In recent years, HHB's Portadat audio recording system based on Digital Audio Tape (DAT) has made believers of both TV and film audio professionals. But now HHB is looking to transition those believers to its next-generation product: the HHB PDR2000 Portadrive location sound recorder.
"This is for customers who are interested in something between our two-channel 16-bit recorders like our Portadat and something that allows for disk-based storage," says Ian Jones, managing director for HHB. "The unit has a 30GB 2.5-inch hard disk in a caddy with a docking station that can plug directly into a computer via SCSI-2 connectors."
HHB demonstrated a prototype at the IBC convention in Europe last year. The unit combines eight tracks of 24-bit/96-kHz recording to a removable hard-disk drive with on-board mixing and synchronization.
Features include three flexible 6-into-2 mixers to provide a stereo mix to disk, a simultaneous alternative mix, and a headphone monitoring mix. It also has six instantly recallable headphone presets that can be configured to monitor almost any point in the signal path. To help with quick backup, Jones notes, it can connect to an external DVD-RAM/DVD-R or DVD/RW-drive. The docking station allows it to be connected to either Mac or PC-based workstations.
