Sound Devices, specialists in audio and video products for broadcast and film
production, has won the Cinema Audio Society (CAS) Technical Achievement Award
in the Production category for its 970 rack-mount, multi-track audio recorder. The
Cinema Audio Society was formed in 1964 to recognise innovations in recording
technologies, including hardware and software products which are used by sound
mixing professionals.
Sound Devices has now been a recipient of the prestigious CAS Technical
Achievement Award five times. The 744T and 788T Production Recorders, and the
664 and 633 Field Production Mixers are all past winners. “To be consistently
recognised year after year for our new products with CAS Technical Achievement
Awards is a remarkable accomplishment,’ says Matt Anderson, president of Sound
Devices.
Sound Devices’ 970 records 64 channels of monophonic or polyphonic 24-bit WAV
files from any of its 144 available inputs, including 64 channels of Ethernet-based
Dante, 64 channels of optical or coaxial MADI, eight channels of line-level analogue
and eight channels of AES digital. The half-rack, 2-U device simplifies any
application requiring high-quality high-track-count audio recording, such as drama
and reality productions, and live concert recording.
The 970 records to any of four attached drives, two front-panel drive bays (behind
the screen) and two rear-panel e-SATA-connected drives. Material can be recorded
to multiple drives simultaneously or sequentially. With its built-in, rock-steady
Ambient Recording Lockit time-code technology, the 970 is well-suited to operate as
a master clock. The 970 also features an embedded web-based control panel for
machine transport and setup control over ethernet-based networks as well as file
transfer over the data network with SMB. Users can perform file metadata editing
of scene name, take name, notes, track names and reel folders before, during and
after recording across all drives. In addition to RS-422 and GPIO control, the unit
also allows for format conversion between analogue, AES digital, MADI and Dante.
Sound Devices’ 970 is designed with a large five-inch screen for metering of up to
64 tracks and for fast and intuitive menu control. Additionally, Sound Devices 970
features the company’s proprietary PowerSafe technology, which has a built-in 10-
second power reserve. In the event of a power loss, the unit continues to operate
for up to 10 seconds to safely stop any file operation and then shuts down. This
ensures that a complete power loss has no effect on the recording.
The 970 also features FileSafe, which automatically detects and repairs corrupted
file headers when drives are mounted. Should this occur when a drive is
inadvertently removed during recording, the user can simply reinsert the drive and
FileSafe will automatically repair the files.
