The TASCAM MMR-8 is a non-linear digital replacement for the analogue or digital tape machines commonly used in recording studios and broadcast facilities and for the magnetic film dubbing machines employed in film and video post-production suites. It is capable of recording and playing back eight discrete audio tracks from one or more small computer system interface hard disk drives or other removable media.
Each TASCAM MMR-8 unit can record onto a single removable small computer system interface hard disk drive or play back from multiple small computer system interface drives of different types, and it offers both exact synchronisation and track-slipped synchronisation to industry-standard film, video and audio devices, whether those devices are mechanical tape-based or hard-drive-based.
Audio data recorded on the TASCAM MMR-8 are stored as selectable linear sixteen-bit or linear twenty-four-bit word files at sample rates of forty-eight kilohertz or forty-four point one kilohertz. Each of these sample rates may be adjusted to pull-up or pull-down levels for conversion between phase alternating line video, film and video formats, yielding a total of fourteen discrete sampling frequencies.
Analogue input and output connections are balanced at plus four decibels unloaded on twenty-five-pin D-subminiature connectors that are pin-compatible with the TASCAM DA-88, enabling use of the same cabling. The optional digital input/output expansion card provides connection to standard AES/EBU digital audio interfaces for direct digital recording and playback. This digital input/output connector uses a standard DA-88 cable to deliver four stereo AES inputs and four stereo AES outputs. Any of these digital inputs may be selected as the master sample-clock reference source, and any one of the four stereo input pairs may be routed through the on-board sample-rate converter.
The TASCAM MMR-8 will play back material created on Digidesign Pro Tools workstations or WaveFrame digital audio workstations, as well as on Open Media Framework compositions that reference Sound Designer II audio media files. To transfer a session, the hard disk drive or drives containing edited session, project or Open Media Framework files are disconnected from the workstation and hot-plugged into the MMR-8 by means of the standard internal Kingston drive carrier or via the external small computer system interface port. Once mounted by the MMR-8, individual tracks from one or more projects may be loaded as required for a mix session, and sound files in any combination of supported formats and resolutions may be played back simultaneously from one or more drives.
On initial power-up the TASCAM MMR-8 installs system default operating parameters and enters its normal operating state. In addition to these defaults, users may save up to ten custom-parameter files on the internal hard disk drive to facilitate instant reconfiguration between mix sessions. All operating parameters may be altered manually before or during a session through menu selections on the front-panel display, and optional password protection may be enabled to prevent inadvertent parameter changes.
Physically, the TASCAM MMR-8 is built around a standard Intel Pentium processor-based personal computer motherboard running an industry-standard operating system, with integral Peripheral Component Interconnect and Industry Standard Architecture expansion slots. The digital signal-processing board, synchronisation board and analogue-to-digital and digital-to-analogue converter boards plug directly into the motherboard.
A Symbios small computer system interface-two controller card handles external drive connections. A biphase-operations interface board provides four biphase inputs and one biphase output, connected to the user-interface board by ribbon cable. A replaceable lithium coin-cell battery maintains the complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor real-time clock and system configuration memory.
All analogue inputs and outputs on the TASCAM MMR-8 employ high-quality twenty-bit converters to ensure excellent audio fidelity, and all digital audio processing within the TASCAM MMR-8 is performed at twenty-four-bit resolution. The system supports a variety of audio file formats including StudioFrame, WaveFrame, Sound Designer II, Audio Interchange File Format Compressed and WAV files in either sixteen-bit or twenty-four-bit resolutions.
The front panel of the TASCAM MMR-8 offers forty-five soft-touch keys for dubber and playback functions and seven large illuminated transport control buttons for play, stop, fast forward, rewind, reverse play, record and rehearse functions, as well as an Online key to switch the unit between offline local operation and online master or slave synchronisation modes. When operating as master the TASCAM MMR-8 will drive external time-code or biphase devices; when operating as slave it can chase incoming tape-machine time code, biphase, MIDI time code or TimeLine Lynx module signals.
A two-line by twenty-character liquid-crystal display on the front panel of the TASCAM MMR-8 serves as the status and control text window, showing machine status, current time code or feet-and-frames location on the top line and system registers on the lower line, with horizontal and vertical scrolling via rotary wheel or arrow keys for setup and track loading. Forty-five peak-level light-emitting-diode meters on the front panel provide real-time monitoring of analogue input and output levels with clip-hold indicators, and an additional seventy-four status light-emitting diodes report synchronisation modes, bus control modes, sample and frame reference settings, record-format settings, transport status and input status.
All audio and synchronisation connections of the TASCAM MMR-8 are located on the rear panel. To minimise connector footprint, analogue inputs and outputs are provided on separate female twenty-five-pin D-subminiature connectors, each card-mounted and clearly labelled. The digital input/output connector is a single female twenty-five-pin D-subminiature socket carrying four stereo pairs of AES/EBU digital signals, with tracks one and two on the first stereo pair, tracks three and four on the second, and so on. Any digital input pair may be used as the sample-clock reference or routed through the internal sample-rate converter.
