Tascam MMR-8 - Manual (Page 13)

TASCAM MMR-8 Owner’s Manual • Chapter 1 • General Information MMR-8 13
The MMR-8 will directly play back material created on many different digital audio workstation systems.
A format compatibility chart is given in the Functional Specifications section of this chapter. The disk
drive or drives containing edited Project (EDL and audio) files may be simply “unplugged” from the
workstation and then “hot-plugged” into the MMR-8, using the standard internal Kingston hard drive
carrier, or otherwise connected to the MMR-8’s external SCSI port. Optionally, files on a RAID may be
accessed via the external SCSI port as well. Once the drive(s) are mounted by the MMR-8, tracks from
one or more projects may be loaded as required for the mix session. Sound files of the same or different
audio file formats may be played back on the same unit simultaneously from one or more drives.
When the MMR-8 is turned on for the first time, the system default operating parameters are loaded, and
the machine boots into the Normal state (see the Functional Overview section in this chapter). There are
ten user settings files that may be stored to and recalled from the internal hard drive so that the MMR-8
setup parameters can be instantly reconfigured between mix sessions. The MMR-8’s operating parameters
can be manually changed at any time via Setup menu selections. Password protection may be used to
prevent some parameters from being changed inadvertently.
Hardware Overview
The MMR-8 comes standard with one removable Kingston drive carrier. The Kingston carrier can hold a
standard SCSI drive for recording and playback of audio tracks. An internal IDE hard drive holds the
operating system, the MMR-8 software, and the parameter settings files. Additional external SCSI drives
can be connected and accessed by the MMR-8. This allows loading tracks simultaneously from more than
one disk. A list of approved media drives is given in Appendix B.
The MMR-8 is based on a standard Intel Pentium™ processor-based PC motherboard, with
integral PCI and ISA bus slots running under an industry-standard operating system. The MMR-8
processing and interface boards plug directly into this PC motherboard. There is a Lithium battery
#CR2032 for the CMOS circuit on the motherboard. Caution: Battery May Explode if Mistreated. Do
Not Recharge, Disassemble or Dispose of in Fire. The MIC (analog-to-digital Input Converter) and
MOC (digital-to-analog Output Converter) boards are in their own shielded cage, connected to the AIO
(Analog I/O) card via ribbon cables. Very high quality 20-bit converters on all analog inputs and outputs
assure excellent audio fidelity. The MMR-8 uses 24-bit internal digital resolution for all digital audio
processing. Recorded audio is stored in standard linear 16-bit or 24-bit sound files.
Internal Boards for Units with Serial Numbers up to 01608
The PRX (DSP) card performs the audio processing for the MMR-8. A standard Symbios SCSI-2
controller card also plugs into the PCI bus. The Sync card, the UI/B (User Interface/Biphase) card, the
AIO (analog I/O) card, and the DIO (AES/EBU digital I/O) card are all plugged into the ISA bus. The
Biphase Operations Board (BOB) occupies a slot on the back panel to provide connections for the
system’s four Biphase inputs and one Biphase throughput. It is attached to the UI/B card via a ribbon
cable and is not plugged into a slot.
Internal Boards for Units with Serial Numbers of 01609 and above
Units with serial numbers of 01609 and above have a different set of internal processing boards.
Functionally, these units are identical to previous units. The change was made to facilitate a more
streamlined manufacturing process. Instead of separate boards for DSP processing, sync, remote control,
etc., these functions have been combined into a single board designated as the M2 board. Connectors on
the side of the M2 board have ribbon cables attached which break out to brackets and connectors serving
the same functions as the previous array of boards and connectors.