Sound Designs 744t (long)

dkatz42 · 30th May 2005

I finally got mine a few weeks ago and thought I'd post some early impressions. I'm going to be hauling it off to Zambia in a couple of weeks for a video shoot, so I suspect I'll have more to say after that.

The 744t is a four channel field recorder that records to hard disk, compact flash, both (at the same time, for another layer of safety), and in the future external firewire drives (after a firmware upgrade.)

It's about the size of a Grisham novel in paperback, surprisingly small, and about 2 1/2 lbs without the battery. It's about as small as it can possibly get and still be usable (between all of the connectors and the necessary buttons and metering.) It feels very solid and rugged; I wouldn't slam it into things, but they seem to have tried hard to make it take reasonable amounts of abuse.

Primary power comes from standard Li-ion rechargable camcorder batteries (cheap and easy to come by) along with a DC power input with a liberal range of input voltages. Battery life depends on how many channels you're using, whether you're using phantom power, whether you're recording to CF or hard drive, LED metering brightness, etc., but looks to be several hours with a 6000mAh battery. You can even power off sections of the system that you're not using (inputs 3 and 4, for example) to extend battery life.

It will record one to four channels at sample rates from 32K to 192K, including both CD multiples (88.2/176.4) and standard-plus-.1% rates (48.048, etc.) Bit depths are 16 and 24. It also has an MP3 encoding mode, but they admit that the current implementation blows chunks (and it's not really clear why anybody would want to use it.)

Four channels of analog and digital inputs, four channels of digital output, two channels of analog output, two channels of mic pre.

It has an Ambient timecode interface with the full range of modes. The timecode generator is powered by a separate battery that is charged by the main battery (or other power source) when the power is on, so it will maintain the timecode (to within about a frame per day) for a couple of hours with the power off, without rejamming. (After that it will jam from the low-accuracy battery powered time-of-day clock if you like.)

Aside from the sheer size, the most amazing part to me is that they actually got almost everything right. There are lots of small usability things that make it clear that they had real pros in the field giving them design feedback, anything from the fact that the "record" button always works (no matter where you are in the menus) to the fact that the diminutive TA3 connectors used for the secondary inputs and outputs are oriented 180 degrees apart so that the connector release buttons are always accessible.

Since the inputs are always active (and streaming data through RAM) you get up to ten seconds of preroll tacked onto the front of your file when you hit Record (so there's no excuse to miss the beginning of a take.) If you're taking external timecode, it will back-calculate the timestamp on the front of the recording once received timecode has stabilized.

It's impossible to record over anything you've done (in fact, it's impossible to delete files without connecting to a computer, save for reformatting the media.)

The unit records WAV and BWF files (which are identical other than the name.) You can pull recordings off of the unit by dumping them to a CF card, or by hooking up the firewire port to a PC or Mac (it uses a standard FAT32 file system) whereupon it looks to the computer like an external drive. A future firmware upgrade will provide a "host" mode as well as "disk" mode, so you can hook external FW drives to the interface (dumping safety copies to an iPod would be sweet...)

The internal hard drive is field replaceable; it takes any standard IDE laptop drive, so you can toss 'em when they croak, or put in something bigger if 40GB isn't enough.

You can tell it the max file size to generate (to avoid o/s size problems, or to make them small enough to fit on data CDs, for instance.) It automatically splits files without skipping a sample, of course.

Firmware upgrades are easy; you get the firmware file onto the box somehow (via CF or the firewire port) and then the system looks for a file and installs it.

An RJ-11 cable passes timecode, word clock, and transport commands, so you can daisy-chain up to 127 of these boxes together and slave them all at sample accuracy. No more having to field mix complex audio due to a lack of tracks.

M/S decoding, adjustable input sample delay, settable metering ballistics, switchable limiters, high pass filters, per-channel switchable phantom power, flexible input and headphone routing, yada yada.

Street price is about $4K, not trivial but clearly in the right price range for the folks that need stuff like this (particularly compared to the $15K Aaton.) The baby brother is the 722, which has only two channels and also lacks the timecode interface but otherwise looks functionally the same (to the extent that I've looked.)

The short version is that they seem to have hit a home run, at least judging from availability (it took me almost three months to get mine, and the factory has hired three shifts and is only starting to get caught up with the backlog.)

In the field we're going to try slaving the unit to my video guy's HDcam using a Lectrosonics IFB to carry the timecode from the camera, in Record Run mode (so the 744t is slaved to the record button on the camera, and I can be lazy) plus wireless links to the camera for safety audio of the talent and the simultaneous translation. I'll report back how well it all ended up working (at least there's not going to be much RFI to deal with in rural Zambia...) Stateside practice runs are next week...

Tim Halligan · 31st May 2005

Looks like a cool device...an aquaintance has the 722, and I'm fairly sure it has all the timecode biz onboard - but that may have been an option.

2 minor points: wav/BWF (or bwav) - Almost identical. Audio is the same, but BWF carries timecode data with it, wav can't.

Timecode with the HDcam: Jam sync at the start of the day, and every time he changes batteries. Get him to free run...that way if your RF link takes a dive you shouldn't have a worry in post, and you won't get odd code jumps if you button on before him. If it makes you feel more secure, you be the TC master as you'll be changing batts less often...

Sounds like a cool shoot in Africa.

Cheers,
Tim

dkatz42 · 31st May 2005

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tim Halligan

Looks like a cool device...an aquaintance has the 722, and I'm fairly sure it has all the timecode biz onboard - but that may have been an option.

I've never seen one, but the Sound Devices web site seems to indicate that the 722 is lacking all of the timecode gorp, and doesn't show it as an option (otherwise it would eat sales of the 744t.) I think the lack of the "t" on the 722 is for this reason as well.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tim Halligan

2 minor points: wav/BWF (or bwav) - Almost identical. Audio is the same, but BWF carries timecode data with it, wav can't.

The Sound Devices stuff produces identical files (always carrying the timestamp) with a different type suffix. Apparently the WAV format is defined in such a way that the timecode info can be ignored by systems that don't understand it. FWIW.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tim Halligan

Timecode with the HDcam: Jam sync at the start of the day, and every time he changes batteries. Get him to free run...that way if your RF link takes a dive you shouldn't have a worry in post, and you won't get odd code jumps if you button on before him. If it makes you feel more secure, you be the TC master as you'll be changing batts less often...

I slightly misspoke; the plan was to use auto record mode on the 744t and record run on the HDcam; in this mode the 744t automatically shifts into record mode when the timecode starts to move (and with the preroll and back-calculating features I could manually hit the record button within 10 seconds of the start of the shot, and as long as I get stable timecode at *some* point during the shot it will all come out in the wash.

The one advantage of this mode is that the sound will roll automatically with the camera, as long as the RF link is working.

Obviously if we're having RF problems we have a bunch of other options.

The 744t is nice in that, if you're using one of the free run modes, it doesn't lose sync even if you swap the battery (since the timecode generator has its own battery that charges from the main battery.)

Thanks for your comments...

mosrite · 4th June 2006

dkatz42, Im about to hire this for a job but noone seems to be able to answer a simple question for me, can you?

Basically I want to know if it can record a stereo digital signal (via AES) at the same time as its analogue inputs (and clock to the incoming digital device). Any advice greatly appreciated.

T.RayBullard · 4th June 2006

The 722 has no timecode option.

mosrite · 4th June 2006

Quote:

The 722 has no timecode option.

but surely that doesnt affect whether or not you can feed it both an analogue and digital signal simultaneously and clock it externally?

(Btw Teddy should be sending you something to listen to tomorrow...)

T.RayBullard · 4th June 2006

Mosrite, that was the 722, not the 744t. The 722 is the 2ch. Let me ask one of the owners your question..ill get back to you.

TEddy

scb · 5th June 2006

Quote:

Originally Posted by mosrite

dkatz42, Im about to hire this for a job but noone seems to be able to answer a simple question for me, can you?

Basically I want to know if it can record a stereo digital signal (via AES) at the same time as its analogue inputs (and clock to the incoming digital device). Any advice greatly appreciated.

yes

mosrite · 5th June 2006

Quote:

yes

Thats good news then, thanks.

What are the ADs like on the 744t? Can anyone compare them to anything in terms of quality?

dkatz42 · 5th June 2006

Quote:

Originally Posted by mosrite

What are the ADs like on the 744t? Can anyone compare them to anything in terms of quality?

I doubt they'd win a bakeoff against a Lavry, but I don't think you'll find anything better in a field recorder. FWIW, the converters are on a daughter card that can be swapped out in the future (no word on whether this would be a field upgrade or not.)

Of course, video guys think 48/16 with 6dB of dynamic range is HiFi.

ghellquist · 5th June 2006

Quote:

Originally Posted by mosrite

What are the ADs like on the 744t? Can anyone compare them to anything in terms of quality?

I run a 722. Think it is the same stuff, but cannot guarantee it.

They are quite good I think. The preamps as well. Very low noise level. Not quite up to my Millenium HV3d + Lavry Blue, but not that for off either. I find them just a tad thin in the bass region but definitely publishable quality. Have done quite a few good recordings with the box and it sure is good to have that much quality in a portable unit.

If you ever test it though a small notice: the headphone amp can crank out quite a bit of power, and as such it can add a tiny bit of noise. The recorded signal is less noisy than you hear in the headphones.

Gunnar

mosrite · 5th June 2006

Thanks guys, I'll be bypassing the convertors on 2 of the channels (will be converting out of the box) but will be relying on 2 channels of ADC within the 744t. Sounds like it should be up to the task.

mosrite · 22nd June 2006

Just finished a location job with the 744t. What a great unit! The size is pretty incredible, has to be seen to be believed. For them to have crammed that much fuctionality into a box that size is impressive. I really dig the idea that it can record to the CF card and internal HD at the same time - good safety measure.

Regards the quality of the pre and ADC, I certainly cant complain. I did outboard pre and conversion for 2 channels but used its own for 2 as well. Sounded great and definitely made the grade for spots.

A highly recommended device if you have the dosh and are in the market for that kind of thing.

bove · 3rd July 2006

I use a 722.

Thought I'd add that their tech support is amazingly good.

For my questions, I was forwarded to the guy who designed the device. I called once when it was snowing up there (blizzard) and he wasn't at work.... they had him call me from his home within 5 min. Very nice.

30th May 2005	#1
dkatz42 Lives for gear Joined: Aug 2004 Location: Santa Fe, NM Posts: 988 Thread Starter	Sound Devices 744t (long) I finally got mine a few weeks ago and thought I'd post some early impressions. I'm going to be hauling it off to Zambia in a couple of weeks for a video shoot, so I suspect I'll have more to say after that. The 744t is a four channel field recorder that records to hard disk, compact flash, both (at the same time, for another layer of safety), and in the future external firewire drives (after a firmware upgrade.) It's about the size of a Grisham novel in paperback, surprisingly small, and about 2 1/2 lbs without the battery. It's about as small as it can possibly get and still be usable (between all of the connectors and the necessary buttons and metering.) It feels very solid and rugged; I wouldn't slam it into things, but they seem to have tried hard to make it take reasonable amounts of abuse. Primary power comes from standard Li-ion rechargable camcorder batteries (cheap and easy to come by) along with a DC power input with a liberal range of input voltages. Battery life depends on how many channels you're using, whether you're using phantom power, whether you're recording to CF or hard drive, LED metering brightness, etc., but looks to be several hours with a 6000mAh battery. You can even power off sections of the system that you're not using (inputs 3 and 4, for example) to extend battery life. It will record one to four channels at sample rates from 32K to 192K, including both CD multiples (88.2/176.4) and standard-plus-.1% rates (48.048, etc.) Bit depths are 16 and 24. It also has an MP3 encoding mode, but they admit that the current implementation blows chunks (and it's not really clear why anybody would want to use it.) Four channels of analog and digital inputs, four channels of digital output, two channels of analog output, two channels of mic pre. It has an Ambient timecode interface with the full range of modes. The timecode generator is powered by a separate battery that is charged by the main battery (or other power source) when the power is on, so it will maintain the timecode (to within about a frame per day) for a couple of hours with the power off, without rejamming. (After that it will jam from the low-accuracy battery powered time-of-day clock if you like.) Aside from the sheer size, the most amazing part to me is that they actually got almost everything right. There are lots of small usability things that make it clear that they had real pros in the field giving them design feedback, anything from the fact that the "record" button always works (no matter where you are in the menus) to the fact that the diminutive TA3 connectors used for the secondary inputs and outputs are oriented 180 degrees apart so that the connector release buttons are always accessible. Since the inputs are always active (and streaming data through RAM) you get up to ten seconds of preroll tacked onto the front of your file when you hit Record (so there's no excuse to miss the beginning of a take.) If you're taking external timecode, it will back-calculate the timestamp on the front of the recording once received timecode has stabilized. It's impossible to record over anything you've done (in fact, it's impossible to delete files without connecting to a computer, save for reformatting the media.) The unit records WAV and BWF files (which are identical other than the name.) You can pull recordings off of the unit by dumping them to a CF card, or by hooking up the firewire port to a PC or Mac (it uses a standard FAT32 file system) whereupon it looks to the computer like an external drive. A future firmware upgrade will provide a "host" mode as well as "disk" mode, so you can hook external FW drives to the interface (dumping safety copies to an iPod would be sweet...) The internal hard drive is field replaceable; it takes any standard IDE laptop drive, so you can toss 'em when they croak, or put in something bigger if 40GB isn't enough. You can tell it the max file size to generate (to avoid o/s size problems, or to make them small enough to fit on data CDs, for instance.) It automatically splits files without skipping a sample, of course. Firmware upgrades are easy; you get the firmware file onto the box somehow (via CF or the firewire port) and then the system looks for a file and installs it. An RJ-11 cable passes timecode, word clock, and transport commands, so you can daisy-chain up to 127 of these boxes together and slave them all at sample accuracy. No more having to field mix complex audio due to a lack of tracks. M/S decoding, adjustable input sample delay, settable metering ballistics, switchable limiters, high pass filters, per-channel switchable phantom power, flexible input and headphone routing, yada yada. Street price is about $4K, not trivial but clearly in the right price range for the folks that need stuff like this (particularly compared to the $15K Aaton.) The baby brother is the 722, which has only two channels and also lacks the timecode interface but otherwise looks functionally the same (to the extent that I've looked.) The short version is that they seem to have hit a home run, at least judging from availability (it took me almost three months to get mine, and the factory has hired three shifts and is only starting to get caught up with the backlog.) In the field we're going to try slaving the unit to my video guy's HDcam using a Lectrosonics IFB to carry the timecode from the camera, in Record Run mode (so the 744t is slaved to the record button on the camera, and I can be lazy) plus wireless links to the camera for safety audio of the talent and the simultaneous translation. I'll report back how well it all ended up working (at least there's not going to be much RFI to deal with in rural Zambia...) Stateside practice runs are next week...

31st May 2005	#2
Tim Halligan Gear addict Joined: Nov 2003 Location: Perth,Western Australia Posts: 324	Looks like a cool device...an aquaintance has the 722, and I'm fairly sure it has all the timecode biz onboard - but that may have been an option. 2 minor points: wav/BWF (or bwav) - Almost identical. Audio is the same, but BWF carries timecode data with it, wav can't. Timecode with the HDcam: Jam sync at the start of the day, and every time he changes batteries. Get him to free run...that way if your RF link takes a dive you shouldn't have a worry in post, and you won't get odd code jumps if you button on before him. If it makes you feel more secure, you be the TC master as you'll be changing batts less often... Sounds like a cool shoot in Africa. Cheers, Tim __________________ An Analogue brain in a Digital world.

4th June 2006	#7
T.RayBullard Lives for gear Joined: Mar 2005 Location: Columbus County, North Carolina Posts: 2,426	Mosrite, that was the 722, not the 744t. The 722 is the 2ch. Let me ask one of the owners your question..ill get back to you. TEddy __________________ I think it is wrong to make everything equidistant from the listener with too many mics. The pasting-on effects end up like bad Photoshop work on graphics & photos - too unbelievable.-Tony Faulkner http://www.last.fm/user/TeddyBullard/

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4th June 2006	#4
mosrite Lives for gear Joined: Jun 2005 Location: All Over Posts: 1,115	dkatz42, Im about to hire this for a job but noone seems to be able to answer a simple question for me, can you? Basically I want to know if it can record a stereo digital signal (via AES) at the same time as its analogue inputs (and clock to the incoming digital device). Any advice greatly appreciated.

5th June 2006	#12
mosrite Lives for gear Joined: Jun 2005 Location: All Over Posts: 1,115	Thanks guys, I'll be bypassing the convertors on 2 of the channels (will be converting out of the box) but will be relying on 2 channels of ADC within the 744t. Sounds like it should be up to the task.

22nd June 2006	#13
mosrite Lives for gear Joined: Jun 2005 Location: All Over Posts: 1,115	Just finished a location job with the 744t. What a great unit! The size is pretty incredible, has to be seen to be believed. For them to have crammed that much fuctionality into a box that size is impressive. I really dig the idea that it can record to the CF card and internal HD at the same time - good safety measure. Regards the quality of the pre and ADC, I certainly cant complain. I did outboard pre and conversion for 2 channels but used its own for 2 as well. Sounded great and definitely made the grade for spots. A highly recommended device if you have the dosh and are in the market for that kind of thing.

3rd July 2006	#14
bove Gear maniac Joined: Dec 2005 Location: New York, NY Posts: 290	I use a 722. Thought I'd add that their tech support is amazingly good. For my questions, I was forwarded to the guy who designed the device. I called once when it was snowing up there (blizzard) and he wasn't at work.... they had him call me from his home within 5 min. Very nice.