The Soundfield
Mike Pappas

The OTARI DTR-8S

I made my last analog remote recording in 1988. I was shlepping my Otari MTR-10 with Dolby HX Pro and modified Dolby 361 A type noise reduction units all over Northern California, and my back just couldn’t take any more of the 145 pounds that the Otari weighed in at. It was just too much. I decided to find a home for the MTR-10 and I got a Sony PCM-2500 DAT machine.

The Sony wasn’t a lightweight at 58 pounds, but it was certainly better than the Otari. Since then my trusty Sony has logged well over 2,000 hours of use and, all things considered, has been very reliable. In fact, I can only recall one instance of it needing to go in for service in 11 years!

I had started to think about adding a new DAT machine to my stable late last year. I really wanted another machine with an AES/EBU interface so I could make digital dubs in what my ears tell me is the superior digital interface format. I heard that Otari had just introduced a new low cost DAT machine called the DTR-8S and I called up Rob Grub, National Sales Manager at Otari, to see if I could get a unit for review.

About 5 days later UPS delivered me a DTR 8S. The first thing that struck me was the quality of its construction. The bottom of the unit is embossed with a honeycomb, which significantly increases the rigidity of the chassis. The next thing I noticed was that the chassis was copper-plated in many places. All in all, the unit’s construction was mighty hefty.

The more I examined the DTR-8S, the more I realized that all of my wish list had been fulfilled. AES/EBU in’s and out’s; no serial copy management system (SCMS) to prevent you from making as many copies as you like. Input monitoring, so you can listen to what is going into the machine without having to put the machine into record mode; balanced analog inputs and outputs with selectable levels of -10 dBv or +4 dBv. The Otari also has the ability to record a 60 character ID at the start of every track along with 300 and 500 times search speeds and a full function IR remote control. Wow! This machine had it all!

I figured that I would try the DTR-8S out on the next live broadcast I would do at the radio station I am engineering manager at. The Ron Miles Trio was going to be playing live during our fund raising drive, and the Otari DTR-8S was pressed into service as the machine to record our historical copy. I was planning on feeding it AES/EBU from our VIMAK AD-500 analog to digital converter for the session.

The input monitoring feature came in quite handy right off the start by letting me check input levels without having to put the machine in record. The broadcast went off without a hitch and a couple of days latter I had a chance to take a listen to the DAT. I fired up my home system for a listen.

The Otari had done a very nice job of getting this performance onto DAT. Everything that was going into the converter came right back out. I figured that my next step was to check out the on board converters to see how good of a job they could do.

The station was in need of a couple of new DAT machines and based upon my initial experience, I figured that we would get a couple of DTR-8s for the station. Since these units would be used in a myriad of applications around the station, we would get a pretty good idea of the build quality and the sound of the built in converters.

I installed a pair of DTR-8S in to our main satellite down feed system and let our mostly volunteer staff have their way with them. The response from the staff was quite positive. They liked the 500X search speed and the audio quality was significantly better than the machines they replaced. After 4 months of constant use (abuse?) we haven’t had any reliability issues, and the machines just keep humming right along.

I have logged about 300 hours on the review sample, and I it certainly has exceeded my expectations in terms of performance and reliability. If you are in the market for a high quality DAT machine with a super set of features, the Otari DTR-8S is worth checking out.

The Rape of AMEK

A long time ago a couple of English High School buddies got together and started a company to build mixing consoles. Over the years they became quite successful, and their mixing consoles started to be used in some of the top recording studios in the world. Their fame spread and in the early 80’s AKG Acoustics decided that this company, AMEK, would be a good investment for them, so they purchased 30% of the company.

AMEK continued to grow, and in the mid ‘80s they arranged a deal with Rupert Neve of Neve Console fame to come to work for them designing mixing boards, preamps, equalizer and the like. In the ‘90s AMEK produced a whole new generation of high performance mixing consoles for sound reinforcement, recording studios, and film. They had computer recall capable mixers that were priced for the project studio market. Called the Big by Langley, this product sold like hot cakes. I sold and installed one of these mixers in a project studio in Vail Colorado, and the client was tickled pink with its sound and recall capability.

While AMEK was undergoing all of this growth, major consolidations were going on in the pro audio industry. Harman International, which owns JBL, went on an acquisition binge. They sucked up DBX, AKG, UREI, Audio Digital, Orban, Soundcraft, DOD, Lexicon, and on and on. They didn’t think much about the 30% of AMEK that they got when they sucked up AKG for many years.

As competition heated up the mixing console business, Harman and its mixing console companies (including Soundcraft) were being increasingly beat out by the lean and mean AMEK. AMEK was increasing its market share at the expense of the giant monolith Harman. Last September, Harman decided that since it couldn’t compete against AMEK, they would buy up all of AMEK’s bank loans and call them in. AMEK, unable to come up with all of the cash necessary to satisfy the banks, had no choice but to fold to Harman. Nick Franks, co-founder of AMEK and CEO, was given pennies on the dollars by Harman and shown the door. Layoffs ensued, cloaked under the title of "redundancy."

Now why is this important to you? Well about 20% of most Pop and Jazz recordings made in the last 25 years were tracked, mixed and or mastered through an AMEK product. That nice lean and mean company who had the foresight to give Rupert Neve a home, is now being run by a giant monolith who has, in my opinion, a pretty poor record of keeping operations at the forefront of technology. The industry lost a highly innovative independent manufacturer to a company whose biggest contribution to the industry is making brand names like AKG into a company that sell $99 dollar microphones in Guitar Center.

As this trend toward consolidation continues, you will see less and less leading-edge technology that advances the state of the recording art. If you own most of the market, what reason do you have to be innovative? If you look carefully at that list of Harman companies you will see that a couple of them no longer exist. Harman likes to acquire firms and, in my opinion, drain the technology out of them and make them shadows of their previous selves. Audio Digital and UREI are a couple of bright firms that have been ridden into the sunset. UREI built the LA-2 compressors and 1176 limiters that have become collector’s items in the recording studio world. They haven’t had a "hit" product since their acquisition in the early ‘80s. Audio Digital used to make a really great line of digital delay lines, but they are history since their acquisition by Harman International.

Big Conglomerates are the anti-Christ of the pro audio business. They take out more than they contribute. Prices rise as acquisitions struggle to make the payments to the head corporation. Innovation tanks because there is no reason to take any risks when you own the market.

Will you see the once proud AMEK brand name on $99 guitar effects foot pedals? Only time will tell — but the future doesn’t look good.

What will they think of next?

This press release hit my Email a couple of weeks before the CES extravaganza in Vegas and I thought you might enjoy it.

From: Dan Meinwald <[email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: An invitation to Positive Feedback writers and staff

Date: Sunday, December 21, 1997 5:25 PM

Tim de Paravicini invites you to hear his statement loudspeaker, the Yoshino Grand, and an entirely new concept in tube amplifier design, the E.A.R. V20.

The Yoshino Grand loudspeaker makes an unmistakably grand statement: a six-foot tall, multi-driver monolith that is a true line source to 100Hz, with a frequency range of 18-24,000 Hz (±3dB) and 88 dB/watt sensitivity. Its line source design eliminates the floor and ceiling from the acoustic equation, and creates a complete listening experience from anywhere in the room, with no "sweet spot". The Yoshino Grand produces full dynamics without compression. It is capable of exceeding 120 dB loudness levels on a continuous basis with a high-powered amplifier, yet it can be driven easily by a single-ended amp producing 10-12 watts.

The Yoshino Grand loudspeakers will be demonstrated with the new E.A.R. V20, an amplifier unlike any other. The 24-watt-per-channel stereo integrated amplifier uses twenty 12AX7s (ten per channel) as output tubes. The 12AX7, a small-signal tube, is commonly used in low-output devices, or in the input stages of power amps, but never before in a high-end amplifier output stage. The V20 is not only unique in its use of small-signal tubes as output devices, but in its implementation of these tubes in Enhanced Triode operating mode. The V20’s Enhanced Triode Mode circuitry, its push-pull, class ‘A, zero feedback design, and de Paravicini’s own ultra-wide-bandwidth output transformers, combine to produce very low distortion, superb linearity, extended frequency response, and perfect loudspeaker coupling. The small-signal output tubes also provide extraordinary reliability at low cost.

The Yoshino Grands, the V20, and their designer will be at WCES ‘98, in Alexis Park Room 2602.

My input — or "duck and cover!"

Via Email to all on the above mailing list:

Ho boy here is a really stunning idea. Let’s take a bunch of small signal devices and try to make them into a large signal device. Lets hope that all of their problems work out or cancel out, or at least keep you guessing as to what is really wrong... At least you will be kept busy swapping tubes.

Hell if you want tube horsepower, why hasn’t any of these "bright boys" tried some of the devices we broadcasters use. I mean a 4CX5000 will run about 7500 watts all day long at 89.3 MHz. You can get a 4CX20000 to give up 30KW or so. Our transmitter runs 5,900 watts with 5900 volts of plate voltage and about 1.25 amps of plate current (80% efficiency) with a 4CX5000. How about that, instead of something really retro and IMHO dumb. If you don’t need a bunch of watts there are a raft of driver tube that will cough up a couple of hundred watts (4CX250). All this would take would be someone to think out side of the box....

On top of that we typically get about 10,000 hours of run time (at full power output) before we have to swap out one of these bad boys and then we send them out to be rebuilt. They come back and do another 10,000 hours. We can rebuild these babies indefinitely if we don’t fry them in some sort of mishap (stuff happens, like lightning blasts the tower and cooks the transmitter).

Let’s see one of these sissy amps turn in those kinds of numbers. Yes broadcast transmitters are expensive ($50K+ or so) but what the hell. I have to figure that this disaster was going to set some unsuspecting clod back a fortune anyway...

And yes I know we run class C and that it is tough to build an amplifier that runs audio and all of the other excuses, but...

Mike Pappas

Engineering Manager

KUVO 89.3

Denver Public Radio

& Senior Technical Editor

Positive Feedback Magazine

As you would expect, I got a couple of responses to this little missive. Dan’s rejoinder, and mine to him, interspersed, follow:

From: Dan Meinwald <[email protected]

OK, Mike, I get the sense you don’t like the idea of 12AX7s as output tubes.

Dan, you are correct. The 12AX7 is a small signal device as listed in the RCA tube guide. Designed for pre amplification applications, it certainly looks like the last thing you would ever use one for would be as an output device. Also unless they are hand-matching all 24 of them they are going to have to figure out how to swamp out all of the differences in gain and mu. This is not a minor project when you have 24 of the buggers.

I can’t comment on the amp yet, as I haven’t heard it. (The amp being sent for CES is out of the first production run, and there were some unforeseen delays. All reports on the pre-production amp were highly positive, though that means nothing to me, much less you.)

Instead of looking at the plethora of high power devices that are out there, they pick the wrong device and then compensate by using a lot of them. Kind of like using 100 electric razor motors to power a car...

Just FYI , re: your comments on run time... the first E.A.R. 509 Mk2 amp I acquired (100 watts mono, PL509/40KG6 output tubes, Mk3 version to be introduced next year) ran seven years with constant use before output tubes needed to be changed.

Dan, your amp ran 7 years at a whole lot less that continuous full power output. I would suggest that its tube life would be significantly reduced if it were run at full rated power continuously. Our FM transmitter runs full output at all times since we are frequency modulating the signal and 10,000 hours (about 2 years) is about normal life for the 4CX5000. If we ran it at lower power its life would be significantly greater.

Dan, thanks for the feedback. My Email was intended to stimulate discussion on why people do the things they do, which it appears to have done.

Mike Pappas

From: Bob Sireno, [email protected]

Mike:

Thanks for the very interesting insight into broadcasting tubes and how puny our every day tubes seem by comparison. Well, okay, they are puny.

Take care.

Bob Sireno

Bob, It wasn’t meant to be a "puny" issue. It was meant to point out that there are a bunch of tubes out there that would certainly better suited to power amplification than twenty-four 12AX7s. FYI there is a whole series of triodes out there called the 3CX series that would probably be a great choice for an amplifier. It seems however that instead of looking at these devices, we have designers who can’t look outside of the box... I have to say that using 12AX7 for power amplification is one of the dumbest things I have ever seen.

Mike Pappas

Disclaimers:

Let me make a couple of statements for those of you newer PF readers that haven’t been subjected to one of my prior ranting sessions.

I am not a tube fan to begin with. Haven’t used a tube amp in about 15 years (maybe more). I always try to listen to them at every opportunity to see if I can figure out what makes people so gaga about them. SE, triodes, pentodes, A/B, A, listened to them all at one time or the other. Haven’t heard one yet that "blew up my skirt".

I have to tell you that I really get into solid-state amps. I am currently listening to a Spectron 1KW class D amp that cranks out about 1/2 a kilowatt a channel at 4 ohms. This amplifier knocks me out every time I drop some tunes into the transport. The speakers I am using are Avalon Acoustics Radian HC that certainly do the boogie-woogie in my 14.5 foot by 38 foot listening room.

Classical? Don’t go near it. Rock, Jazz, Blues, Acid Jazz are the typical diet for my listening sessions. I get the chance to do at least two live radio broadcasts per month of some of the finest Jazz players around. We always roll a DAT for the vault and we have over 80 of them at this time.

Recording gives me a great perspective when it comes to evaluating gear. If it doesn’t sound like what I recorded, something is not doing its job. This is what turns me off about tube amps. It’s like turning up the color knob too far on you TV set. Things come back with more than I recorded them with.

All of those "silky mids" that you read about in tube amp reviews don’t exist on the recordings! They are an artifact of tube amplifiers. Don’t get me wrong, If you like listening to "silky mids" and you are fully aware that you are listening to something that is being created by your amp, that’s fine. I prefer my playback systems to not add any embellishments.

So readers what do you think? Lot’s of 12AX7’s make sense to you? Would you like to see someone try using a 3CX series triode in a "real" power amp? Designers — are you taking notes?

Want me to take photos of the 3 Phase 208 VAC 60 amp per leg power supply that drives our transmitter with the 250 lb. Peter Dahl power transformer for the next issue? How about a little cheesecake session with our V12 Detroit Diesel 600 HP, 350KW standby generator? You should see the glistening double turbochargers and dual silky superchargers on that bad boy! Talk about the sound of hell’s hounds pounding at the gates when we light it up! Maybe I will record some of it...

Attention Tube Crazies! Want to trade in your tube amp for a little solid-state reality? Tired of listening to all of those fake "silky mids"? Where’s Gizmo when you really need him? Smoking some "silky mids" in a triodian ritual sacrifice of hearing reality? Are all of you mad as hell that I would dare besmirch the "Holy Icon" of tube amplifiers? Great! That’s why I write these articles in the first place. Here is what you do; Put down this rag, get off your duff, drop in some hits, crank it up, and LISTEN!

Boy do I fell better now... E-mail me your thoughts and wishes at [email protected]. As always your submissions are potential fodder for my next missive....

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