Premier Rock Forum

let me say upfront that i dislike digital sound recording in general

hard disc systems have been hard on my ears the few times i've heard them, and the difference betw. a given mastered recording's CD and LP is invariably depressing

but i have heard 24 bit/96kHz transfers of 1/2" analog tapes that sounded pretty good

and, to the point, i am curious about the RADAR system....i keep reading positive things about it from people who are otherwise not impressed by hard disc multitracking

anyone have some first-hand experience with RADAR specifically? please ignore my mouthing off so we can avoid the boilerplate dig/analog debate.

thanks

tm

I worked on a radar session (48K/16 bit) and it didn't sound so good. It was easy to work on, and didn't crash once. My best digital experience was with the pro tools HD running buy itself. It had as close to a uncolored character as I've heard (running at 96K 24bit). I know it's the McDonalds, but it is what it is. Or is it is itn't?

I'm a huge fan of RADAR, while not being a fan of digital tracking (in general). It's an incredibly stable system (run on BeOS) with the best sound in the digital realm so far (in my opinion, of course).

Being a Vancouver resident, I had the opportunity to tour iZ's main office / warehouse last month, and was very impressed with the staff and the apparent quality control over the system. It is a fully integrated operation, in that all aspects of the manufacture of RADAR are done under the same roof.

Prior to my visit, I had great experiences with recording on to this format, and choose it as second only to 2" so far as sound quality goes. Add in the editability factor, and it's enough to sway some analogue purists.

My $.02.

I had one for about four months. The system really sounds great and is very stable. I think it's the best sounding digital system available. The file management and backup facilities are very well thought out, it's easy to use, and it's got a really good user support system. I was able to A/B the system with a Studer 827 24trk machine and it was pretty unbelievable how close it was.... at least not as much of a difference between a tape machine and other systems that I've A/B'd such as Pro Tools TDM. The thing actually has "a sound" to it, which is pretty interesting. Most bedroom-studio types might shy away from it because it's just 24 ins and 24 outs; so you can't mix internally with plug-ins or anything like that, but if you're really serious you wouldn't be doing that anyway. When I was initially looking into it, I just called a local dealer and arranged to hold on to a demo system for a week and play around with it and see what it could do. You might want to try that if you're really curious.

I have never tried the Radar, but I too have heard nice things about it. Supposedly it "sounds similar" to analogue tape.

I can second Greg's comment about the new HD systems. We have one here at the studio at my workplace and I was actually very impressed with the sound quality, particularly the lack of harsness that was metnioned earlier. However, with the money that you would drop on a system like that, you could easilly get a Studer A820. That's pretty crazy.

One of the studios where I work has a RADAR 24 and I love it. It's the easiest, most intiuitive digital medium I've ever used. To me, it sounds WAY better than any other digital medium I've used, although I have to say that I'm not a ProTools guy AT ALL. I did get a chance to get a four day demo of an HD system at the studio that has the RADAR (they also have Fairlights for broadcast work), but by the end of the second day, with the Digidesign rep present (he brought his own "superbad" computer, too), we couldn't get the system to work for five minutes without crashing, so it went untouched for the rest of the time it was here.

I've never had anything happen with the RADAR that stopped or even slowed down a session. I don't do tons of editing or anything like that, but the editing on the RADAR is VERY extensive and VERY easy to figure out. (If editing is your thing, NOTHING works like the Fairlight and don't even think about trying to debate that unless you've seen a ten-year old Fairlight BLOW AWAY Pro Tools HD, speed-wise.) On the RADAR, I make very redundant backups to DVD RAM and never remove the hard drive.

To me, the RADAR is how digital formats should be. Hope this helps!

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

I can't help but notice that a lot of you guys keep mentioning how stable RADAR is, and someone else mentioned that it runs on BeOS. It seems to me that if you guys really want a stable platform to run your audio tools in, then you should be using a Unix based operating system (of which BeOS is) such as Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD or whatever. My vote would be for Linux because, in a similar way to Windows or MacOS, it's the most popular. I also realize that none of the major vendors are making applications at this time for Linux.

The main problem I see with a RADAR system (and I don't know what their plans are for the future) is that BeOS, as a company, doesn't make BeOS anymore. They sold all their work to Palm, Inc. So, maybe they will start using OpenBeOS or BlueEyedOS or PalmOS (ha!) or something, I don't know, but it seems to me that they would benefit, as would all of these other companies, from a customer satisfaction point of view, by moving over to, and running their software on something unix-based. Think about how awesome that would be for a second. No more crashes, and all of the other benefits that you can get from running a unix-based operating system.

Now, before someone mentions that MacOS, and especially MacOS X, is based on unix, so that should be good enough, I think you're missing the point. Or possibly, the multiple points. One of our points here, or goals if you will, is to reduce system crashes. We (the users) want a platform similar to a standalone machine, like an analog tape machine, that rarely (less than once a year) fails to the point of actually having to shut the entire system down, and start it up again from scratch. If the guy above who came in for the HD demo couldn't even keep his "fancy-pants" computer up for more than 5 minutes, that's obviously a complete failure of our first goal. So, something needs to change. Either the application needs to change, or the platform. Since we are talking mostly about alternate platforms, lets change the platform.

So, let's pretend that we are Digidesign. We spend a few months porting our MacOS X code to linux (it shouldn't be that hard if it's unix-based already), with some emphasis on making it cross-platform compatible, just in case we decide in the future that we'd rather run on OpenBSD or whatever, and so that people who still want to run our application on MacOS or Windows can. We also announce that we are moving the base of our support over to linux at the same time that we begin porting (and we release a beta version as quickly as possible), which will allow all of the manufacturers of plug-ins and add-ons to begin porting as well.

When those few months are up, we offer our program for sale and we quickly find that we have immediately multiplied our user base. Why? Because now you don't have to own an expensive Mac to run our application. It'll run on any machine that will run linux (which is practically all of them). What this also means is that anyone who wants to can make their own plugin or add-on, and make it freely available to anyone on the internet, if they choose, to trade and use and improve. This makes our product better because now, we can do less, but our users buy more, get more (and steal less).

But what will probably happen in the real world? People will continue to fork over huge amounts of money every few years for systems that continue to crash, that you can't use except for on over-priced machines with fancy cases, and for which there is no means of direct feedback to the improvement of the product.

There's more to this, but I'll stop here.

russ

The main problem with the Radar is that it was invented by Mormons. Wait, that's not the real problem. It's that it was invented by Canadians.

Hey Russ,

You possibly missed the point. RADAR doesn't crash and it sounds better than any other digital or analog recorder. Digital audio does seem to be a mystery to many people as they sort through the many products currently available. Some are better than others for many reasons. It is always wise to select the right tools for the job you have to do. We at iZ Technology have researched every OS available and selected the one that works best for the application. High quality Audio Acquisition is the primary objective of RADAR. Assemble editing is easy and faster than with any competing product. If those are your priority requirements you really owe it to yourself to check one out.

DaveiZDave wrote:You possibly missed the point. RADAR doesn't crash and it sounds better than any other digital or analog recorder.

1. I don't think I missed the point. I didn't say that RADAR crashes. I was referencing the statement that someone made above that during a demo of ProTools, on a fancy computer, wouldn't stay up for more than 5 minutes.

2. Sounds better than any analog recorder? Really? Wow. Let's not talk about that.

DaveiZDave wrote:We at iZ Technology have researched every OS available and selected the one that works best for the application.

Which one have you chosen now? Are you still using BeOS eventhough it's no longer being developed? What aspects of BeOS are so much better than Linux, *BSD, MacOS, or Windows? I'm really curious.

DaveiZDave wrote:High quality Audio Acquisition is the primary objective of RADAR.

What about High Quality Audio Exportation? It seems to me that the sound coming out of whatever you are using is more important than just capturing a clean, high fidelity signal.

I congratulate you on a stable, fast product which your users seem to enjoy. My concerns though are mostly technically based and before I would spend between $5000 and $18,000 for a digital recorder, I would like to know how viable it's going to be in the next 5 - 10 years.

Thanks,
russ