User manual APOGEE TRAK2

[. . . ] Trak2 2-channel mic preamplifier with 44. 1/48/88. 2/96 kHz sampling 24-bit A/D Converter Owner's Manual and UV22HR® License Agreement v2. 1 ­ March 2002 Trak2 User's Guide This manual was written by Julio Alvarez and Joe Raia, with additional material and illustrations by Roger Robindoré, Jim Keller and Richard Elen. Design, production, editing and other word-wrangling by Richard Elen. SoftLimit and UV22HR are Registered Trademarks, and Soft Saturate is a Trademark, of Apogee Electronics Corporation. All other trademarks are property of their respective holders. [. . . ] This is a "soft mute" which ramps down to infinity over 1024 samples so that there are no clicks or pops when muting. · Highlight the MUTE field for the desired channel using the cursor keys. · Rotate the data wheel to "MUTED" or "UNMUTED". Advanced Mic Pre Menu At the bottom of the microphone preamplifier page is the ADVANCED menu selection. Clicking on this field will take you to the ADVANCED MIC-PRE SETTING page that has additional features. Gain Step Size This field allows you to set the size of the microphone gain steps for each detented turn of the data wheel. The smallest step available is 0. 5 dB and the largest is 4 dB. This field defaults to 1 dB steps from the factory. Mic Protect (also see above) This field allows you to turn on or off the microphone protection feature, which protects microphones (especially ribbon mics) from accidental exposure to phantom power. When ON, disconnecting a microphone from either the front or back panel inputs will turn off phantom power. When a new microphone is connected, phantom power is OFF and will remain OFF until it is re-engaged manually. This feature defaults to "ON" from the factory. Auxiliary 1 and 2 This field (options are AUTO and HIGH Z) allows override of the automatic high impedance selection feature. With the automatic high impedance selection feature turned on (AUTO), the Trak2 will automatically select the quarter inch (Tip-Ring-Sleeve or TRS) input(s) when a cable is plugged into the front panel quarter-inch inputs. · · If you want to have the Trak2 set up to always use the TRS front panel inputs (disabling both the front and back panel XLR inputs), set this field to "HIGH Z". You may want to disable the automatic Hi-Z selection feature if you will continually be tracking just guitar or synths, for example, and you don't want the unit to default to the XLR inputs on power-on or when you are plugging and unplugging instruments to the TRS inputs. Page 23 Trak2 User's Guide The Line In/Returns Menu This screen allows you to activate or de-activate the line-level inputs at the rear panel (LINE-IN). There are two basic input modes for the Trak2: MicA/D and LineA/D. · · MicA/D mode (RETURN "OFF") sends the signal from the mic preamplifier straight to the analog to digital converter to be converted to digital and directed to the various digital outputs. LineA/D mode (RETURN "ON") sends the signal from the LINE inputs on the rear panel to the analog to digital converter. In this mode, the mic pre is still active (both the inputs and the rear panel SENDs). You can create an effects loop when tracking in LineA/D mode by connecting a microphone to the mic inputs, connecting the SEND to the input of an external compressor or EQ (for example), and connecting the output of the external processor to the LINE inputs on the back panel of the Trak2. This is also the basic mode used to record professional line-level inputs such as the mix outputs of a console during mixdown. This feature can also be set in the RETURNS field of the Active Status Display. The Analog To Digital Converter Menu Digital Reference This field is used to select a digital reference level to calibrate the analog levels of the A/D and D/A converters (i. e. , the actual level that feeds the A/D converter chip and is output from the unit after the D/A converter). The gain of the line-level inputs and outputs can be set to different levels so that they are optimized for the particular task-at-hand. Using the common professional reference level of +4 dBu (which normally equates to 0 VU on an analog console), the analog gain potentiometers can be "turned up or down" to match a certain digital level (usually in a range within ­20 dBFS (FS=Full Scale) and ­10 dBFS: remember that 0 dBFS is the digital ceiling above which no audio can be recorded). [. . . ] Several recorders can be ganged to form larger recorders. The most popular are the Alesis ADAT and the Tascam DTRS recorders (DA-88, DA-98, etc). MOTU Mark of the Unicorn makes digital audio workstations (DAWs) revolving around their popular Digital Performer recording and MIDI sequencing software. Their most popular system, the MOTU 2408, includes an interface, a PCI card, and software that work in conjunction with Apple Macintosh computers. [. . . ]