by Jerry Vigil
Even in a recession, you see it. When a $20,000 console will do the job, it's the $70,000 console that gets purchased. When an analog 8-track will do the job, it's the latest digital workstation that's selected, at several times the price. Some stations simply won't settle for second best, at anything. (Maybe that's why many of them are winners.) This drastic price swing occurs with DAT machines as well as consoles and multi-track recorders. You can buy a DAT deck for under $600, or you can get one for five figures. You can buy a new Ford Escort, or you can save up for a new Mercedes Benz. Both DAT decks will record and playback digital audio, and both cars will get you to work.
This month we take a look at one of several high-end DAT decks on the market. The Fostex D-20, together with its $800 remote control, is yours for only $9,300! The D-20 has been around for a couple of years, but there are still only a few DAT decks available that can do some of the tricks the D-20 can do.
What kind of tricks? How about a vari-speed function just like the one on your analog 2-track reel-to-reel? It's easy to understand how vari-speed works in the analog world, but the D-20 is reading ones and zeros off the tape, slowing down (or speeding up) the tape, converting the ones and zeros into audio, and changing the pitch of it, all at once! Impressive or not, this is a trick in the digital world that involves a bit more than speeding up the capstan motor. The range of the vari-speed is plus or minus ten percent, and it sounds incredibly good in either direction. Is entering the vari-speed mode any different that doing so on an analog deck? Not really. A simple key punch enters the mode and "+" and "-" keys alter the speed. Speed is adjustable in .1% increments, and the current speed is displayed on the LED readout.
What other tricks? It was especially nice to see a DAT deck capable of numbering programs beyond ninety-nine. In radio production, if you're archiving, let's say, ten-second sweepers, and you're putting them on a 120-minute tape, you'll run out of program numbers before you use up the first twenty minutes of the tape. The D-20 adds that third digit to the program number. If it weren't for the fact that start IDs need about nine seconds of tape for each ID, the D-20 could probably record up to 999 start IDs on one 120-minute DAT. However, 120 minutes divided by nine seconds is 800 start IDs, and that's the most you'll get on a DAT until lengths longer than 120 minutes are available. The unit itself won't let you record an ID number larger than 799. Still, when you're used to stopping at 99, eight hundred is several times more than enough! This figure of 800 is really theoretical. The manual suggests that nine seconds be placed between each start ID (which itself is nine seconds long). This is probably to ensure accurate program search operations. Therefore, the shortest program you could have would take up nine seconds for the start ID. Add nine more seconds after that, and you get a minimum of eighteen seconds per program. That gives you, more realistically, a maximum of 400 programs on a 120-minute DAT. Still plenty! If you master promos to DAT, and they average forty seconds each, figure on being able to get about 180 promos on one 120-minute DAT. The high numbering capability also makes DAT more feasible for storage of sound effects and other production "work parts."
Any more tricks? The punch-in/out recording on the D-20 is pretty slick! Not only is it slick, but punching in and out is just as easy to do as it is on a reel-to-reel deck. Monitor outputs on the rear panel let you hear the playback of the tape. When you're ready to punch in, press PLAY and RECORD simultaneously. You're instantly and digitally punched in. The monitor outputs switch from playback audio to input audio as you'd expect. To punch out, press PLAY. The monitor output switches back to playback. Don't forget, this is digital punch-in/out, so digital crossfading is available. The crossfade time on the D-20's punch-in/out function is 10ms. If you're the kind of producer who does a lot of punch-in/out recording of voice tracks, this is a feature you'll enjoy. The D-20 makes it possible to record those voice tracks digitally, ensuring not only smooth, clean punch-ins and punch-outs, but clean digital audio as well.
The punch-in/out recording and digital crossfading is made possible by the D-20's 4-head design. This also allows for "off-the-tape" monitoring or the ability to listen to playback as you record. The delay time between the input and the playback signal is 200ms.
For radio production, the Fostex 8320 Remote Control for the D-20 is a must. The D-20 alone does not record program numbers and start IDs, though it will read and locate them. The 8320 brings the familiar start ID, skip ID, end ID, ID search, erase, write, and renumber functions to the D-20. The 8320 also echoes the majority of the D-20's front panel controls and adds a few of its own. Both the D-20 and the remote control unit employ large, easy to read LED displays that are never cluttered with information but, instead, are switchable between various information displays by pressing the DISPLAY button.
For the experienced DAT user, most consumer model DAT decks and low-end professional decks are easy to use, right out of the box. Due to the many functions of the D-20 and its remote control, a visit to the manual is in order, even to get the hang of the D-20's transport controls. While you do get large "broadcast" transport control buttons on the D-20's front panel, you'll notice there isn't the familiar Pause button or Review/Cue buttons. The functions are there; the buttons are not. During playback, the pause mode is entered by pressing STOP. The STOP and PLAY buttons will be lit with the PLAY button flashing. This is the pause mode. Pressing PLAY resumes playback. If the unit is left in the pause mode for three minutes, it will automatically enter a full stop mode.
To enter the Review/Cue mode, press the SHIFT key then the CUE key. (The SHIFT key is much like the ALT or CTRL key of a computer keyboard in that it enables other keys to have more than one function.) Once in the Review/Cue mode, pressing REWIND or FFWD will put the D-20 in a 5X normal speed mode with the audio circuits on. Pressing SHIFT then CUE again shuts off the audio circuits. To enter full rewind or fast-forward mode (100X normal speed), press REWIND or FFWD twice.
The D-20 comes with four locate buttons: Z.LOC, LOC 1, LOC 2, and P.LOC. Z.LOC is a zero locate. P.LOC searches to the last point that the PLAY button was pressed. LOC 1 and LOC 2 are extra memory locations which can store points on the fly. (The 8320 remote control doesn't have these buttons on its panel but instead provides ten auto-locate points using the ten buttons on the numeric keypad.) The REPEAT button engages the D-20's shuttle mode which will repeat playback between points LOC 1 and LOC 2. The remote control adds programmed playback of up to 99 programs.
The locate points utilize the common Absolute Time subcode recorded by most DAT decks. We found searching and cueing with A-Time on the D-20 to be extremely accurate, to the point of possibly replacing start IDs altogether. Rather than keeping a log of program numbers and programs, the log would function just as well by recording A-Time for each program. Of course, locating one hour, twenty-seven minutes, and thirteen seconds into a DAT would require a few more keystrokes than punching in, let's say, program 24.
Other front panel controls include input LEVEL and BALANCE controls, a headphone jack and level control, a COPY GUARD switch which lets you copy protect your DAT masters, an EMPHASIS ON/OFF switch, and a SAMPLING FREQ switch switchable from 48kHz and 44.1kHz. Several of the front panel controls of the D-20 are for use with time code. Until such time that radio production studios are using time code to some significant degree, we'll spare you the details of the extensive time code support provided by machines such as the D-20.
The only shortcoming we could find in the D-20 was its inability to automatically record start IDs when sensing the first bit of audio at the inputs. Instead, start IDs are recorded as soon as the unit is placed in the record mode, or they are recorded manually. If necessary, the position of the start ID can be adjusted using the D-20's "rehearsal" function. This doesn't make the D-20 an ideal mastering machine if you plan to make a lot of dubs from DAT to cart because the position of start IDs with reference to the start of program audio will vary from program to program, thus making it difficult to know exactly when to start the cart deck. However, one could, with practice, learn to write start IDs manually after recording at just the precise location for proper cueing. Of course, if you're one of the lucky ones who have done away with carts and entered the nineties with digital cart decks and storage systems, this is probably an insignificant shortcoming; and for anyone outside the "dub to cart" world of radio production, it might mean even less. Whatever your case might be, this is a small sacrifice in exchange for vari-speed, punch-in/out recording, and considerable autolocate functions.
The back panel of the D-20 provides balanced XLR inputs and outputs and unbalanced, 1/4" phone jacks for the monitor outputs. Time code and digital ins and outs are also balanced XLRs. Also on the back panel are the external sync ins and outs, a DATA COM jack for the remote control, three dip switches, and two ACCESSORY connectors, one of which is for the Fostex Model 4030 synchronizer, the other an expansion bus. Specs include THD at 0.05% with emphasis applied, dynamic range at 90dB, frequency response at 20-20kHz, crosstalk at less than 80dB (at 1kHz), and fast wind time at 80 seconds for a 120-minute DAT. List price on the D-20 is $8,500. The 8320 Remote Control lists for $800.
A photo of the 8320 was unavailable to us, but take our word for it; the attractive remote control would look great next to your console, not to mention that the rack-mountable D-20 wouldn't hurt the looks of your equipment rack at all. The D-20 and 8320 may be a bit pricey for some, but if you like driving to work in a Mercedes, you would enjoy the D-20 as part of your arsenal.