DAT-heads Digest #190

Contents:
  re: digest #183 - fading ("john e. bogus")


From: "john e. bogus" <bogusisme@surfbest.net>
Subject: re: digest #183 - fading
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2007 19:10:42 -0500

Stan-

"BBE Sonic Maximizer (a very expensive "loudness" processor...) have long 
since go on to other less discriminating owners"
**Oh yes, I remember this item.....the competing dynamic range expanders 
from DBX were much more well-regarded, and still command a fair penny....

"I feel that the Edirol unit's are pro-sumer machines, at best."
"I've always had better results, and greater reliability over the long run 
with machines designed
for location recording in the professional world."
**Yes, you do get what you pay for in this regard with "professional" 
equipment.....but the price differential usually prices the hobbyist-class 
user out of the market.  I find your comment interesting because you have 
based your opinion on reliability rather than "transparency" or "better A / 
D converters".

"Laptop systems are clunky, and harder to power on location for longer shows 
and festivals.  More complexity = more breakdowns and failures"
**Yes, very true.....but for anyone who can solder, a beefy external battery 
can be assembled fairly cheaply.  Also, where is a laptop system inherently 
more mechanically complex than what many of us are already used to?  Really, 
you have one box that saves your data and another box that is your preamp 
and A / D converter.....aside from the mechanical reliability of the cables 
and connectors, what is really any different here than running your AD20 or 
V3 or SBM-1 into your DAT?  Obviously, you run into additional complexity 
(and thus additional opportunity for a Murphy visit) when you're talking 
about running a matrix or surround sound or multichannel sbd feeds, but 
given your basic two or four channel recordings, what would be more 
inherently unreliable about a preamp-A/D stage connected by firewire to a 
laptop?  Note that this only addresses the mechanical issues....

"Recently spent two very frustrating hours reloading software, dll drivers, 
and rebooting a friends laptop + transfer box that decided it wasn't going 
to be a functioning recorder that day..."
**And that is the downside of laptop recording....you're dealing with a 
computer, rather than what you call "fast-dumb" recorders that only do one 
thing....if I do go the laptop route for taping allowed shows, I'll carry my 
stealth rig for backup.....

"However, the SD 700 series devices replace mic preamps + phantom power 
supplies"
**Apparently a huge selling point for these units is exceptional audio 
quality from the stock A / D converters.....

"The new boxes cost more, but they offer more features and functionality."
**Yes....improving technology will always (ok, there are exceptions to 
everything) give you more for less money, especially if you account for 
inflation....

"I think it's a mistake to equate the miniature analog cassette units with 
the similar DAT units.
A better comparison would be between the mini-disc and the analog cassette."
**I would agree.  My intent was not to compare the analog D3 / D6 machines 
to the DAT units that replaced them in terms of performance....what I was 
trying to say is that when the small DAT decks replaced the small analog 
decks, the buy-in price jumped, and remained about double of what the analog 
decks cost....while yes, you did get better performance for spending more 
money (you get what you pay for), the entry-level buy-in cost for 
mass-produced current technology doubled, and it was at least several years 
before a market for used gear developed.  While nowadays the MD is to the 
DAT and new breed of digital recorders what the analog decks used to be 
(which is a lower-priced entry level alternative, with less desirable 
features and performance), there was a significant amount of time that a 
large gap existed before the stealthy MD decks appeared on the market, then 
came down to prices that were "reasonable" compared to the DAT decks.

"Too bad they never got it to roll at 88.2, as the even division of sampling 
rate when downsampling
for CDs sounds considerably better."
**An extremely interesting comment!  I've never heard anyone mention this 
point before, and it is an excellent argument for using this sampling rate 
instead of 96 khz.  After all, there will be much less difference between 
88.2 and 96 khz than there is between 44.1 and 48 khz.....and both 88.2 and 
96 khz are both considered "high resolution" (generally assuming that you 
have a 24 bit depth to go along with it).  I'm curious as to what others 
think of Stan's idea....should we be trying to promote the use of 88.2 / 
176.4 khz if using a sample rate above 48 khz?

"Taping has never been a sport for the faint of heart or the financially 
challenged...  There has always been a certain level of expertise required 
to even begin to play the game, and there is also a certain level of 
financial ability to afford the gear, and the tickets, and the travel time, 
and the beer... ;)"
**Exactly....there will always be a necessary minimum investment in money, 
time, effort, and understanding.....and one or more of those hills may be 
difficult to climb for some....it is possible to get started on taping with 
a quite modest and affordable investment in buying equipment (advancing 
technology has always made this easier).....but where this becomes a 
double-edged sword is that the learning curve grows more steep as equipment 
becomes increasingly complex - and this affects the veteran professional as 
well as the newbie who wants to tape his first show, and is trying to figure 
out what to buy.  While advancing technology has given our gear better 
performance for the same or less money, the other costs associated with 
attending a show to record it have risen quite disproportionately in 
comparision with inflation.....a ticket for an arena show cost $12.50 or 
$14.50 twenty years ago, and costs $50-60 today.....has the price of bread 
and a pound of beef quadroupled in that same time?  What about the cost of 
your drycleaner?  How about your own salary or wage?  One of the very few 
things that has risen more quickly than inflation is the price of gas to get 
to the shows, although this cost is "only" about 2 and a half times what it 
was 20 years ago....still, this is a significant bite if you're making a 
good road trip, and literally doubles the cost of getting there.  I'm 
willing to bet that there are boatloads of people who are being more choosey 
and going to fewer shows than they used to because the prices of tickets to 
big shows and the gas to get there has risen far faster than inflation (yet 
they still seem to have no problem filling the arenas)....my own personal 
solution has been to be more choosey and see far fewer of the big arena 
shows, and to instead turn more of my attention and taping efforts to 
smaller shows in the clubs....the price of club shows (including things like 
drinks and band merchandise) hasn't risen disproportionally to inflation, 
there's just as much great talent out there that can be seen in a more 
intimate setting, and there's far fewer hassles with seeing shows and taping 
in most smaller independently-owned (non-corporate) venues....not to mention 
that many of these artists playing the club circuit are vastly underrated, 
less well known than they should be, and undertaped.....

"DAT recording never really caught on with "Joe average", for much the same 
reason that DCC (digital cassette cart)never did"
**I would disagree completely.  In addition to what you say about the 
reasons for the success of the CD format, another reason the industry pushed 
this format so hard is because at the time, CD's were considered 
"uncopyable".....the introduction of CD's and them being pushed hard in the 
marketplace was the replacement for the industry's "home taping is killing 
music" campaign from a few years earlier - remember that one?  "Home taping 
is killing music" was quietly killed with the introduction of CD's.  But 
that whole industry campaign was in response to what, exactly?  You guessed 
it - the proliferation of high quality cassette decks as technology made 
them better performing and cheaper to own....the industry has always been 
against having high quality recording equipment in the hands of the 
consumer.  DCC was a failure in the marketplace because the disadvantages 
and cost outweighed any marginal benefit in performance that may have been 
perceived.....a good 3-head analog deck still gave equal or better results 
at a lower cost.  If the industry wanted to sell DAT decks as a replacement 
for the cassette, they could have easily done so....if consumers had been 
given digital outputs on their CD players, and DAT had been touted as a 
replacement for the cassette (and look!  it even records digitally in 
better-than-CD quality!) and the decks marketed alongside the CD players in 
the stores, then consumers would have bought them.....what did the industry 
do instead?  The manufacturers were pressured to adopt SCMS, and to not make 
a portable deck that recorded at 44.1 khz....the promise of digital audio 
was to be kept in the hands of "professionals", and out of the hands of 
consumers as much as possible.  As an aside, I remember reading somewhere a 
while back that the same lossy compression scheme used for MD originated 
from the one that was used for DCC....

"It wasn't until enough folks wanted to be able to record at that bit/sample 
rate level that we saw the first portable digital recorders.  Prices remain 
high on these because there isn't all that much demand.  We're a niche 
market...Pricing is more dependent on market penetration through demand than 
you'd think."
**Absolutely!  There was enough pent-up demand for DAT to be brought onto 
the market in spite of being fought by the recording industry....this demand 
came mostly from professional users (how many SV-3700's were sold to 
recording studios at the start of the 1990's?), with tapers being, as you 
say, a niche market....it wasn't necessarily tapers that portable DAT decks 
were marketed to, it was professional users in the broadcast field, etc. 
While technology makes our gear better and cheaper over time, and while 
supply and demand always govern the marketplace, it must be recognized that 
industry manipulation of the marketplace does exist.....that is why MD and 
MP3 are pushed on consumers instead of the high quality products being sold 
to our niche market - in other words, we are a niche market at least in part 
because of the efforts of the recording industry.

"Early adopters of new formats not only pay higher prices for them, but also 
run the risk of "dead-ending" - having a format replaced by a newer one."
**Yes....this is simply how the laws of supply and demand work when new 
technology is introduced to the marketplace....you will always have those 
who will pay anything to have the lastest and best....but most will wait 
until the new technology is proven and initial prices drop.  With the finite 
lifespan of the DAT format, we do not have the luxury of being able to wait 
too long, and this is upgrade a leap that many of us will make in order to 
continue to do what we enjoy....but the problem for many of us is what will 
replace our small DAT portables for stealth recording....what will solve 
this problem is the laws of supply and demand, of course - we have to let 
the manufacturers know that there is demand for what we want to buy, and 
when the right product appears at the right price, our market niche will 
respond accordingly (just like it did when the D3 and D6 casette decks, and 
later when the portable DAT decks were introduced).


So given the gear that is available now, what are our choices as a 
replacement for the Sony portable DAT decks?  From what I can tell, there 
are only two pieces of the new breed of gear that are the same size or 
smaller than the Sony portable DATs....these are M-Audio's Microtrack and 
the PDAudio from Coresound.  Referring to the websites of both companies, it 
appears that Coresound's site offers more "hard" information on the 
Microtrack than M-Audio's own website does!  The Microtrack has the 
advantages of smaller size, a plastic case (easier to go through metal 
detectors), and a price which is lower than the DAT deck it replaces.  But 
interestingly enough, Coresound claims on their website that the 
Microtrack's internal A / D converter is only capable of 16 / 48 khz, 
meaning that you need an external converter to record at a bit depth and 
sampling rate exceeding that of DAT.....as such, I would consider it a 
replacement for DAT, but would not consider it to be a real upgrade in it's 
stock configuration.....my question is if what Coresound claims is true, why 
is this same information not posted anywhere that I could find on M-Audio's 
own site?  Do they think that such things are not important to those who are 
considering buying their products?  This seems like a pretty important 
specification to me, and all that M-Audio's site says is that the Microtrack 
has "Pro-quality preamps complete with phantom power will work with your 
favorite condenser microphones virtually anywhere you need to capture 
audio-all the way up to 24-bit/96kHz."  Perhaps someone else can shed some 
light on this issue.  Although Coresound's PDAudio system is larger, has a 
metal case, and is higher priced, the system is modular, which means you can 
purchase it piece by piece....but what you gain from this flexibility, you 
would lose by having the A / D converter as a separate box.  The advantages 
of the PDAudio system include an A / D converter capable of 24 / 192 khz, 
and the future ability to record in 4 channels that is promised on 
Coresound's website (but this would almost assure that you would have to 
then replace your 2 channel A / D with the new 4 channel version).  But 
there seems to be an awful lot of soft- or firmware revision for this 
product....do they really have all the bugs out of it yet?  And since you 
have to buy a miniature computer as part of the system, what happens as this 
third-party component changes in the marketplace (gets replaced with a 
different model, goes out of production, can't get the original repaired, 
etc)?  And in trying to integrate a miniature recording system to what is 
essentially a miniature computer, wouldn't there be an increased complexity 
and steeper learning curve with a software-driven device?  The PDAudio seems 
like it would be a lot harder to use in the field, especially under stealth 
conditions.  From what I can see from the two companies' websites, the 
Microtrack seems to be more of a direct replacement for the small DAT 
decks.....but the PDAudio offers the potential for 4 channel recording.  If 
I had to buy immediately, based on the information I have, I would have to 
choose the Microtrack on the basis of being more stealthy (smaller, plastic 
case) and costing less, and upgrade for taping allowed shows by either 
buying Coresound's Mic2496 A / D converter meant for their PDAudio system, 
or by going the laptop and multichannel A / D route as I have planned.  If 
Coresound came out with their 4 channel upgrade to their PDAudio, then I 
would be extremely tempted to purchase their more expensive and clunkier 
system (look at the way those knobs stick out on the A / D converter....the 
"flat" style knobs on the small Sony products were much better for this 
application!) to be able to stealth in surround sound.  da9ve gave an 
excellent user review of the Microtrack in digest #153, and praised the 
quality of the unit's internal A / D converters.  Recently another longtime 
taper I know wrote me offlist: "bought a microtrack, but usually run the 
sbm1 ahead of it, as the A/d and mic pre on the mt is less robust than a D7. 
Ive been transfering a lot of dat to computer with it, thereby being able to 
make 16/48 dvd audios".  I would be interested in hearing what he thinks are 
the shortcomings of the Microtrack's front end, as this directly contradicts 
da9ve's observations.  I assume that to transfer a DAT, the tape's contents 
must be loaded into the Microtrack first before transferring to the 
computer.  It's excellent to hear that this particular taper is now burning 
DVD-A's, especially as he has always been one of the "convert everything to 
CD" crowd....I would love to hear what software you are using to pull a wav 
file off of the microtrack and author your DVD-A's, so it would be great if 
this taper expounded at length on what he has been doing with his upgrading. 
If the Microtrack could record 4 channels of audio at 24 / 48 khz or better, 
I would consider it an ideal replacement for my D7 and jump at the chance to 
buy one.  As this unit and the PDAudio exist on the market now, I'll 
probably buy the Microtrack if the price comes down significantly (it's 
reasonably priced now, but still not cheap enough to push me over the edge 
to jump for one immediately) or used ones start hitting the market (which 
usually happens around the same time).....and continue to keep an eye on how 
Coresound continues development of their PDAudio system.  I'm in no 
particular hurry to buy, and doubt that at this stage, not many who have a 
functioning DAT deck are in any particular hurry either....perhaps an even 
better product will hit the market in the meantime....perhaps one or both of 
these products will be improved by the manufacturer.....but in the meantime, 
it seems the Microtrack is much better than the JB3 was (those sure weren't 
on the market long....talk about "dead ending"!) at being a contender to 
replace the Sony DAT portables for stealthing.  I'd love to see some more 
user reviews of both the PDAudio (haven't seen one yet for this product) and 
the Microtrack.....hopefully both of these (and the more, the merrier, of 
course!) products competing in the marketplace will cause their respective 
manufacturers to improve and develop them further.  Aside from the 
factual-type "hard" information and specs, I'd like to hear both Len and the 
M-Audio people (and anyone else who is selling or planning to sell to our 
market niche of those about to replace our portable DATs) telling us more 
about why we should choose their product over that of the competition. 
After what I've said here, I would fully expect Len or someone else from 
Coresound to enter the discussion as they have done in the past.....this 
kind of direct dialogue between manufacturer and marketplace can only give 
us better products that they will sell more of.....the more we make it known 
what we want to buy, the more likely that those who are listening will make 
the gear and put it on the market.  With the JB3 (although it's already 
gone), Microtrack, and PDAudio being marketed as a replacement for DAT, I'm 
confident that the free market will furnish a supply for the products we 
demand, despite of the best efforts of the recording industry to keep high 
quality digital recording equipment out of the hands of consumers.

Yours Truly,
john e. bogus 



** FOR YOUR REFERENCE **

To unsubscribe from this digest, please send email to
dat-heads-unsubscribe@datheads.phish.net 

If your email address has changed, you may (optionally) 
send the message to

dat-heads-unsubscribe-oldaddress=olddomain@datheads.phish.net

and the old address will be removed.

Problems or questions about a subscription should be addressed 
via these avenues and then if needed to

dat-heads-owner@datheads.phish.net
or 
postmaster@datheads.phish.net

never the list itself

You can submit a message for inclusion in the next digest via this address:

    Internet: dat-heads@datheads.phish.net

Archives of DAT-Heads digests and related files are available on
the DAT-Heads home page:

http://www.solorb.com/dat-heads/


End of DAT-Heads Digest
******************************