Sunfire’s newest version of their very powerful Tru Sub Pro subwoofer just arrived. This super-compact subwoofer (it’s 11″ square) puts out an enormous amount of foundation-shaking sound. It makes the perfect companion your Event 20/20s or your Mackie HR824s.
With the release of Roland’s new VS-2480 standalone hard disc recording system Roland has seriously stepped into the mainstream of users doing pro and semi-pro work. We’ve begun to receive a number of questions about this unit. Principally, people seem to want to know the differences between this workstation and Roland’s previous offerings. This is important because it is actually quite different in some important ways from Roland’s previous VS recorders. Many more pros are picking up 2480’s and doing real production on them that ends up as the final product. For some answers and explanation about the 2480 we went to Sweetwater Sales Engineer, and resident tweakhead David Klausner. Here’s what he has to say.
The first obvious difference between the 2480 and previous VS recorders is the number of tracks and the size of the mixer. The VS-2480 can record 16 tracks in one pass, can record up to 384 virtual tracks, and plays back a full 24 tracks. The mixer section features 64 automated channels and 17 motorized faders. Additionally, there is now “drag-and-drop” style editing with a mouse (an optional ASCII keyboard may also be attached) and a VGA output to connect a computer monitor for expanded viewing. Roland has also added dual R-Bus ports for additional I/O, which can be either analog or digital formats. The 2480 also features 24 phrase pads, which can be used to trigger samples and phrases directly from the hard drive (see our Tech Tip on this feature – TTOTD 10/15/01), and a sequencer to record and automate sample playback. The ability to slave to SMPTE time code, MTC, and external word clock round out the major feature upgrades to the latest in the Roland V-Studio line.
While we’re talking about the Roland V-Studios, it might be appropriate to mention a few of the general questions people seem to have about these workstations. One of the big ones concerns the nature of virtual tracks. I tend to think of virtual tracks as “layers” within the track hierarchy.
Let’s say you have recorded 15 tracks, and now it’s time to do the vocals on track 16. You do a take and you think it was pretty good, but perhaps you can do better on another take. With virtual tracks, you don’t have to go to a new track, and you don’t have to record over the track you’ve already recorded. You can go to a virtual track, or layer, on track 16. If you liked some things about that track, but think you might have an even better one in you, you can record another take on yet another viral track on track 16. The VS-2480 will let you record 16 layers on one numbered track. Let’s say that upon listening back, you decide that you really liked the first verse from the first take, the second verse from the second take, the chorus from the third, and so on. You can now compile the parts of the takes you like into a new take, on yet another virtual track on track 16. When it comes time to mix, you can only play back one of those virtual tracks, but you have been able to record a number of alternate takes that in an analog system would have each required their own tracks.
Another cool use of the virtual tracks is to record parts with different instrumentation. You can see what a song would sound like with either a guitar or a keyboard playing the same part (or the first verse with guitar and the second with keys), or make an alternate version of a song with a different feel, like a country or metal version of a straight ahead rock tune. Using virtual tracks creatively like that can increase your creative potential exponentially.
The other big question that comes up concerns data compression. A number of the other workstation companies talk about their audio as being uncompressed, implying that the Roland system is somehow inferior in sound. There are basically two ways to write more data in a smaller space. One is known as lossy compression, and the other is known as lossless. Lossy compression, as the name implies, actually throws out data, based on various algorithms that determine what data is least likely to be missed. This type of compression can be quite good, as with the most recent compression scheme for mini disc (known as ATRAC Pro), or quite noticeable, such as with MP3‘s. The quality of the algorithm and the extent to which the data is being squeezed to fit a smaller space determine how good the resulting audio will sound.
Lossless compression, on the other hand, does not throw out any real data; it simply uses a type of shorthand to use less disc space. Digital audio is a one or zero for each frequency, at each representable volume, measured at the sampling frequency (in the case of CD’s, there are 44,100 such measurements per second). As you might imagine, most of what we are writing are zero’s. If we had a way to abbreviate a long string of zero’s, we would be able to significantly reduce the amount of disc space we need to store the information, but we would be able to fully recreate, with no loss, the original data. This is a simplified explanation of what most lossless compression schemes do.
That’s great in theory, but in the real world, how does it sound? In a word, great. We held a listening test at Sweetwater and the results were quite convincing. On most program material, most of the golden-eared crowd could not discern any difference between the data compressed tracks and the uncompressed versions. On a few types of program material, there were very subtle differences, but at least as many listeners actually preferred the sound of the compressed material. In short, there is really no reason to shy away from the Roland V-Studio based on the belief that that compressed data will sound bad. Further testimony to this is the fact that on Sting’s most recent album, the single “Desert Rose” was basically recorded at home on a VS-1680.