there, to find out how the Fast Trac is holding up. "It's great! We haven't had any problems with it at all. It takes only a few minutes to learn how to use it." Music used to be dubbed in Phil's main studio. The Fast Trac was installed in a small rack with a CD player, an ITC cart deck, and an amplifier. JBL monitors were mounted on the wall. The rack rests on a desk in what used to be a store room. How much time in the main studio has Phil gotten back? "We're adding a lot of music right now, and it has freed up our main studio an average of ten to twenty hours a week." The only negative comment Phil had for us referred to the fact that he had to use a knob to set levels instead of a fader. It's a tough life. If you're concerned that the Fast Trac might not be as clean as a nice console, rest easy. Henry Engineering didn't hold back on the specs. The frequency response is from DC to 30kHz. The noise floor is at 85dB. Distortion is less than .01% THD. Audio inputs are internally adjustable from -10dBm to +8dBm, and you get a choice of 20K ohms balanced or 10K ohms unbalanced. This will accommodate just about anything you might want to plug in to the Fast Trac. Outputs are available at +4dBm balanced (100 ohms), or -10dBm unbalanced (1K ohms). The external processor ins and outs are unbalanced as is the fourth external input on the front panel.
As mentioned, this might be one piece of gear you'll never use if you're the Production Director. You'll be busy cutting those promos and spots, and, with a Fast Trac and very little space somewhere, the tedious but necessary task of doing dubs can be moved out of "your room" and handled by someone else. Automated machine control means almost anybody can crank out dub after dub with consistent "tightness" on the carts, and your jocks and PD will love the disappearance of carts dubbed too loose or too tight. List price on the Fast Trac is a reasonable $1,195. For more information on the Fast Trac, contact Henry Engineering at (818) 355-3656 in Sierra Madre, CA.