Lexicon PCM96 A Reverb Masterclass? - Audio Media

Sound Devices| 788T
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in tenth of a millisecond increments up to 30
milliseconds.
The rotary control on the right side of the chassis
spins you through the selectable knee positions of
the high-pass filter and through the main menus.
At the bottom of the input window a block of
letters, LRABCDEF, is used to show to which
of the eight tracks that particular input is assigned.
Very easy to read. Very cool.
Track Routing And I/Os
Any input can be routed to any track.
Multiple inputs can be routed to a single
track, or any combination of tracks via four female
XLR inputs and four TA3 inputs for balanced or
unbalanced mic or line level analogue audio.
The eight digital inputs enter through a single
DE-15 (D-Sub) connector.
Each input gain pot is surrounded by an
exceptionally cool and innovative LED light
ring that glows green to indicate signal activity,
red for the approach of clipping, yellow to
indicate input limiter activity and flashing
yellow to indicate an unlocked digital input.
The green and yellow LEDs increase in intensity as the
level increases.
The six analogue and digital outputs are
parallel, so whatever goes to analogue output
1 also goes to digital output 1. On the right
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panel, there are four male TA3 active, balanced
analogue outputs, and a 3.5mm unbalanced
stereo analogue output for outputs five and six.
In addition, there are two male TA3 connectors for
digital outputs 1-4. Digital outputs five and six exit
through the DE-15 connector on the back panel.
No D-Sub cable was supplied by Sound Devices,
so I couldn’t evaluate the digital inputs. I was able
to output digitally from one of the TA3 digital outs
the AES/EBU input of a Panasonic SV-3900 DAT
machine with no problem.
The 13-segment green, orange, and red output
meters, which also operate when recording, have
non-linear resolution and are small. It took an
‘adjustment’ for me to stop looking at them so
much and pay more attention to the input lights.
The three red output LEDs fire between -3.0dBFS
to 0dBFS. I, myself, would like that to be changed
to ‘red means over’. The brightness of the LEDs are
continuously adjustable for operation for full sun
to total darkness.
Headphone amp gain is more than
sufficient and also has a peak light of
its own. Monitoring multiple inputs
and outputs with one set of stereo
headphones can be challenging.
The 788T headphone output control supports
the monitoring of each input and output, various
selections or all, regardless of input and output
routing assignments. In addition, the headphone
circuit can also decode Mid-Side inputs to LR,
and derives a stereo signal from the W, X, and Y
channels, when working with the four-channel
Soundfield B-Format.
Recording starts manually by pressing the
REC button, or from External TC-Auto Record or
External TC/cont-Auto Record. The REC button
stays red so you can quickly see that you’re still
rolling. If you’re wandering around the menus
when the director calls ‘action’, just hit the Rec
button and you’re recording. The 788T Pre-Record
Buffer can be set to record a full ten seconds
before the Record button is pushed, except when
in Record Run mode or in any of the four external
time code operation modes.
In Use
During recording, I found the additional presses
of the Record button can be programmed to
do nothing, add a cue marker to the file being
recorded, or start a new file. The 788T records
both broadcast wave and poly wave files with
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AUDIO MEDIA OCTOBER 2008