Akai DD1500 User Manual page 77

RECORDING - 11
** IMPORTANT NOTES REGARDING TRACK MONITORING DURING RECORDING **
On analogue multi-track tape recorders, we take seamless punch-in/out for granted.
However, this is much more difficult to achieve on hard disk recorders.
The DD1500 has seamless punch-in/out and to achieve this, the DD1500 plays previously
recorded material in the background so that, when you punch-out manually, the track is
ready to play back immediately with no gap at the punch-out. I.e.:
PUNCH-IN PUNCH-OUT
NEW RECORDING
PLAY MUTED PLAY
ORIGINAL RECORDING
This means that in most cases, the DD1500 will drop in and out of record pretty much like
a normal MTR. Usually, on most hard disk recorders, due to disk speed restrictions and
SCSI bandwidth, there is a gap of several seconds or more at the point of drop-out. This is
not so on the DD1500 and it is possible to punch in and out seamlessly on mono and
stereo tracks.
However, in order to achieve this, it is necessary to drop tracks because, during recording,
the track selected for recording is actually using two tracks - one for the actual recording
and the other for the muted track. The DD1500 deals with this in a way so that this should
not be much of a problem and the way this works is designed to be as transparent as
possible. When you enable a track for record, the priority for track dropping is:
FIRST TRACK(S) TO BE DROPPED - Those with no audio on them.
NEXT TRACKS TO BE DROPPED - Any tracks not selected for playback.
NEXT TRACK(S) TO BE DROPPED - Those with the least audio on them (i.e. a track with
one or two cues will be dropped before a very busy one).
In normal practice, you should find the process fairly transparent and it's only in very busy
projects with a lot of cues across all tracks that you will hear the track dropping take place.
However, when using an MO, because these are slower than hard disks, you may notice
tracks dropping. Also, when recording four tracks, there may be gap in monitoring when
you drop out of record. The actual recording will be fine - only the monitoring at the point
of punch-out will be momentarily affected.
As mentioned, though, under normal circumstances, when recording stereo or mono cues
onto either a hard disk or MO, you should not notice this.
Version 2.00 - March, 1996 Page 69