The soft whirring of hard drives is now a common characteristic of film
and video sets as production sound continues to make the transition to
hard-drive systems. In a sense, the transition to hard drives is a
collateral benefit of digital audio’s primacy as a high-definition
medium — sampling rates as high as 192 kHz have been accessible for
nearly a decade now. The hard drive simply brought high-resolution
sound to the set, where it’s been waiting for picture to catch up.
Peter Scheider, principal at New York rental house Gotham Audio, notes
that the use of dedicated hard-drive audio recorders is on the upswing,
even on budget projects, as the costs of the systems come down. "You’d
see double-system recording [audio apparatus external to the camera]
used when a production had the luxury of time, and a single system,
with audio directly into the camera, used on things like reality
shows," he says. "But hard-disk systems have gotten better, easier to
use, more portable and more affordable, so they’re used more frequently
now."
The hard-disk location recorder is as subject to Moore’s Law as any
other piece of digital gear: costs come down and capability increases.
Disk capacities are approaching 100 GB, while prices range from below
$5000 to around $14,000, depending on features.
The ability to transfer audio via DVD-R is becoming ubiquitous,
particularly among high-end systems. Glenn Sanders, president of
Zaxcom, whose Diva recorders are now on their fifth iteration, says he
expects Flash drives will become a factor in the near future as costs
for that media decline. There is already provision for that on the
six-lb. 10-track Diva 5, which lists for $12,500.
Most systems now support sampling rates up to 192 kHz, but that kind of
stratospheric resolution will rarely be used for dialog, even in
high-def. Most users find that even 48 kHz is overkill for spoken word,
which can be handled well at 32 kHz or 22.05 kHz, the lowest resolution
most of the systems will handle. Jon Tatooles, managing director at
Sound Devices, points out that sampling rate resolution is less
critical to dialog than issues such as signal-to-noise ratio. "In the
field you want as much dynamic range as possible when working in a
high-def environment," says Tatooles. Sound Devices’ three-channel 722
and four-channel 744T hard disk recorders use 40 GB 2.5-inch
notebook-type drives and each have a working flash drive port. A DVD
FireWire interface will be made available later this year.
The number of tracks in digital audio has often been a function of
allocation of available memory. But in location recorders, the need for
discernable discrete tracks is apparent. The clear trend, though, is
that the number of tracks is going up. Sound Devices’ three- and
four-track systems are daisy-chained together, running about $1000-plus per track. Fostex’s PD-6 is a six-track system whose variable
sampling rate determines recording time. Recording is to a simultaneous
combination of 8 cm DVD-RAM and DDR (dual-disk recording, where data is
recorded direct to both DVD-RAM and hard drive, making for quick
handover of the day’s audio files to the edit suite). The number of
tracks does vary widely, from two to 10, but Fostex’s Rick Cannata says
most field recordists desire a dedicated stereo pair of tracks and at
least four other individual tracks for high-def work. "Most post
systems can’t import more than four tracks at a time," he says. "And
the four-two combination fits the current surround mode we’ve had with
broadcast for some time as well as providing a pathway to full 5.1."
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