by Jerry Vigil
Face it. The cart is on the way out. Digital is on the way in. Forget the fact that with digital gear you get superb quality audio, random access, editing functions, and so on. Now it's even cheaper than setting yourself up with carts and cart machines. Ask around. Chances are you won't find any sane station owner buying new analog cart machines and a thousand or so carts. And pity those who made such an investment only a couple of years ago, thinking digital was still too new and too far away. Well, a couple of years have passed, and Sony's MiniDisc format is here, not only for the consumer, but for the professional as well. It's the format Sony hopes will replace the analog cassette. It's also the format Denon and others hope will replace the cart. We recently looked at Sony's professional MD cart machines [May '94 Test Drive], and this month we take a look at the Denon DN-990R MD Cart Recorder/Player.
The MiniDisc itself is quite impressive. Measuring roughly 2½ by 2½ inches, its sturdy construction is much like that of the familiar 3½-inch computer floppy disc. The magneto-optical disc itself is not visible at all, and is only exposed once inside the machine. There are 60-minute and 74-minute versions available. This extended recording time on such a small medium is possible with the help of ATRAC data compression.
The DN-990R retains the appearance of Denon's CD players, complete with data wheel inside the concentric Single/Continuous Play mode switch, Play/Pause and Standby/Cue buttons, End Monitor, and Search buttons. In fact, side by side, the Denon CD players and MD players make a very attractive rack of gear in your digital studio -- on-air or production. The DN-990R and 980F playback only unit will rack mount three across in a 19-inch rack.
First order of business was a trip to the local record store where, next to a modest display of pre-recorded MiniDiscs, the blank discs were found. The 74-minute disc cost $16.99 -- a lot when you consider that a CD of the same length filled with your favorite music costs less. But it's not so expensive when you look at it as a 74-minute "reel" of digital tape. Well, maybe it's a little expensive when compared to a 120-minute DAT. But maybe not, when you consider that you don't get random access and editing capabilities on DAT. $16.99 is expensive compared to a couple of bucks for a blank chrome cassette or five bucks for a cart. Then again, $16.99 is the deal of the century when you realize it can replace over 70 of your 70-second carts!
The MD is inserted into the DN-990R by pushing it all the way into the slot at the top of the front panel. The machine doesn't "grab" the MD while you're pushing it in. Once inserted all the way back, the disc "drops" into place, and then the mechanism takes over. So you are able to insert the MD as slowly or quickly as you like, and the unit leaves you with the sense that it is rugged enough to endure the rough handling that can sometimes occur in this business of ours. The eject button mechanically ejects the disc, so a disc can be removed even when the power is off.
The front panel is not intimidating at all, and recording and playback is easily accomplished without even a glance at the manual. Simply plug the disc in and press Record; the red Record button lights, and the Play/Pause button flashes. Press the Play/Pause button, and you're recording! Track numbers are automatically assigned. The display toggles between elapsed time of the recording and remaining time on the disc by pressing the Display button. Left/Right LED level meters display recording level. To stop recording, press the Standby/Cue button. Recording can also be stopped by pressing the Play/Pause button which puts the unit in a Record/Pause mode.
To play back a recording, use the data wheel to select a track number. If you have a large number of tracks on a disc, pressing in on the Select knob then turning it increments the tracks in units of ten. (Up to 255 tracks can be recorded on a single disc!) It takes the unit about three seconds to locate the track and load the first portion of audio into a RAM buffer to provide "instant start" or "cue to audio." Press Play/Pause and you're in business. Want to cue to a particular point within a track? Use the Search buttons to cue just as you would on a CD player equipped with the same buttons. Want to hear just the last few seconds of the track? Press the End Monitor button.
Recording and playback doesn't get any simpler than this, but that doesn't mean the DN-990R doesn't have lots of features and options. You get the best of both worlds -- a machine that's easy to use, yet it takes advantage of the digital technology within to provide some extra functions that take the DN-990R a little beyond a simple replacement for a cart machine or cassette deck.
The DN-990R offers an End Trim function that adjusts the end point of a track. This is non-destructive editing that is useful in trimming blank space or noise that may have been recorded at the end of a track. A Divide function divides a track into two separate tracks at whatever point desired. The Combine function joins two tracks together to make them one track. And a Move function moves a track from one location to another. For example, let's say you want track 5 to be track 2. Press the Mode/Cue button to select the Edit mode, then turn the data wheel to select the Move function. Use the data wheel again to select where you want to move the current selected track. If you move track 5 to position 2, then track 2 becomes track 3, track 3 becomes track four, etc.. You also get an Erase function for erasing single tracks or all tracks on the disc. Other editing functions include track and disc naming. Text input is done using the data wheel, a process much slower than input with a keyboard (unless you can't type).
What can you do with these editing functions? If you're one step ahead of me, you realize the Divide, Combine, and Move functions are basically a form of cut and paste functions. (There is no Copy function.) But the 990R is not a digital workstation, and the cut and paste functions are not performed as quickly as they are on a workstation designed for such. So, don't expect speed from these editing functions, but you do get the luxury of having them. How useful they are depends upon your use of the 990R. If you want to record a voice track a segment at a time, the Combine function is perfect for this. Let's say you have a spot with three segments done by three different voices. Track 1 can be voice 1, track 2 voice 2, and track 3 voice 3. When each is recorded, use the Combine function to join 1 and 2. Track 3 then becomes track 2. Use the Combine function again to join the new track 1 and track 2, and all three segments are now track 1. Or, you could simply put the unit in Continuous Play mode and let the tracks playback in sequence, using the End Trim function where necessary to eliminate pauses between tracks. Let's say each voice talent didn't arrive in the order of their appearance in the spot, and you ended up with the segments out of order. The Move function fixes that. In the case of a dialogue spot where you have all of the lines from voice 1 on track 1 and all of the lines from voice 2 on track 2, you could use the Divide function to separate each line and assign it an individual track number, then use the Move function to put them in the correct order. These are things you CAN do with the 990R, but the unit was certainly not designed to compete with digital audio editors. Cut and paste on the 990R, especially on the dialogue spot just mentioned, can be time consuming.
A replacement for a digital audio editor, the DN-990R is not. However, when you consider the MiniDisc as a replacement for the cassette, some of these functions make the unit much more appealing. Imagine having a cassette of your favorite oldies, and being able to change the order in which the songs play after you have recorded them! Imagine being able to erase one song you don't like anymore without leaving a 4-minute gap in the tape! And how many cassettes have you seen that display information about the song -- title, artist, LP name, year released, anything you want -- on the cassette deck? Up to 250 characters can be assigned to each track or disc name, but the total characters per disc cannot exceed 1700.
The DN-990R also provides several "preset" functions that dictate how the machine operates. Tracks can be set to be numbered automatically when audio is detected or manually by pressing the Record button on the front panel. Tracks can also be numbered by reading the sub-codes and Start IDs from CDs and DATs when making dubs. The audio input level for the auto detect mode is adjustable from -72 to -32dB. The unit can be set to cue to the start of the track or the start of the audio on the track, and the audio detect level is adjustable from -72 to -36dB. The Play/Pause button can be set to flash at the end of a track, starting anywhere from 35 to 5 seconds before the track ends. The End Monitor button plays back the last few seconds of a track, and this is adjustable from 35 to 5 seconds. The playback pitch can be set to +2%. Other presets control remote functions, SCMS functions, display functions, and more.
After recording, the 990R writes new track information to the TOC (Table Of Contents). This takes about 3 seconds. A feature unique with the Denon unit is a Pre-UTOC function which writes TOC information to the disc during recording instead of after. This makes the recording accessible if a power failure occurs during recording. Another unique Denon feature is the ability to record "cue tones" on a track. Up to five cue signals can be recorded on a track and used as signals to start another device connected to the 990R.
The rear panel of the 990R sports balanced XLR ins and outs and XLR digital I/O (AES/EBU and EIC-958). You get a power on/off switch and headphone jack. An RS232C serial port enables control of the unit from a personal computer. A 25-pin parallel port enables remote control of recording and playback operations. The sampling frequency is 44.1kHz with a frequency response of 20-20kHz. As mentioned, the unit utilizes the ATRAC (Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding) data compression algorithm. This is a method of reducing the amount of digital information to be recorded by eliminating that information in the audio that is supposedly not audible to begin with. There is still much discussion and debate over the use and quality of the many compression algorithms in use. Some people can hear the difference between a CD and a recording of the same CD using data compression, and others cannot. I can't. (But that can be blamed on 20+ years in this biz with loud monitors in my face or headphones wrapped around my head!) THD is at 0.02%, S/N ratio is 84dB ("A" weighted), and channel separation is 80dB (maximum level, 1kHz). The DN-990R record/playback unit lists for $3,200. The DN-980F playback only unit lists for $2,400.
As a replacement for the analog cassette, the MD is very tantalizing. You don't quite get 90 minutes, but you get enough recording time. The text info scrolling across a display is pretty seductive. The editing functions are an added bonus. The discs are even smaller than a cassette. How the MiniDisc does in the battle to replace the cassette is yet to be seen. The DCC is still out there, and that format keeps people in the comfortable and familiar cassette world while still introducing digital quality. If everybody threw away all their cassette decks and tapes tomorrow and we had to decide on DCC or the MiniDisc, I'd choose the MiniDisc because of its random access and editing functions.
But the question before you and I is how the MiniDisc will do as a replacement for the cart? Should you use the MD for music? For spots? For IDs, sweepers, jingles? For everything? In the world of carts, we usually have one song or spot per cart. If we are talking about a piece of music, that's five or six minutes. The shortest MiniDisc available is 60 minutes. Is it worth $17 per song to transfer one song to one disc, and have 55 minutes of unused disc left over? If they come out with discs the same sizes as carts, at a price proportionately less than $17 for 74 minutes, then it makes more sense to have one disc for each element. On the other hand, it makes more sense to take advantage of the large amount of digital disc space available for only $17 (or whatever price you might find it for). Using the MiniDisc in this manner takes it beyond a "cart" replacement and puts it more in the arena of mass disk-based storage. What becomes very important at this level is the way tracks are maintained on each disc.
If you put all your spots on MD, it might make sense to do it this way: If you presently have 400 cart slots in the control room, replace them with eight 60-minute MDs, using the first one for commercials 1 through 50, the second for slots 51 through 100, and so on. There are no paper labels to read in this setup, so client name, intro time, outcue, etc. must all be input as part of the track name. When the track is playing, the information would scroll across the display screen. You could read the outcue and watch the timer display count back to zero.
When a commercial's expire date comes around, you would not want to erase that spot. Why? Because it would renumber all the other spots past it, decrementing them by one. You would have to maintain a list of spots and run dates, and when you needed to dub a new spot to one of the discs, you would have to first record it to the disc (making it track 51, let's say), then erase the old spot (cut 12), then perform a Move command moving track 51 to track 12. As you can see, this system could get a little hairy. Add to that the need to have the discs in the production room to do the dubbing when they need to be in the control room at the same time. This brings duplicate discs into the equation. Furthermore, if the log called to play spot 7 followed by spot 24 (which are on the same disc), you're going to have some dead air while you cue up cut 24 after 7 has played. Programmed playback is not available on the DN-990R (though it is available on consumer MD players).
Now, for things that aren't so "number" specific, the MD format is more attractive. For example, in the control room, the MD would nicely replace all the carts with jingles, IDs, sweepers, and promos. In many stations, this is well over 100 carts. The MD format can replace all those carts with one disc! As jingles, IDs, etc. are needed, they can easily be dialed up, not by number, but by track name, cued up within a couple of seconds, and ready for instant playback. Have a new promo going in? No problem, erase the old one and record the new one. As long as track numbers are not significant, the MD format is ideal for replacing carts.
The MD format could work well for music, too. The label on the outside of the MD could list contents and track numbers, or the disc could simply be inserted and scanned for titles and artist names. It doesn't make a lot of sense to transfer music from CD to MD if you have CD players in the control room, but for songs such as station edits, special mixes, oldies available only on vinyl, and things of this sort, the MD format is ideal once again.
Finally, who says the MiniDisc has to replace anything? The DN-990R is a beautiful 2-track digital recorder to have in the production room. Keep a "work disc" in the unit all the time. If you're in the middle of some heavy duty multi-track work, and someone comes in needing to record a quick voice-over, just press Record and drop the voice to the MD. You can retrieve it later for work on your multi-track when you're through with your other task. The 990R is perfect for recording multiple tags that need to go to cart. When through recording, it's a breeze to cue up to each tag as you dub it to cart. And when the 990R is not a fancy 2-track recorder, use it as a mass storage unit. Store all of your most used sound effects to disc, labeling each. Next time you need crowd noise, dial it up. No more fishing through SFX catalogues and loading up SFX CDs. Every time you go to a SFX library for an effect, record it to your MD for "next time." Do the same with often used music bedds. The MD format could also be used for mastering, but until MD is established in our studios, it might make more sense to master to a more common format, like DAT.
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