AudioMedia - February 2009 - (Page 26)

ALISTAIR McGHEE considers the MR-2000S an ‘evolution with an icing of revolution’ in the niche market of rackmount recorders. ne of the duller traits of the modern world is ‘metooism’, the deluge of seemingly identical products all fighting for the same space in one of the more popular niches of the marketplace. Of course professional audio has its share of such products, and every month or so another mic preamp or powered near field monitor hits the already groaning shelves. It keeps me in work, and I love new kit as much as anyone, but it’s nice when companies take a bit of a risk with a design that offers something genuinely innovative. And here Korg is to be applauded for its MRS hard disk recorder. As far as I can see, Korg has only one competitor in the rackmount DSD mastering recorder market, and that is the Tascam DV-RA HD. Korg (unlike Tascam) has eschewed any silver disk options O My first outing with the MRS was to record rising young Welsh tenor Luther Vaughan. Just to make it interesting, I also packed my Sound Devices T to make a simultaneous PCM recording while running the Korg in high bit-rate DSD. With a pretty bare front panel, you’re going to spend a lot of time in the MRS menu system, but I suppose that’s life in the modern world. I ran my through some RME micstacy ampage and split the signal across the two recorders. Around the back of the Korg, you get balanced and unbalanced analogue, SPDIF on phonos, some word clock BNCs, and a USB for transfer to computer. There's no AES, which didn’t bother me, but it’s something to come back to. Windows and OSX are both supported by the supplied AudioGate software, though I only used the Windows version. KORG MR 2000S Rackmount Mobile Stereo Recorder and is offering a U package. For Korg, already established with two portable DSD recorders, the MRS is both evolution with an icing of revolution, in the form of the higher bit-rate DSD format running at . MHz that debuted on the ‘table top’ MR. The MRs is Korg’s answer to the question, “What am I going to master onto at the highest possible quality, where nothing else really matters?” And it’s a good question really. DAT has long gone, CD bit-rate isn’t high enough, and maybe even Alesis’s classic Masterlink is looking a little bit long in the tooth. So why isn’t this niche awash with competing products snapping at each other’s Achilles’ heels? Well probably because many people have gone down the route of mastering onto a DAW, where high bit rates are a piece of cake and interfaces are two a penny. That is the segment with the competition. But everyone recognises the limitations of the DAW, lots of the interfaces are proprietary or not of great quality, or both. And that’s before we navigate the murky waters of drivers, OS updates and stability, boot times etc, etc. So why not unwrap a Korg? The Answer Is… THE REVIEWER ALISTAIR McGHEE began audio life in Hi-Fi before joining the BBC as an audio engineer. After ten years in radio and TV, he moved to production. When BBC Choice started, he pioneered personal digital production in television. Alistair is now Assistant Editor, BBC Radio Wales, but is allowed out occasionally. When you do, the first thing that strikes you is the quality of the finish. It is superb. Beautiful metalwork, well screwed together, small and light even in a U package. But it's not the kind of lightness that speaks of cheapness – no, it's the lightness that speaks of niceness. The front panel is simple: five transport buttons, four menu and display buttons, and an encoder. The display is bright and easy to read, although not colour. Metering is by -segment LED, enough to be both readable and genuinely helpful in level setting, which may seem obvious, but I’ve suffered enough LCD bargraphs in my time. A simple display of sample rate and a headphone output complete the front panel controls. Not A B east, But B eaut y If I can digress here a little bit, the issue of audio transfer is obviously crucial to the whole business. You can only get the audio out of the MRS by playback or USB transfer. The supplied AudioGate software allows basic file manipulation – its main role will be simple file editing and file transcoding, as once the recorder is connected to the computer you can copy the files through Windows Explorer. The interface for some reason reminds me of a Rolodex, and once you load a file you can add markers that can then be used to split the file before transfer to the computer. That's a handy function, because these files are going to be big if you record at the high data rate settings, and why would you do anything else? The inclusion of mp file formats is interesting. I suppose you can transfer DSD to your iPod – listen in the car on the way home. So back to the recordings. In an afternoon session, Luther and I recorded two or three tracks without incident. I took the recording back home and transferred the DSD recordings to my PC via the AudioGate software. I then loaded the KHz -bit files from the Sound Devices, opened up Sequoia, and was able to listen to the two files side by side via the Marian Trace Pro card in my PC. As you might expect they both sounded very, very good. I felt the Korg files might have been fuller in the base, and I could see more energy on the spectroscope below Hz in Sequoia, but to be honest I wouldn’t have bet my mortgage on it. I wouldn’t even have bet my bank’s mortgage on it. Running Through The G ate Ironically the Sound Devices costs more than the Korg, and I don’t suppose that many people are mastering on it. Listening directly to the DSD files from the MRS is a very pleasant experience. I’d be hard pushed to describe any sort of a ‘sound’, as the machine is as transparent as anything I have heard. You can make BWAV recordings Can You Hear What I Hear? 26 AUDIO MEDIA FEBRUARY 2009

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of AudioMedia - February 2009

AudioMedia - February 2009 Contents Recording News Post News Broadcast News GEO Focus: USA What's Up UK NAMM Review For the Record Project Profile: Hallelujah HHB CDR882 KORG MR-20005 Chandler Germanium Brauner Phanthera Final Cut: Lesbian Vampire Killers SE Electronics RNR1 The Royal Opera House Fairlight XYNERGI Limiting Loudness Product Sampler: Studio Consoles Video Guide AMSR News Stone Temple Pilots Fly Again Rode M2 Yamaha IM8 Series

AudioMedia - February 2009

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