Even if you'd bought the Z1 it's still the same compression, the HDV spec is to blame for that. It was largely for that reason I bought this unit. HDV audio is passable but we shoot opera and the difference between the 24bit audio on DigiBeta and HDV is quite noticeble and I'm no audio geek. Hopefully with this unit we'll be able to layback decent audio in Vegas against the HDV footage. Better still we could add two extra mics from back of house to capture the full ambience of the venue for a realistic surround mix.
This is what's nice about this unit, we can take the line level feeds from the desk into two channels and our own mics into the other two.
Bob.

Farss, is there any chance you could post a short 4-track BWF recorded with this device somewhere? Just a few seconds would be fine.

I'd like to investigate what is needed to get audio from these polyphonic BWFs into Vegas 6 but so far I can't find an example file to work with.

Thanks for the review.

Mark

Farss,
You said Vegas wouldn't accept the interleaved BWF from the unit, what happens when you try? I've not recorded BWF with the unit I've got here, but will be doing so later today or tomorrow. I'm curious to know what you found, or rather didn't find.
Mark, you can download test BWF files from :
http://www.sr.se/utveckling/tu/bwf/

Not a problem, I'll just email it to you if that's OK, I guess you only need a few seconds. It's kind of late down here so it will not be until tomorrow.

Bob.

SPOT,
I've not specifically tried any interleaved 4 channel files from the unit but a few guys over in the audio forum are complaining about not being able to open 'polyphonic' bwf files in general. I'm just assuming the same thing goes with the files from this unit.
Have you been able to open any multitrack bwf files in Vegas 6?
If so the it's pretty likely the ones from this unit will work as well and someone in the audio forum has given us a bum steer.
Bob.

I've opened BWF's from the Marantz, yes. But that's it. (not including the demo ones that come from the weblink I sent Mark to. Jeffrey Fisher claims no trouble at all with them, this is presented in our Vegas 6 DVD. But I was gonna do the V6 demos for download with the R4, which is what caught me off guard from your post.

This sounds promising, I should have known not to trust those damn audio guys, my Mum warned me about them.
So tomorrow I and you will record 4 track BWFs with our Edirols and see what Vegas makes of them. We need to do this as the water goes down the plug holes the other way around down here.

Bob.

Yes, email would be fine.

I've just checked to make sure that my forum settings allow you to email me, which they originally didn't, and now they do.

Just a few seconds of a 4-track polyphonic BWF should allow me to tell if any of the tools I have here will convert the poly BWF into a set of mono BWFs that Vegas can import preserving the timestamp information.

Many thanks in advance.

Mark

Yes, the files on the Swedish Radio page you mention are the standard BWF files for test purposes and I have them of course. But they are all of the original stereo variety (which Vegas has no problem with, of course).

The files that Vegas cannot (apparently) deal with are those of the later "polyphonic" BWF type which include more than two channels of audio. These are the sort of files produced by location multitrack recorders like the Edirol, Deva, Fostex, HHB, and probably others.

Mark

Bob why is field recording of audio an "off topic" since some use
Vegas for audio only in the vegas audio forum?

Good audio on my video is always an important part.
I thought about the Edirol but went with another brand just because
it had a CD writer built-in and was very well known by a couple
audio techs locally. Very close 4 phantom mic inputs rest nonpowered.
24 channels saved. Good headroom. Says portable but need
lots of trunk space.

No need to send me this file now Farss - I've found a set of sample polyphonic BWFs on the Deva website so I've been investigating Vegas6's BWF import capacities using them.

And unfortunately it is just as it was reported in the Audio forum - V6 does not correctly import poly-BWFs. If you give it a BWF containing more than 2 channels V6 only imports the first two channels (as a stereo track) which better than nothing, but not what is really wanted.

But fortunately there is a workaround. Fostex produce a free app called BWFManager (http://www.fostexdvd.net/fxdvd_route/docs/techsup/BWFManager_V101.zip) which will take in a poly-BWF containing up to 8 channels of audio and split it into a set of mono BWFs (preserving the timestamp data) which V6 will import correctly and place at the appropriate timecode. This Fostex app won't deal with the 9- and 10-channel BWFs that the Deva can produce, but it seems to work fine with anything up to 8 tracks. And I would expect that it would handle the 4-channel BWFs from the your Edirol R4 just fine too.

Mark

Thanks for the update. So the audio guy(s) were right, damn them!
So in reality the BWF support doesn't gain us all that much as:
1) We cannot directly import a polyphonic file.
2) Vegas can use the timestamp data but not use timecode data to hold sync.
3) Vegas cannot export polyphonic BWFs either.

Not that any of this is a showstopper. As you said there's apps that can split the polyphonic files and the R4 can record dual stereo, obviously Edirol did their homework. And you can still slate the heads and tails of every shot and fix any sync issues yourself.

But, this just adds to the overheads of shooting and it means more time consumming work in post. After a full days shooting and a lot of tapes and audio files you'd better hope you had a PA logging everything. Now all the stuff is there to make your jog ever so much easier, all we need is just a tad more from Vegas and we're so much more in front, here's how.

Take your trusty PD170 and your R4, sync their time of day clocks and connect them via LANC. The file names that the R4 creates match the time of day you started recording. Camera records the same info to tape as well.

Capture your video, import your audio files, lets say 100 AVIs of video and 200 WAVs of audio. Marrying them up would be WAY easier IF Vegas gave us access to the time of day metadata from the camera tapes but (and I could be wrong) VidCap looses the metadata when we capture. If it didn't then I'd bet someone could even write a nice script to automate the whole process for us. Something like, drop clip on T/L, run script and that drops the two (or one) matching audio files onto the T/L. We'd still need to sync the thing manually but at least we're being given some help in this arduous task.

Bob.

Actually, I would like to see a 4-channel poly-BWF from the R4 after all if you could manage it - it seems there may be something strange about the BWF files the R4 produces.

I've been doing a bit more websearching and have come across suggestions that even though the R4 creates valid BWFs with up to 4 channels of audio data, for some reason it doesn't put the correct timestamp on them. I've seen a couple of places that say that the timestamp information is always just 00:00:00:00 regardless of what the time was at the start of the recording which is not very useful, to say the least, and I'd be interested in confirming whether this is really true.

It might be that this was only true of earlier R4s and has been fixed in an update, or it might still be true (or it might be completely wrong) but it would be nice to know one way or the other.

Mark

Give me a while and I'll see what I can do. One thing though, the R4 doesn't record TC from the LANC port so I don't see how it could put anything other than 0:00:00;00 in there unless it used time of day from its clock which again isn't all that helpfull as it can also use that to name the files and certainly wouldn't give you frame accuracy.
Bob.

Aside from the convenience of an all-in-one audio recording solution, are there any advantages of a portable hard disk recorder over a laptop and a FireWire or USB multichannel external pre-amp, like the Edirol FA-101 (http://www.edirol.com/products/info/fa101.html) or UA-101?

If you plan to have a laptop with you in support of your video shoot (ala DV Rack), then is it reasonable to go with an external pre-amp like this, which is considerably less expensive than a standalone recording solution?

Thanks

--Rob

It all comes down to convenience. I've used my M-Audio Firewire 410 with a laptop to record audio while I shot with a PD150, worked just fine. Issue for me was the 410 only has 2 mic inputs and it's in pretty constant use hooked up to one of my edit systems. Other thing and only a small one, the 410s line inputs are unbalanced.

Also the R4 has built in mics and even Edirol say they're not going to give you great sound (duh!), but at a pinch they'll do for interviews. Also you can throw the R4 over your shoulder, add a mic and your set to go to grab a quick interview, can't do that with a laptop and a sound card. Also bear in mind that laptops usually only have 4 pin 1394 which means you need some way to power your external box. The USB units might be able to run off the laptops USB ports but reckon on shortened battery life, particularly if you're running phantom power.

Of course if you're taking along a laptop to run DV Rack I don't quite know how things are going to workout if the video guy wants to check his video while the sound guy is trying to record audio.

But as I said at the start, its all about convenience. The sound quality is determined by the quality of the mic preamps and the A->D converters. There's portable all in one units with both good and bad just as there are sound cards / boxes. I don't get too uptight about this issue though, most locations have inherent worse signal to noise than even average mic preamps.
Bob.

I flagged it 'OT' only because it doesn't directly relate to Vegas. But hey I'm on your side, location sound, if you're going to be using it, is more important to me than image quality.

I've lost count of the number of people I've spoken to who think because you can get an image of someone talking 50 feet away the camera will also record what they're saying!

Bob.

I bought an R-4 at NAB's last day, too. From the Unitek (Pasadena, CA) booth.

So far, it's working fine. I particularly wanted it so I could record four-channel 48k/24bit sound effects.

For that reason, the four phantom powered mics-in make it a whole lot less cumbersome than a laptop/external card/preamps of some sort. You start carrying four of everything and it's a nightmare.

The 8 internal AA batteries go dead pretty fast. Unit consumes 2000 mA. Best NiMH rechargable AAs I can find are 2500 mA, so I'm good for about an hour of recording before changing batteries. Phantom powering the mics uses additional power as does the display's backlight, which can be set to shut off after preset numbers of seconds.

The hard drive is constantly spinning because it is always buffering. You can set the buffering to "Off" but the drive still spins, eating power.

By the way, the amount of buffering differs with the recording setting. For instance, when set at 44.1kHz/16bit stereo, it can buffer 29 seconds. Set at 48kHz/24bit 4-ch mono, it can only buffer 9 seconds. At 96kHz/24bit StereoX2 (two stereo tracks), it buffers only 4 seconds. Obviously, the more work it has to do, the less overhead it has to apply to prebuffering. But buffering is really handy. Recording the past is a great way not to miss that first word or musical note.

I too have no real need for onboard effects. I can do all that in post. I would trade effects for two obviously-missing features: a way to control all four inputs at once and factory supplied external battery power system, like an NP-1 battery or other bigger battery pack that is factory authorized. I can probably rig up a bunch of D cells and a plug, but it's going to be a kluge.

Probably the biggest annoyance is lack of a master gain pot.

What I really wish they would do is allow me to pull each pot out to engage a geared system that would gang pots together. That way I could gang two, three or all four and ride gain. I want to record jets coming down the runway. I want all four channels to record evenly for surround. How am I going to pot all four inputs down as the jet gets closer? Rip off the little handles and put cogged pulleys a cogged belt around the pots? A master gain would be very helpful.

WARNING ABOUT BWF:
I set the R-4 up for BWF multichannel because the manual says about recording in BWF:

"Each WAV file within a project is in BWF format. In addition to the conventional WAV data, the file contains information about the recording time, recorder (EDIROL R-4), and marker data. Of course, these files can be loaded into players or waveform editing software in the same way as conventional WAV files."

So I recorded in BWF and dropped some BWF test files onto my Vegas 5 timeline. It made a weird sound and immediately blew a speaker. Still don't know exactly what happened.

I went back to standard WAV and haven't had a problem since.

I would not recommend fooling with BWF unless you really sneak up on it and keep your amp turned down.

The R-4 can record in 96kHz 24 bit, but not four mono tracks simultaneously; only a dual stereo pair, which is okay.

I've found that recording four mono tracks simultaneously is easiest to handle in Vegas surround because they're already mono and will go onto the L, R, Ls and Rs tracks without having to split and pan the stereo signal.

One nice feature is that you can prename the files. For instance, say I want to record a 4-track F-18 jet flyby. I can rename one of eight preset names to "F-18 Flyby." When I go into record, it will create a folder named "F-18 Flyby_01.pjt" with four mono tracks inside.

Unfortunately, those four tracks inside the clearly named folder are the four wavs you will actually be importing into Vegas and they are named simply "1.wav, 2.wav, 3.wav, 4.wav."

So say you record several events. Now you have a bunch of folders with the master name "F-18 Flyby" appended with "01, 02, 03, 04, etc" representing each time you hit Record.

Inside each folder will be the same 1.wav, 2.wav, 3.wav and 4.wav files and before importing into Vegas each of those files will have to be manually renamed to:

F-18 Flyby 01.L.wav
F-18 Flyby 01.R.wav
F-18 Flyby 01.Ls.wav
F-18 Flyby 01.Rs.wav

The next folder's files will have to be renamed:

F-18 Flyby 02.L.wav
F-18 Flyby 02.R.wav
F-18 Flyby 02.Ls.wav
F-18 Flyby 02.Rs.wav and so on.

If you don't, let's just say it can get confusing.

The R-4 appears to be sensitive to motion. I would not move it at all while it's recording or playing back. It is a hard drive, after all, and ought to be on a stable surface.

Transferring files from the HD to a CF card in the internal card slot takes forever and a day. Much faster to use the USB 2.0 cable to get files into Vegas than use the card.

Overall, it's cool to have better-than-DAT in four channels and digital. Searching on a DAT tape for a particular recording is a royal pain. With the ability to rename files right on the machine, you can really keep stuff organized.

So, keep a large supply of 2300-2500 mA NiMH AA cells around and you have a really good compact field recorder for way less than a laptop and all the parts and powering headaches it would take to do the same multichannel recording.