Been lurking for some time around this place and gotten some good info on tape decks, but what I haven't gotten is a sufficent info how to perfectly sync up my Otari MTR-12 (with center-track head and a dedicated electronics card, seems to be rare feature on the most MTR-10/12s I've seen) with my Logic DAW. There's not much literature nor anything described in Otari manual about the center-track TC feature.
Got to admit MTR deck itself holds the speed very-very good, does it already surprisingly good for certain lenghts and it's perfect for final mixes, but often want to use it for tracking onto tape-and-back into DAW for longer tracks and at lengths more than couple of minutes small discrepancies start to appear, hence looking for syncing it up with the TC feature it supposed to have.
Since I couldn't find any spec for it for starters I have s/h Syncman in order, which is cheaply priced gear, should this do the trick translating time code from tape to MIDI SMPTE understandable to Logic? Or it's a fail waiting to happen?
Would gladly hear what's your experience on syncing your decks or anything to look out for tracking between tape machine and a DAW.
Many thanks in advance.
Center-Track Time-Code sync with DAW
No aswers... Guess precision syncing with DAW isn't a very common pracitce since most use multitrack machines for mixing here.
Anyways, I got the Syncman end expected the worst - but bang, it was working after first run! Even with my crappy test cables. I set frame rate to 25FPS and Logic understands the incoming TC, with a quarter to half-a second lag or so, Otari fires up it's TC sync leds much faster, split-second on monitoring - now my long tracks and mix stems are in perfect sync, so I can track forth and back with snippets or stem-mixing (especially love to have the long drums sessions over the tape and those are time-critical).
MTR's separate Time Code board is by far the most complicated hardware in the whole machine with it's endless ICs and processors in high density, looks more like a modern digital computer, didn't even bother recapping it as I did with most rest of the machine so I'm surpsed it works so good from the start.
Hence if you have the center-track TC feature and using Tape-DAW hybrid system, a 25-50 bucks thrown on a Syncman-like small box is definately a worthy investment!
Another question is biasing and leveling the center-track erase and recording heads from the TC board adjustments, I don't want to adjust the TC head azimuth yet too having no knowledge how to adjust it and there's very little if no literature at all available on this issue. When I get there will let you know.
Anyways, I got the Syncman end expected the worst - but bang, it was working after first run! Even with my crappy test cables. I set frame rate to 25FPS and Logic understands the incoming TC, with a quarter to half-a second lag or so, Otari fires up it's TC sync leds much faster, split-second on monitoring - now my long tracks and mix stems are in perfect sync, so I can track forth and back with snippets or stem-mixing (especially love to have the long drums sessions over the tape and those are time-critical).
MTR's separate Time Code board is by far the most complicated hardware in the whole machine with it's endless ICs and processors in high density, looks more like a modern digital computer, didn't even bother recapping it as I did with most rest of the machine so I'm surpsed it works so good from the start.
Hence if you have the center-track TC feature and using Tape-DAW hybrid system, a 25-50 bucks thrown on a Syncman-like small box is definately a worthy investment!
Another question is biasing and leveling the center-track erase and recording heads from the TC board adjustments, I don't want to adjust the TC head azimuth yet too having no knowledge how to adjust it and there's very little if no literature at all available on this issue. When I get there will let you know.
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