Recording - August 2013 - 49

mode, the LR-16 captures 16 tracks of
audio at a time and stores them as WAV
files; in Player mode, it plays back stereo
WAV files from the drive through the headphone jack and stereo output.
Recording mode
The menu choices for Recording mode
are very simple. You can format a drive,
delete a recording, adjust display contrast
and brightness, turn on10 dB pads for any
inputs that need them, or set up the playback monitor status of the LR-16. There’s a
fully functional monitor mixer built into the
device, and while setting it up takes a bit of
fiddling, it can be handy when you need to
play back a stereo mix of your recorded
data without using more than one stereo
return on your mixer. You can set level,
On/Mute/Solo status, and pan position
(somewhat coarsely) for each channel.
Once the drive is connected and tested,
the front-panel backlit LCD shows 16 input
meters. Press the Record
button, and in less than one
second the LR-16 is recording; press the Stop button
and it’s stored its data and
is ready to start again in a
few seconds.
When you record, the LR16 creates a folder on the
hard drive called Take_XX
where XX is a number from
01 to 99; inside that folder
are 16 WAV files called
Chan_YY, where YY is from
01 to 16. (See the screenshot.) When you stop and
start recording, a new folder is opened with a new Take number, and
so on and so on. You can’t rename or
organize your Takes without putting the
hard drive on a computer, and it always
records 16 tracks of audio, even if you’re
not using that many. Simplicity is key here!
No track arming, no folder creation menu:
press the Record button and the LR-16 does
all the work. It’s virtually impossible to
make a mistake, which is worth some wasted hard drive space.
Based on your selected bit depth and
sample rate, the LR-16 gives you an estimate of how much record time you have.
Just as a couple of examples, a 2 GB USB
key gave about 23 minutes at 16/44.1
(roughly 80 MB/minute), and a 500 GB
hard drive offered about 65 hours at
24/44.1 (roughly 120 MB/minute). Be
aware that as a FAT32 volume, the hard
drive can’t create files larger than 4 GB,
so your maximum recording time in one
file is just a hair over 9 hours, and is
reflected as such in the countdown timer
on the LCD as you record. If you wish, you
can press the Record button again while
recording, and the LR-16 will immediately
create a new Take folder and 16 new
Chan files on the fly.

Player mode
The LR-16, when its drive is formatted,
creates a Music folder. You can hook the
drive up to your computer and drag and
drop audio files into that folder for playback; it plays back WAV files of 16 or 24
bit resolution at 44.1 or 48 kHz.
In Player mode, the LR-16 has singletrack playback, continuous folder playback, repeat and shuffle options. This
gives the LR-16 added utility; sometimes
it’s handy to play back audio through your
mixer between sets, or perhaps run test
signals during sound check, and this saves
you carrying along an extra iPod.
Interface mode
Hooking up the LR-16 to a computer via
a USB cable turns it into a 16-in/2-out audio
interface with support for up to 24-bit/96
kHz audio. Windows PCs require WDM or
ASIO drivers, downloadable from the
Cymatic Audio website; there’s also a
Control Panel application
that gives you onscreen control of the monitor mix with
metering, faders, pan pots,
mute and solo controls, and
stereo channel link buttons.
The LR-16 is Core Audio
compliant right out of the
box; it’s recognized immediately by any Mac OS X or
iOS device with no driver
installation needed. There’s
no Mac OS X/iOS equivalent of the Windows Control
Panel.
Like it says
The LR-16’s motto is: “Connect. Record.
Done.” It’s hard to argue with that claim of
simplicity; in this review we’ve walked you
through the device’s entire feature set, top
to bottom. You cable it to your mixer
inserts, hit Record, and it captures clean
clear audio with no fuss at all.
I was recording multitrack data through
my Phonic Helix Board 24 Universal’s 16
inserts in less than five minutes, and had
no trouble importing the resulting WAV
files into my test DAWs (PreSonus Studio
One and Ableton Live on my laptops,
WaveMachine Labs Auria on my iPad).
The quality was impeccable, and I can’t
remember the last time just grabbing multitrack audio was this easy.
If you want to record from your board
with the option of later DAW editing, but
dislike taking a computer to gigs, the LR16 was made for you. Cymatic Audio has
made 16-track live audio recording trivially simple, nicely affordable, and transparent to the FOH engineer’s job.
Price: $499
More from: Cymatic Audio,
www.cymaticaudio.com

http://www.adkmic.com http://www.adkmic.com http://www.myspace.com/adkmic http://www.cymaticaudio.com

Recording - August 2013

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