Recording - August 2011 - 45

Build up? Yes, the PSD430 supports overdubbing! You can record audio over pre-recorded files, either entire songs or a preset looped section. Elsewhere in this issue I discuss sound-on-sound recording, and the PSD430 does it beautifully. There’s also a very elegantly designed punch implementation that worked very well in my tests, with settable preroll and postroll and even programmable fade in and out. A lot of effort has been put into keeping the unit’s file organization very clear and easy to navigate. You can easily move/copy/delete files, split one file into two at a designated point with the Divide function or splice two files together with Combine, create standard M3U playlists, rename songs you record or rip, add artist data, and even classify and search tracks by genre. Text input uses the jog wheel and is as slow as you might guess it would be, but at least it’s there. The PSD430’s biggest draw as an education-slanted recorder is its ability to independently change the tuning (up or down up to one octave in semitones, with fine tune) and tempo (25% to 150% in 1% increments) of recorded audio, and save the results as new files. While there are purpose-built tuning and timing plug-ins that give better-sounding results, the PSD430 wins on immediacy and ease of setup. Dialing in a transposition or speed change is effortless and instant, and off you go. Other convenience features include various seamless A–B loop and track repeat modes, a footswitch that can control the transport or punches, chromatic tuner, an adjustable tone generator for tuning an acoustic instrument, and a metronome with tap tempo. The only such feature I tried that I didn’t like very much was Voice Reduction, a center-cancel feature that made my test recordings sound phasey and weird... but this often happens with center-cancel, especially with recordings that have lots of stereo effects processing. The wireless remote control is a bit scary when compared to the tiny and sparse remotes that come with cheaper recorders; it’s as big as a cable TV’s and loaded with features for auditioning tracks, adjusting tempo and key, and even recording remotely. There’s no way to set the record level from the remote, less of a problem for a unit in this application than for,

say, a field recorder. And all of these features are documented in a printed Quick Start Guide and a huge user manual in PDF form that comes on a CD with the unit. Conclusions One more thing: this unit is built like a tank. It’s big, solid, and confidence-inducing, with no corners cut anywhere. And that conclusion carries to the entire PSD430, really... it’s what you get when you want a tabletop audio recorder that pretty much does it all. It’s a stereo recorder with sound-on-sound, practice trainer, computerfriendly USB device, CD player, burner, and duplicator; music educators will have a tough time coming up with ways to record, assemble, play back, and distribute teaching material that the PSD430 can’t do. There are as many design philosophies for recording devices as there are people who want to record audio, and once again Superscope demonstrates that it knows music educators like no one else. Price: $999 ($899 street) More from: Superscope Technologies, www.superscopetechnologies.com

http://www.superscopetechnologies.com http://www.stedmancorp.com http://www.REALTRAPS.com http://www.stedmancorp.com

Recording - August 2011

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - August 2011