AATON CANTOR-X multi-track digital sound recorders Equipped with Firewire and Bluetooth

euro 14,790,00

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With Cantar, the recordist has permanent access treal mechanical faders, each devoted tone function only. Five mic and four line rotary analog prefaders, plus six linear digital mixer postfaders.
With Cantar's slanted working surface, the easily reachable faders are positioned in such a way that operator's hands rest on them in a perfectly natural position, whether Cantar is on the shoulder or the cart.

All weather controls
Even when the recordist has gloves on, Cantar's large rotating knobs allow him tbrowse the headphone grids, check input solos, foldback, line-out, etc.
A unique feature of Cantar is its waterproof, sandproof linear faders which dynamically set the postfader gain applied teach digital channel in the mixdown. An example of Aaton's attention tmechanical sturdiness: the mic-faders have their own friction pads and blocking stops tprotect them from rough treatment.
The low temperature LiION batteries are encased in a light and sturdy metal housing

Easy monitoring
Since the human eye better responds tchanging angles (ten o'clock, five o'clock...), the Cantar circular modulometers are particularly easy tmonitor; their ballistics perfectly emulate needle galvanometers.
The circular screens' dots and icons clearly display the monitoring grids, pan pot values, and input-to-track routings. They alsconstantly monitor the internal and external hard drives as well as DVD burning activity. The rectangular screen displays the Xa Xb channel levels plus useful data such as remaining disk space, battery voltage, scene IDs, and fader gain values down tthe dB whenever a rotary or linear knob is actuated. The s front panel provides an optimal viewing angle for both over the shoulder and cart use. The Cantar high contrast LCDs remain visible on a snow field under bright sunlight.

Protective niche for connectors
In and out cables gtthe rear keeping the connectors out of harm's way. The radimic receiver cables don't even have tleave the carrying bag. Since the cables and connectors are all oriented downwards when Cantar is used on the shoulder strap, they are protected from rain infiltration. The Firewire, AES-in, and Accessory sockets are alsextremely well protected, underneath the housing.

Mic preamps
The five mic inputs are equipped with highest quality impedance transformers. Aaton developed high dynamic range proprietary preamplifiers teliminate cumbersome conditioners. The powerful analog limiters are unobtrusive tbackground sound. With its five HiQ mic inputs Cantar is extremely well adapted t'Surround' recording: the mic1 prefader controls the other four, leaving them a +/-12dB balancing range. All channels (from AES, mic or line) can be MS declared; the signals are recorded as M and S and automatically decoded for monitoring during recording and playback. Note that when four radio-mics are connected tthe four independent line prefaders, Cantar becomes a nine-mic machine.

Long recording hours
The power consumption of a portable recorder is a potentially stressful issue on location. Cantar goes well beyond the twhour autonomy of other machines: with LiION batteries it runs for up tsixteen hours. When a battery approaches depletion, a warning reminds the operator ttoggle over tits twin.
Ntime is wasted powering Cantar up, a cold-start from zerpower t'REC' is done in less than five seconds. The external twin battery structure offers good mechanical protection for the hard-drive housing. Elastically suspended on either side of the unit, the batteries function as shock absorbers.

Firewire and Bluetooth
The internal hard drive and the built-in CD/DVD/DVD-Ram burner are Firewire connected. Cantar can simultaneously record on both the internal and external hard drives. Thanks tFirewire bidirectionality, a Mac/PC laptop can load softwares, copy/delete folders and files, and even burn a DVD within Cantar.
A Bluetooth PDA connected tCantar is a convenient way tset, store and load user configurations. Rent a Cantar, push your PDA "Config Upload", and the new recorder picks up where you left off last time.
Cantar's operational settings and physical parameters are displayed on the PDA screen: mic input status, filter values, phantom and limiter activation, fader couplings, battery voltage, remaining disk space, etc. Wherever you are on the set, you can modify the input routings, key in scene, take and notes, and control the eight channel modulometer levels.

Internal DVD-Ram/DVD/CD burner
General practice is tburn the day's two-track mixdown for the telecine or Avid on a CD, and all the tracks for the sound editor and final mixer on a DVD. This can be done on either an external Firewire burner or the Cantar DVD-Ram/DVD internal burner.
Another method is tconstantly perform an idle-copy on the internal DVD-Ram burner during the day.
The latest generation DVD-Ram burners are fast enough teliminate the need for audifile compression in the recorder itself.

Audipost compatibility
The Cantar file structure makes the flow chart tAvid, Protools, Pyramix, etc. very straightforward. The twreference channels generated by the built-in mixer are treated separately from the primary channels, C1 tC6. These twchannels - Xa, Xb - are recorded on tracks 1 and 2.
Thus, however the way they are imported, be it as a twtrack mixdown or an 8 channel multitrack group, the Avid NLEs put them in A1 and A2 on top of the auditimeline.
This feature, plus Cantar's on-the-fly disarming of any track (i.e. checking the level of a channel without recording it), ensures that the boom lands on A1 and the mix of RF mics on A2.






Nestled in your palm, Cantar's remote screen can be protected from direct sunlight and reflexions, close tyour eyes and fingers.









Specifications

Media

- Recording and playback tand from shock resistant and sealed 2.5" internal FireWire connected hard drive. Stores the sound of a complete film production.
- Simultaneous 8 track recording on internal hard drive or flash memory,and one external FireWire connected HDD. The 8 tracks can be either 6 digital fader controlled tracks plus 2 tracks receiving either the mix-down (bounce), or twAES inputs, or twline inputs.
- FAT32 formatting allows for up t127GB, i.e. up t60 hours depending on number of tracks and sample rate (up t96K). The removable internal disk is hot pluggable tPC or Mac workstations (Avid, FCP, Sadie, Fairlight, Pyramix Protools etc.)
- Fast copy texternal drives such as HDD and DVD-Ram powered by Cantar through FireWire, or copy ton board CDR/DVD+R burner.
- Not using a proprietary format nor compressed files, the Cantar internal hard disk is instantly accessible, through FireWire, from the desktop of a PC or Mac laptop: a quick way tmake copies tother medias, tinsure TCP/IP internet transmission and load Cantar software updates.

AudiFormat

- AES31 BWF Monophonic tracks for instant use by any computer or mixing console with nde-interleaving nor decompressing treatment.
- Built-in CDR burner delivers IS9660 Monor Poly files (stereinterleaved) for on-the-fly telecine syncing and editing stations. If need be, the Pyramix LRC® 'Lossless Real-time Coding' can be activated tburn the twtrack mixdown of three hours of multitrack recording on a single CDR.
- 16 and 24 bit, 44.1Khz t96.096Khz sampling rates in & out. Built-in sample converters allow for any rates.
- 'Working day' based session recording. AES31-3 (BWF) audifiles with dynamic gain metadata.
- Management of several projects on the same disk.
- Files sorted on a day tday basis.
- Automatic 'unique identifier' file name generator.
- Circled takes, slate locators, sc&tk Ids etc. are entered from either the Cantar control panel or from a wireless (Bluetooth) connected PDA.
- Metadata (e.g. scene & take & comments, in and out points etc.) is delivered as ALE lists and embedded in the AES31 description field that Avid v11, Xpress-DV and FCP import (see http://www.aaton.com/products/post/indaw/ flow chart)
- Audifiles are compatible with the Aaton Keylink (telecine code reader with on the fly audisyncing), and the Aaton InDaw (videpost syncing station).

Inputs

- Nine simultaneous analog inputs on XLRs:
Five low noise mic preamps with isolation 10dBU very high quality transformers (Zin = 2KOhm each with its own 48V Phantom supply (40mA distributed tthe five mics), analog HP filter (60 t240, -6 and -12 db slope, plus LFA) and analog domain limiter. Twgangable pairs (gain, limiter, and filter).
Four analog line inputs, G = +15dB, max level +22dB. Zin = 4.4KOhm.
- Eight AES inputs, each pair with its own sample rate converter.
- File Playback from the internal disk, for simultaneous recording and playback (e.g. phone conversations and music videos).

Mixer and outputs

- All 18 inputs can be mixed and routed to:
One t8 tracks
Stere1/4" headphone (automatic MS decoding). 65mW (70 Ohm), 140mW (32 Ohm), 560mW (8 Ohm).
Twsymmetrical analog line (XLR-5).
Twasymmetrical analog wireless IFB (mini-jack).
Eight AES with sample rate converters

Advances in the field recorder domain

- all routing and physical configurations are memorized and can be recalled.They can alsbe stored in a PDA or laptop for instant programation of a new machine.
- Built-in, dustproof and waterproof six linear fader mixer (patent pending) for comprehensive 'dynamic' control of the twtrack mixdown. Individual gain values are stored using XML syntax as a guide for the final sound- mixing stage.

Metering

- Dial shapped modulometers with 1 dB increments with peak, clip and limiter-in-action indicators.
- User-selectable ballistics.
- High contrast LCD displays highly visible in direct sunlight. Adjustable back-lighting.
- Swivelling display panel optimizes visibility for shoulder strap and cart.

Timecode and Chase

- 1ppm Tcxo reference internal clock, eight hours before re-jamming.
- Dual Smpte and AatonCode jamming.
- Timecode i/through Lemo-5.
- SMPTE Chase: LTC and videsynced AES outputs for on-location syncing/dubbing of digital videtapes. at 23.98 -24 -25 -29.97 -30fps

Power

- Aaton's operating system insures low power operation: 500mA in test with all inputs activated, ultra-fast cold start-up (<5 sec), and fail-safe disk control.
- Twidentical on board quick release Aaton batteries (4 pin XLR) insure seamless switchover during recording (NP1s can be used too).
- Depending on the "test-to-record" ratio, one on-board battery set lasts from 10 t15 hours.

Miscellaneous

- 1 to 10 second pre-record.
- Immediate playback of the last recorded file.
- Play back scrub, in-points markers and slate markers.
- Softwares and pre-configured routings can be downloaded from Aaton's servers and transmitted tthe core OS by FireWire.
- Reference tone and warning generator.
- Open mechanical structure with independant Analog, Digital and Display modules for easy maintenance and - 'anti-obsolescence' - upgrades.
- RS422 for VTR remote control through Sub D-15 serial com.
- Wireless Bluetooth link tand from Palm PDAs.

Physical

- Housings made of molded aluminium. Waterproof, dustproof faders.
- Dimensions: 230 x 310 x 80 mm (9 x 12 x 3.2")
- Weight 3.2 kg (7.5lbs), without battery.










Ljubljana opera house (20 May2005)
Gasper Loborec: recording a premiere of brand new Slovenian opera "Brothers"
(conducted by French conductor Pierre-Dominique Ponnelle

larger size





Jim Jarmusch and Drew Kunin
on "Broken Flowers"
Grand Prix Cannes 2005

larger size