AATON & THE WORLD OF SOUND
Totally revisited ergonomics
AATON is well known for its innovations in camera design - the "eye-at-your-fingertips" La Paluche (a video camera the size of a big cigar), the "cat-on-the-shoulder" XTR, and the "bird-in-hand" A-Minima, (16 mm cameras). So when it came to conceiving an audio recorder, there was no question of continuing the tradition of shoe-box like devices with a jumble of cables and buttons. The operator's ease of use was our prime design consideration, we wanted him to feel comfortable, as if the machine was a permanent extension of his fingers. The structure Stephan Kudelski came up with for his revolutionary one-channel Nagra-3 (modulometer, fader and filter controls grouped on the front, cable sockets on the sides) is still today the 'matrix' of all portable recorders, including the most recent ones. But given the many inputs a recorder must now handle, there is no need to hang on to a tradition that no longer has a raison-d'être.
On CANTAR, the mike faders and filters are moved off the front panel to the top of the housing to make room for three large modulometers. Audio routing is based on a concept we call the Triple-Crown turret; placed on the side of the recorder it remains easily accessible no matter what type of RF mike receivers are on board. All in and out cables glide away from the top of the machine toward the rear. The batteries, laterally mounted, serve as bumpers to protect the hard drive. There are no sockets at all on the rear, CANTAR can be dropped in the mud (let's say two or three inches of it), and still work like a charm.
Innovative features
Faders
The fader knobs are placed on top of the machine,the operator's hand can rest in a natural position, and his arm does not hide the modulometers when the recorder is on the shoulder strap. And on the cart, because the faders are on a horizontal plane as on a mixing console, CANTAR is very comfortable to work with.
Multi-function Triple-Crown
High on the sound engineers' wish list is sophisticated headphone listening controls be it for checking each input during recording (solos), checking the director or the script's sound outputs, or verifying the left/right mix from the boom and the RF mikes, M/S decoding etc. Each factory preset and user defined configuration is stored and appears in large figures on the front panel displays. Using CANTAR's Triple-Crown (two concentric rings and a jog), the sound engineer can easily skip back and forth between them.
High-resolution modulometers
The modulometers take the form of dial-shaped displays (two tracks each). The circular presentation is much more vivid than a linear array, since the eye more easily remembers an angle (ten o'clock, five o'clock, etc.) than a position on a straight line. These specially designed modulometers provide the same ballistics and look-and-feel as needle galvanometers, but are much more accurate, since they feature 1/2 dB increments in the 'sensitive' zone between -35 and -16dB.
Highly visible displays
The display panel of the recorder pivots to allow the operator to select the best viewing angle: 0* on the shoulder, 80* on the cart. High contrast reflective LCDs are used for the modulometers instead of the usual back-lit LCDs which are just not good in sunlight and not that great at night. In dark areas, a tiny orientable on-board flexible light can be plugged-in to illuminate not only the modulometers but the filter selectors, the faders, and the report notebook. The days of recordists with a maglite held between their teeth are gone.
Cable and plug nesting
The cables, which all run to the rear, do not stick out of the machine in all directions. The positioning of the mike sockets is such that there is no doubt about which is which: each XLR is right up against the knob that controls it. The proximity of the inputs and preamps makes for a better signal/noise ratio. Note that the RF mike receiver cables do not even need to leave the carrying bag. In the same way, the AES in and out cables connected to the top of the digital side (5) glide along the central body housing. Since they don't protrude, BNC sockets are the best AES in and out choice: they are Digi-VTR compatible and eliminate the use of custom-made Sub D25 multicore cables.
Double batteries, double reassurance
In order to avoid power loss during recording, CANTAR is equipped with two identical on-board batteries; when one is depleted, the second one takes over. They offer a protection barrier so that the disk housing does not have to take the bumps and bangs that inevitably occur in staircases, doorways etc., not to mention falls! Any blow is dissipated threefold: first, by the resilient suspension of the batteries, second, by the rubber link between the central body and the disk housing, and third, by the elastic mounting of the disk inside the housing.
Ver-r-ry low power consumption
Providing a whole day's work without battery-worry is an important priority in the conception of a portable audio recorder. CANTAR's custom-designed microprocessor operating system ensures not only extremely low consumption (500mA in 'test', all inputs activated), but also ultra-fast cold-starts (less than 3 seconds).
Peace of mind links to the external world
When it comes to delivering the day's recordings to the post-prod people down the line, there is no simpler and faster connection system than Firewire (known as i-Link between camcorders and PCs). At an actual 400MB/s, it is in practice faster than USB-2. Truly universal and hot-plug, Firewire eliminates the incompatibilities among the many SCSI standards, and is available on recent portable MAC and Windows PC and all audio workstations. To on-the fly enter Sc&Tk and comments plus any other metadata in the sound files, a wireless link to a Palm PDA has been selected, this is much more user-friendly than any USB or PS2 keyboard. |
