Oh, the beauty of having a great piece of gear is, all the wonderful component accessories that go along to have the complete package. Once you have an HDR, one would wonder how much expansion abilities the unit has. Lets say you have 3 HDRs with a SMPTE card on the lead unit, hard drives maxed out, 2 effects cards in the other two units, and a modular CDR for your final stage. You need one more item to complete this package before you can call yourself a studio owner......A CONTROLLER!

Vestax has the MX-1 and the MX-2 controllers. These devices are all you need to finish the job of, recording and mixing. The MXs control the HDRs through MMC (MIDI machine control). This is the same way the computer mixers work (for those of you who downloaded the MP6 and MP8). The physical mixer has locate points, snapshot recall, track arming and muting, assignable knobs, 8 faders and a tape based transport control. The best way to control your HDR from your engineering chair.

These devices are a smart investment as far as wear and tear on your HDR. But the question poses....... What if I can't find one? Is there an alternative? Yes, there is. JL Cooper is a company well known for their universal sync boxes and transport controllers. Personally, I think JL Cooper designed the MX-1 for Vestax (that is just a hunch). 3 units I can think of are JLCs Cue Point, CS-10 and BB3. The Cue Point is usually marketed with ADATs and it's compatibles, AKAI DRs, DA-88s, EMU Darwin's and our own HDR-8. Minus the 2 tracks it should work with HDR-6s as well but, for just transport purposes alone, get a BB3. Very simple and very affordable.

The Cue Point is a bells and whistles unit though, it doesn't have faders. Its mainly for external gear record lists who need transports, track arming and SMPTE. For you all digital domain introvert's, the CS-10 is your piece. It basically looks like a generic MX-1. There are two versions CS-10 and CS-10 II which, I think one doesn't have the MMC (and that's what we need to control the HDRs). The other supports computer based hard disc recording. Visit the JLC site form the link on the options page.

These following tips were sent in from community member Robert Kishoro

HDR SERIES --- various issues

You may have noticed that as you "stack" hdr6 or 8s, the noise floor tends to increase. This is usually just a little bit of noticeable hum...... this seems to have to do with the Vestax grounding scheme, anyway, the practical fix--- more than other gear ive used the vestax wants to be connected to a really well grounded outlet including ANY other connected gear. So review your grounding, including cheap power strips. Next, try NOT fastening(grounding) the HDR units to your rack.

Then ground a single AUX (in) channel to the rack or your mixer chassis, this has worked for me........ I may never know exactly why, your results may vary.

RF BLEED

You may have noticed that the HDR series emits radio frequency hash similar to a PC, Practical Fix. Same as above plus try buying two RF SELF ATTACHING CHOKES and attaching to the power lead cables/left side near transformer. If you place a unit high in a room then that's a little TV tower isn't it?

FOOT SWITCH PUNCH

You may have noticed that once in a great while foot switch punch in will crash the HDR series---- its switch "bounce" I suspect. For string players like me, this is not so fun... "intuitive" punching is a great feature. The good news----faster, larger drive and this disappears.

Y CABLES

An alternative to a previous post, simply solder a high quality 2k resistor in the hot path of each cable output TRS. Now the cables have become a simple mixer no load issues, no need to break into your machine, if you then need to connect to the dreaded RCA just buy some radio shack adapter's. Quarter inch to RCA, the output will be just a little lower but, every other device should work just fine, no filtering issues. 4k works well also, maybe a better first value.

ERRATIC

Check the Molex connectors, they are an older style- on the AUX board you can solder the AUX end of the cable directly to the pins.

HDR6--- OP AMP UPGRADE

There are at least two versions of the HDR6 the first version cut a few less important corners but lacked some of the "monitor back" features of the second. Fortunately the first version can be modified fairly easily simply matching the hand soldered mods you see visually as differences between the two...... if this seems complicated or daunting then its best not to do it......but for anyone who cares, the original version uses op amps known as ne5532. This is a dual op amp with many great audio features, you simply replace the generic op amps with 8 pin sockets paying special attention to the direction of the chips, sockets back in same direction, right? then you need the same number of ICs plus say four extra.

The new ICS will be SIGNETICS 5532AN OR 5532A will work as well, the amps are all located on the right side of the board in a line all, with the above number can/should be switched. This is not a minor difference in sound, especially by toady's standards. If your amps read 353 or something similar there is no "easy" fix for this..... 353s ARE WIDELY USED so its not a "K-Mart" device. But, its definitely not a first choice for pro gear... if you choose to change these you must change a resistor and a cap for each one, highly not recommend.

The difference? higher output, "warmer' output, no mushy phase, extended response, more consistent response regardless of temp or load. truly digital noise floor, extremely wide dynamic range. The signetics5532 is made by phillips----- who invented this ic----- all others are "knockoffs". You may find that suddenly you like the analog output of the HDR much more than the digital, but that's partly an issue of your other gear..... and needs...... for certain you can suddenly rely on high quality outboard gear and go several generations this way. I personally do not use any internal HDR effects and find no problems with outboards---many advantages to this I find the static warning goes triple here--- the Phillips mixers ahead of these amps are very delicate....please keep this in mind.

BREAKING THE BARRIERS: 6GIG AND BEYOND
as of five months from this posting I needed to get beyond the two gig limitations that seemed to exist for the HDR6 as many of you may know Vestax was a little too busy to really test a range of drives for this product line.... so here I will recommend what I know will work and some surprising little benefits and issues. This will work for hdr8s also.

Oddly enough the Samsung series of drives not only work well but at about one third the noise level of the original IBM or even the noisier Seagate. The model I have used day in and day out which brings 3 hours of rec time is the Samsung model
VG36483A-6.4 or 6.1GIG. "OBVIOUSLY" two of these drives in each unit set the stage for quality internal backups or six hours of continuos recording. On that note there truly does not appear to be an upper limit to the size of the drives used. When you exceed the the normal time window limit a decimal point appears and it just continues on.

Beyond the obvious, suddenly all of the editing functions are much, much, faster. Playlist reduce is flying even though the actual disk space is so much larger. Boot up is within seconds. The unit seems"freed" from some invisible task so the transport and other functions just seem smoother. The sound, I have no way of proving this one but, it certainly does seem to be true. The audio with this drive installed simply seems less "grainy" more accurate in the upper mids to highs
than the previous drives... this is more noticeable on the original Vestax HDR version (I'll cover later). It is a credit to the actual designer of the HDR series that this could be so...... just think of the confusion concerning large disk support in the PC market and this is an issue with other HDR units as well.

There is an 8 gig and 10 gig unit available now in the same Samsung series, you can obtain these drives from "boldata" systems in San Fransisco Boldata is a huge company that sells PCs to resale's but if you are nice they will deal with you. They may not have the precise model number at hand but if its Samsung with a similar prefix it should work--- 6.4gig 160.00 five months ago.

In addition, because of udma standards its very possible that many newer drives will work Even the one that came with your PC or other gear. I can only guarantee the above drive so look before you leap. There are faster drives with better reps than Samsung so its very likely not the only one.

ISSUES
As you see posted a recommended fan setup. If you switch to a larger drive/drives you will absolutely need a fan, larger drive = more heat. If you install two larger drives then this is a suggested alternative to the that posted. Using the same recommended fan / procedure, fashion a little L brace and attach to the center screw of disk table / far right. Then attach a single post of fan with a long little screw to the "bendable" brace. Bend the brace back at an angle until the cover fits. The fan will give airflow directly over the two drives. This may help if you have HDRs in racks (even with airspace), or the original post idea may work just fine. IF YOUR DRIVE HANGS, this is a sign of overheating, this has only happened once with the drives above, they will run in a standard PC all day long with no problem. Even after the hang no damage and no loss of data. If this happens, install/check fan/ choose a better fan/ be sure about fan direction.

Robert