Emu Darwin

Having led the way in the '80s sampling revolution, Emu have turned their attention to the '90s discipline of hard disk recording with the Darwin digital recorder. Paul Ward checks out the new species on the block...

The Emu name needs little introduction to anyone familiar with modern music technology. From the days of the 8‑bit Emulator sampling keyboard through the highly successful Proteus series to the powerful Emulator IV, Emu Systems have become something of a legend in the digital audio field. It is only fitting then that Emu should eventually turn their attention to the growing market of hard disk recording, with the introduction of Darwin.

Darwin is a stand‑alone 8‑track digital audio recorder designed to offer the power of non‑destructive, random access recording/editing combined with the familiar user interface of a tape recorder.

The 4001 Darwin, upon which this review is based, comes with an internal 1 gigabyte hard drive, which is sufficient for about 200 track minutes of recording time. The maximum permitted disk size is 2Gb, which should be enough for most applications. A 50‑pin SCSI connector on the rear panel allows for connection to an external SCSI device for both recording and backup purposes. The manual goes into some detail about setting up an external drive for recording, specifying the minimum drive requirements as a rotation speed of at least 5400rpm, an access time of 12 milliseconds or better, with no thermal calibration/embedded servo design. The manual also goes on to clarify the relative merits of the types of drives available. A further optional SCSI port may be added, primarily designated for connection to a host computer.

Full Frontal Anatomy

Darwin's front panel is refreshingly uncluttered and the large, friendly, transport keys and bright track level meters certainly help boost the machine's 'instant familiarity' factor. Just below the meters are the eight track record enable keys. These flash when pressed to indicate that the corresponding track is in record mode. Recording will commence on any selected tracks when Darwin is placed into record mode using the transport controls. During recording, the track keys remain steadily lit. Emu also suggest the use of the record enable keys to mute selected tracks when editing. I was initially slightly nervous about employing this technique, but given Darwin's ability to undo numerous edits and recordings, there is little to get too worked up about.

Below the record enable keys are four 'Special Function' keys. The first key, Input Mode, defines how Darwin will handle monitoring during drop‑ins — either 'Auto Input' mode, where the recorded track will be monitored until the drop‑in is activated, or 'Normal' mode, where the signal arriving at the record enabled inputs will be heard regardless of whether Darwin is actually recording or not.

The second key, Rehearse Mode, allows drop‑ins to be rehearsed without any real recording taking place. The final two special function keys are ultimately destined to be user‑definable, although with the current software they are permanently assigned to edit selection and clipboard audition functions.

Screen navigation comes courtesy of four cursor keys, six 'soft' function keys and a 'beam me up Scotty' Exit key for a quick getaway. Data input (including alpha‑numeric characters) can be effected by a number of methods, including the numeric keypad, increment/decrement buttons and the jog/shuttle wheel. The numeric keypad's primary function is to act as a set of 10 instant locate points which can be accessed by a single keypress. Locate points are set by hitting the Store Locate key and selecting a numeric key to which is assigned the currently displayed time. Four banks of 10 locate points can be stored for each version of a song, and switching between banks is accomplished in the Locate page.

Emu put great store in Darwin's operational similarities to a tape‑based system and I think they've done a very good job in this respect. All of the transport keys work pretty much as expected, with one notable difference — near‑instantaneous response times. The fast‑forward and rewind keys are quite ingenious — they may be pressed up to three times in succession to achieve successively faster 'wind' times, up to 100 times normal speed. There is no cue/review function based on these keys, which I feel is a bit remiss. All cueing has to be performed by way of the jog/shuttle wheel, which requires you to stop playback. I would rather that the fast‑forward and rewind keys acted as cue controls when the machine was in play mode. With transport operations as nimble as these, I wouldn't at all mind pressing the Stop key before going into fast‑wind operation.

Signals arriving at Darwin's analogue inputs pass first through the +4dB/‑10dB pad before being digitised and passed into the routing section. The latter is analogous to a simple patchbay, with the inputs located at either side of the screen display and the eight recording tracks along the bottom. Using the cursor and function keys, any input (including the digital left/right signals) may be routed to any of Darwin's tracks. The internal mixer's outputs are also present to allow for internal mixdown in either mono or stereo. Usefully, Emu have provided several factory programmed routing configurations for the most common types of connection, such as input 1 to all eight tracks or inputs 1 and 2 alternating between odd/even‑numbered tracks.

Record Ready

Before any recording can commence, Darwin requires the creation of a 'Project'. A Project is a collection of recordings that must reside on a single physical device (drive). Projects may be deleted, renamed or copied, and be given a specified start time. The sample rate (48kHz or 44.1kHz) for a Project is set at creation time and may not be altered later.

A Project contains a number of 'Versions', which can basically be thought of as playlists (or Edit Decision Lists, as they are known in some circles), although these are significantly more sophisticated, as we shall see. Housekeeping functions include renaming, deleting and creating new Versions based on the one currently selected. Each of the eight tracks within a Version can be named with up to eight alpha‑numeric characters.

Making a recording is child's play. Select the tracks to be recorded on; have a quick look at the input levels; hit the Record and Play keys (at which point Darwin goes into record/pause); when you're ready to go, just press the Play key and give the guy with the digeridoo a nod to start playing. When the recording is finished (or the guy with the digeridoo has collapsed due to a poor circular breathing technique) simply hit the RTZ (Return To Zero) key, take the track(s) out of record mode and press Play to hear the fruits of your labours.

Virtual Slaves

Emu make use of the concept of 'Virtual Slave Reels' to describe the way in which their system of 'Versions' works. Not only is this aspect of Darwin's design philosophy by far its most powerful feature, but the analogy to slave reels is a reasonable one, making operation simpler to visualise and creative use easier.

As might be expected from a machine of this pedigree, the audio quality of results is superb. Operationally, however, Darwin is a bitter‑sweet experience.

Here's a working example. Let's assume you have made a recording that fills seven tracks, leaving track 8 free for backing vocals. The backing vocals are to consist of three doubled harmony lines that will (for the sake of simplicity in this example) be submixed into mono to appear in the final mix. A new Version is created, using the current Version as the template. In the new Version, you mix the seven recorded tracks internally and bounce them onto track 8. Now you use tracks 1 to 6 to record the backing vocal lines, whilst monitoring the mix on track 8. 'But surely you've recorded over the original backing tracks!?', I hear you cry. But nothing is lost since the original tracks are still safe and well back in the original Version. All that remains is to mix the six vocal lines onto track 7, copy the result onto the clipboard, return to the original Version and paste the mixed backing vocals into track 8. Mission accomplished — and all in the digital domain, too.

If the virtual reel concept still seems a little difficult to grasp, rest assured that using the system is far easier than explaining it! In no time at all I was making new Versions at the drop of a plectrum to allow for double‑tracked guitar parts, or adding effects to material originally recorded dry. This really is one of those obvious ideas that makes you wonder why nobody has ever done it this way before. The only criticism I have is that the internal mixer controls are only accessible from Darwin's front panel. This makes mixing internal bounces a bit of a headache. I would urge Emu to allow MIDI access to these controls, if possible, with a future software release to enable the use of physical controllers and mix automation.

Close To The Edit

Emu have endowed Darwin with a basic selection of editing functions. Sections may be cut, copied, inserted, replaced, and erased at will. The affected tracks are selected by use of the cursor keys and the ranges by use of the in/out soft function keys. Sections may be auditioned, allowing the user to preview an edit before it is actually done, and the crossfade time for edit points is adjustable between 0 and 100 milliseconds to help create 'seamless' drop‑ins. Any editing decision can be reversed by use of the 'Undo' feature, allowing the last 16 events to be displayed and undone. Darwin actually stores every initiated action, including recording or dropping in, and these also form entries on the Undo action list. All in all, the Undo function makes it very difficult to do much irrepairable damage with Darwin, provided you don't let things progress too far (ie. more than 16 actions). The last action may also be redone.

Darwin's audio scrubbing feature is welcome, though I found it difficult to achieve accuracy at low scrubbing speeds since playback became increasingly jerky. This is not helped by the track display, which shows recorded blocks but does nothing to indicate where actual audio signals are situated. The 'zoom' feature is also arguably redundant in the absence of any waveform display. Small dotted lines in the display show 1‑second interval markers in a bid to help matters, but they do little to make the task any easier. In fast‑wind modes, possibly due to the screen refresh rate, the dots even appeared to be running in the wrong direction — which completely threw me on one or two edits!

The clipboard is used to copy audio around, either within a Version or across to another. There did not seem to be a way to copy audio data between Projects, which might be a limitation for certain applications. The contents of the clipboard may be auditioned to check edits before they are actioned.

I did notice one or two bugs in the software. After completing some editing functions, the synchronisation of the edited track exhibited a tendancy to go awry. This usually seemed to cure itself once a rewind had been performed, although the same problem also occurred during an internal mixdown and found its way onto the resultant mixed track. One or two nasty disk error messages had me sweating during a particularly heavy editing session. This may have been down to the particular hard disk installed in the review machine, but the problem never occurred again, so I was unable to track it down to any specific area of usage. [According to Emu, this bug was found to be in the original down‑revision of the software in the review model, and was not a disk problem. The problem is cured in the latest revision production models — Ed.]

Every time a punch‑in or punch‑out is actioned, or any edit function is performed, Darwin adds 'events' to its internal playlist. The user is limited to 2000 events per Version and a single user action will typically create several internal events. The manual equates the 2000 event limit to about 50 punches on all eight tracks with crossfade, or 150 punches with crossfade turned off. Event usage is monitored from the Version Info page. If things become tight, Emu suggest that heavily edited tracks are bounced down to make a new, single event. This is probably advisable for any hard disk recording system.

I was somewhat surprised to note the lack of more advanced off‑line editing functions such as volume normalisation, fading, or time‑stretch. With such functions now available in many budget and mid‑priced samplers, I did expect to see Emu implement a smattering of them here.

For me, the most annoying flaw in Darwin's operating system was the inability to switch between screen pages without playback being halted. This became extremely annoying when flipping into the edit functions, but I did not expect to find the same thing happening when I tried to set locate points (but it does!). There didn't seem to be any way to set locate points on‑the‑fly, which is a frustrating omission, even for the early software revision. Emu would do well to take a long hard look at this, since it slows down operation considerably.

A Worthy Contender?

As might be expected from a machine of this pedigree, the audio quality of results is superb. Operationally, however, Darwin is a bitter‑sweet experience. The familiar tape‑like transport is as comfortable as a pair of old sneakers, yet the halt in proceedings every time you select a new screen page is like having to remove them every time you cross a busy road! I feel sure that a few software tweaks here and there could make Darwin a much friendlier machine, and Emu themselves are keen to point out that they intend to keep registered users aware of any such improvements.

I can't help thinking that we are seeing an immature, 'not quite ready', product here from Emu. Similar devices, such as the new Fostex DMT8 digital multitracker, are considerably cheaper and arguably more versatile. The lack of any facility for mix automation and the absence of any EQ facilities certainly make Darwin unsuitable as an all‑in‑one desktop recording solution. I see this recorder more likely to find its niche in replacing many of those ageing open‑reel multitracks in studios that have yet to take the plunge into digital recording. With the prospect of having to buy some additional form of external backup media, however, the cost of such an upgrade begins to look a little steep. If Emu were to get that S/PDIF port to handle disk backups to 'normal' audio DAT recorders then things would begin to look better, but the asking price still seems on the high side to me.

I'd advise potential purchasers to take a look at the Emu Darwin for the operational simplicity it presents and the versatility of the Virtual Tape Reel concept. If Emu can trim the software and start filling the option slots, then Darwin may evolve into something very worthwhile indeed. Until then, I have to say that I find the asking price hard to swallow.