Tascam Digital Audio Production Environment SX-1 Reference Manual

							Part VIII–Data Entry, System & File Management
 TASCAM SX-1 Reference Manual 171
In this section we are concerned with the controls on 
the right hand side of this tab:
The 
Mixdown Enable button enables Mixdown mode. 
Pressing this button sends the machine into record 
all-safe, meaning that nothing can be recorded on any 
of the slots. 
Notice the Record button at the top of the VGA dis-
plays an “M” to let you know you’re in Mixdown 
mode:If the transport is moving and Record is pressed, the 
SX-1 will bounce the audio coming out of the L/R 
Buss to a stereo file, with the resulting file named 
according to the text entered in the 
Mixdown Base Name 
field. Every time mixdown mode is enabled, the 
machine will automatically increment the name with 
a Mix number (“Mixdown 1” Mixdown 2”, etc.). 
The 
Mixdown Take Names field displays the names that 
will be given to the right and left side of the next ste-
reo file created in Mixdown mode. 
The 
Create Mix button changes the manner in which the 
SX-1 exits Mixdown mode. With this button 
checked, the machine will create an entirely new 
Mixfile upon exiting Mixdown mode. This Mixfile 
will be loaded, and the stereo file from the bounce 
will be loaded into the first two HDR slots – with the 
mixer channels panned and linked accordingly. To 
verify that your mix printed correctly, simply press 
PLAY. When you are finished listening to your mix-
down and wish to return to the SX-1’s previous state, 
load the previous Mixfile (from the tab at the top of 
the VGA screen or the 
Mix tab on the Automation 
screen).
On the LCD
The behavior of the machine as controlled by the 
LCD is identical. To view the graphical differences, 
press the 
MASTER key in the MAIN DISPLAY 
MODES
 section of the surface. 
You should see this on the LCD:
The 
Mixdown Take Names field displays the names that 
will be given to the right and left side of the next ste-
reo file created in Mixdown mode. 
The 
Mixdown Enabled ON and OFF buttons enable or dis-
able Mixdown mode.Highlighting the 
Mixdown Name line with the cursor 
and tweaking the 
Edit Param knob will bring up this 
display:
Use the controls that appear at the right side of the 
screen to navigate through the name field, and use 
the numeric keypad to enter the actual characters. 
You can use it just like a cell (mobile) phone or regu-
lar telephone with letters on the keypad—press the 
“1” key once for an “a”, press it twice for a “b”, three 
times for a “c”, etc. Press the 
Accept key when you’ve 
finished editing the name. 
						

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In Surround Mode – what changes?
If the mixing console is set to one of the surround 
modes, the behavior of Mixdown mode is changed 
slightly, in that the audio bounced down to the Mix-down file originates from the surround mix busses, 
not the L/R Buss. 
On the VGA
In surround, the VGA Global tab looks like this: You will notice that the Take names reflect which 
speaker/surround buss the file relates to. The Mix-
down file still uses the text in the 
Mixdown Base Name 
field as its point of reference, but each individual 
audio file also receives the name of its source/
destination.
On the LCD
On the LCD, just as on the VGA, the only thing that 
changes in the display of surround is that the 
Mixdown 
Take Names
 field shows six files (in 5.1 surround) 
instead of two.From the 
MAIN DISPLAY MODE section, press 
MASTER, then press the MIXDOWN soft key.  
						

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Working With the CD Burner
The CD Burning program on the SX-1 can create 
both Red Book audio and ISO 9660 CDs. You will 
find that it has a number of unique features, some of 
which are not available in most other burning 
programs.
When creating Red Book audio or ISO 9660 data 
CD’s, you can access the burning program by press-ing the MASTER key in the MAIN DISPLAY MODES 
section. 
At the top of the VGA screen you will see the 
Type 
tab. Use this tab to select either 
Red Book CD (for audio 
CDs that can be played back in any CD player) or 
ISO 
Data CD
 (for data CDs that can also be read by most 
computers).
ISO Data CD
When ISO CD is chosen, the VGA screen should look 
like this:
The bottom half of the screen is devoted to selecting 
and arranging files for data CD burning. The 
Import 
Volume
 tab selects one of the connected and mounted 
devices as the import volume (the volume from 
which files will be selected for CD burning). If you 
have nothing connected to the SX-1 via SCSI, this 
list will likely only have 
Internal HD as an option.
The 
Import Files register will normally default to show-
ing three folders: the Import Folder, the Export 
folder, and the All Files folder. Double-clicking on a folder with the mouse will open it, while pressing the 
button will take you one step back in the file hier-
archy (the   button acts just like the “Back” button 
in a Web browser).
The SX-1 cannot browse audio files in separate fold-
ers, meaning that selecting the 
All Files folder will 
show you all of the audio files on disc. Find and 
select the desired audio files for CD burning, and add 
them to the selection by pressing the 
OK button to the 
left of the 
Files register. You will add them one at a  
						

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time. As you add files, you will notice that a Total Files 
and a 
Total Size readout will update with each addition. 
When you have assembled all of the desired audio 
files for your ISO data CD, give the CD a name by 
entering one in the 
CD Name field to the right of the 
Files register. Once you have named the CD with your 
PS/2 keyboard, press the 
Burn CD button to the right of 
the 
CD Name field. A progress bar will appear, letting 
you know the status of the burning program. The disc 
will eject when finished.
Red Book Audio CD
If you select Red Book CD from the Type tab at the top of 
the VGA screen, the layout of the bottom screen will 
change to this:
To add a stereo file, press the 
New button to the bot-
tom right of the screen.One of these will appear:
The use of this bar requires some explanation:
The SX-1 uses Takes to load the stereo files for burn-
ing. This means that audio Clips are not available for 
direct import into the burning program. Any audio 
file that you wish to be burned to a CD in Red Book 
audio format must be loaded into a Take slot first, 
before it can be loaded into the bar above. While this 
might at first seem unusual, looking closer at the 
functionality this provides will show its merit. As 
well, consider the fact that any stereo file created in 
Mixdown mode is already, by its very nature, a Take.  
One advantage to using Takes is that you can pre-
configure an entire audio CD by loading the desired 
mixes onto a pair of Takes and arranging from there. 
Using this method, you can drag files around to get 
the desired amount of space between them, as well as 
crossfading one song into the next by using the same 
tools you’re used to for editing audio waveforms. Look again at the slot above that appears when you 
press the New button on the bottom right of the VGA 
screen.
The 
Pause/Pre Gap field is where you manually enter 
the amount of space between the previous Take and 
this one. If the Take in question is the first one, this 
field sets the amount of time it takes to play the CD 
when it is loaded and the first track is selected by the 
CD player.
The 
Left Take field has an arrow, which denotes a pull-
down menu. The pulldown menu allows you to 
search for the desired files by project. When you find 
the desired file and select it, it will be loaded into the 
Left Take slot.  As a benefit, when you load the left side 
of a stereo mix labeled some name followed by either 
a “L” or “R” (to denote left or right), the burning pro-
gram will automatically load the corresponding right 
side of the Mix. Incidentally, this works inversely for 
the 
Right Take field. 
						

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Important! The Take Start Time and Take End Time 
fields address which part of the Take is played on this 
CD Track. For instance, if you had created and 
loaded a Mixdown pass that started at 00:48:00:00 
and ended at 00:52:00:00:in the original session, 
leaving these fields blank would result in a CD Track 
fifty-two minutes long. As well, the audio for that 
track would not begin until the 48th minute. This is 
obviously a function that you need to become famil-
iar with.
If all of the Takes for the mixes you load into the 
burning program begin at 00:00:00:00, and you leave 
the 
Pause/Pre Gap field at the default, the audio CD will 
be created with a two second gap between Tracks. If 
you want to pre-assemble your CD on the Tracks 
window by loading multiple mixes into two slots and 
arranging them, you would simply load the two takes 
in question into multiple slots in the burning program 
(as many slots as you want CD Tracks). Then use the 
“Take Start Time” and 
Take End Time fields to deter-
mine which parts of the Take get played on each CD 
Track.The numbered buttons at the very left of the bar 
(which light up yellow when pressed) select a Take 
for editing, which in this case mainly applies to the 
use of the buttons to the right of the Track field. In a 
situation where more than one Take is loaded, select-
ing a Take that is lower down the list and pressing the 
UP button will move the selected Take up one incre-
ment. Selecting a Take and pressing the 
DOWN button 
will have the opposite effect and move the Take 
down one slot. Selecting a Take and pressing the 
DELETE button will remove the entire slot from the list.
When you are finished assembling your audio CD, 
press 
Burn CD to begin creating the disc.
The 
CP button turns on SCMS copy protection, which 
will allow only one copy to be made of your CD. The 
ISRC field allows you to enter information about 
your project in space on the disc provided by the Red 
Book specification. This information can be read in 
certain CD players. As well, the UPC field to the 
right of the slots is typically reserved for retail UPC 
codes.
The SX-1 and Hard Drives
Care and feeding, and audio file behavior
As you are no doubt aware, the SX-1 uses a hard 
drive to store all of its data on, both project-wise and 
audio-wise. The following section is geared toward getting you familiar with the SX-1’s disk behavior, 
and how to manage your data.
The Philosophy – drives in general
Although there are other forms of digital media 
(solid state and digital tape, for instance), the hard 
drive is the standard storage device of all computer-
based products. You will see that the SX-1 addresses 
these standards as very few other devices can.
Every hard drive has a directory (sometimes known 
as a catalog) that spans the entire disc, which tells the 
drive where to deposit and retrieve data. Each com-
mon operating system has a disk directory – com-
monly referred to as a format – that it uses as a 
standard. For example, machines running a modern 
Windows operating system use FAT32 as their native 
drive format, while modern Macintoshes use HFS+. 
The SX-1 runs on the Be operating system, which 
uses the BFS disk format. 
The format itself determines a number of things 
about the way data is written to the drive, including 
block size (the size of the smallest data block on the drive’s surface – which can range anywhere between 
4 and 512K) and file type. 
Getting much deeper into the architecture of hard 
drives is unnecessary in this section, except to note 
that drive formats grew and developed to support 
operating systems – and thus determine some of the 
behavior of each. This is the reason why the SX-1 
writes Sound Designer II audio files to an HFS+ 
drive format (used on Macintosh computers and 
DAW’s), but writes Broadcast Wave audio files to 
FAT32 (Windows) and BFS (Be operating system) 
drives.
NOTE
The validity (health) of a hard drive’s format is 
extremely important, because if it becomes corrupted 
or compromised in any way, the possibility of lost data 
increases exponentially. 
						

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Drives and the SX-1
The SX-1 comes with one internal IDE hard drive - 
segmented into two virtual hard drives or partitions – 
one for audio and one for the system software. These 
partitions are seen by the SX1 as separate drives 
(because they have separate formats), and can be 
managed as such (meaning that you can manage files 
on one partition without affecting the other). As well, 
the machine comes with UltraWide SCSI capability, 
accessed either by the port on the rear panel, or the 
slot underneath the CDRW drive on the front of the 
unit.
The internal drive is formatted to BFS, but the SX-1 
is capable of mounting all three previously men-
tioned format types and their variations via SCSI: 
BFS, FAT32, HFS, and HFS+.It is possible to have as many as four external drives 
running in conjunction with the internal drive, in spe-
cific configurations that will be covered in a few 
pages. Even though the internal drive is formatted to 
BFS, you can connect any combination (up to four) 
of HFS, HFS+ and FAT32 drives via SCSI and have 
them running at the same time.
NOTE
Even though they cannot be viewed through the SX-1’s 
user interface, the formats for FAT32 and HFS drives 
work exactly the same as they do when connected to 
their desktop counterparts. This means that if you were 
to connect an HFS drive (that you had an SX-1 project 
on) to a Mac, you would see the folders and icons you 
are used to.
What is actually put on the drive
A project created on the SX1, when moved to a desk-
top system, would be displayed in much the same 
way that a project created in any other application 
would look.
There are three basic folders created by the SX-1 on 
a hard drive, the first of which is the TL Projects 
folder (the main folder for SX-1 projects). Inside the 
TL Projects folder sit the individual Project folders 
themselves, with each Project Folder labeled by the 
name entered on the New Project screen, and each 
containing a number of different files:
• an Audio Files folder (which contains the raw 
audio files, or Clips, from the Project) 
• a Data Files folder (which contains all of the data 
written to eq, compression, effects processors, etc) 
• a Track Files folder (which contains all of the Take 
data – basically, all of the EDL information, or 
which files get placed at which time)
• a single file named “something.tl”, which is the 
Project file itself.
There are two other folders: TL Imports and TL 
Exports. These folders serve as buffers for the SX-1 
software, which cannot directly read or store certain 
types of data without conversion. When an SMF file 
is exported to the internal drive, the file ends up in 
the TL Exports folder. The TL Imports folder can be 
used as a storage area for audio you intend to import 
into an SX-1 session, as well as storage for data you wish to remain immune from a Disk Cleanup 
command. 
NOTE
It is important to note that you cannot place any data 
inside the TL Imports folder from within the SX-1 itself. 
The only way to put files inside the TL Folder is by 
mounting the drive on a desktop computer. As well, 
once you have data in this folder, the only way to delete 
those files (without affecting the other data on that 
drive) is to move the drive to an external machine.
Obviously, reformatting the drive will clear all of the 
data on the drive.
If you never connect a SCSI drive to the SX-1 and 
then take that data to a desktop computer, this infor-
mation is largely irrelevant (because all of these 
operations are transparent when working on the unit 
itself). However, it is always a good idea to know 
how something in your system works (and what to 
expect), should you attempt to do something you 
have never done before.
NOTE
It is worth mentioning that the SX-1 and the units it 
derives from (the MX-2424 and the MM series of TAS-
CAM recorders) are some of the only machines available 
with the ability to mount common drive formats. These 
units are some of the only machines available that write 
time-stamped SDII and Broadcast Wave audio files 
natively, meaning that there is no need for conversion 
when taking your data to another system. This flexibil-
ity is one of the core design concepts behind the SX-1. 
						

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What is happening when the SX-1 is recording
The SX-1 has a very fast hard disk engine, which is 
nearly as capable of punching in and out of record as 
fast and as many times in thirty seconds as you are. 
This performance is a result of the manner in which 
the SX-1’s hard disk recorder deals with audio data.
Recording passes are written to disk in real time, 
after passing through RAM buffers. The speed of the 
disk engine itself is achieved by a combination of 
buffer maintenance and hardware throughput. 
When you are finished recording a pass, the audio 
just recorded is placed for playback upon the Take in 
the position it was recorded. If data already existed 
on the Take in that position (which was seemingly 
overwritten), pressing Undo will restore that data. If 
at least a slice of the previous audio still exists on a 
Take, you can right-click on a waveform and uncover 
the rest of the file if you wish.
Basically, a Take is a list of which audio files were 
played and when, which is also a simplified descrip-
tion of an EDL – or Edit Decision List. The SX-1 (and MX-series machines) uses the last 
audio placed on the Take as current, which means 
that if you were to close the project or shut the 
machine down, when you reloaded the project the 
audio last loaded on the Take would be what you 
would see. Once you shut down the SX-1 or close a 
session, you lose the ability to Undo back to a previ-
ous state. 
TIP
Remember however, you can always import the Clips 
back into a Take from the Clip Browser.
The main concept to understand is, if you wish to 
keep all of your record passes as separate Takes (as 
opposed to Clips you can always import back into the 
project), you’ll need to create a new Take before each 
record pass. After you are finished recording, you 
can always load the different Takes and comp them 
together using Mixdown Mode.
The way the SX-1 handles data 
The disk engine (the disk engine inside the SX-1, and 
the MX and MM series machines) handles data a bit 
differently from the way that desktop computers do, 
in order to take full advantage of the speed of the sys-
tem. As a result, there are a few conventions of desk-
top systems that do not apply to the SX-1. 
When you make a Copy of a project, the destination 
volume determines the behavior of the copy some-
what. 
If you Copy a project from the internal drive to itself:
• All of the Track, Project and Data files are copied 
to their new location.
• The Audio Files are not copied.
The reason for this is that the Timeline engine can 
freely exchange audio files between projects, and it 
can only likes to deal with one copy of the same 
audio file at a time. 
If you Copy a project from the internal drive to an 
external volume, either FAT32 or HFS:
• All of the Track, Project, and Data files are copied 
to their new location.
• If the destination volume is FAT 32, the audio files 
are copied to their new location with no change.• If the destination volume is HFS or HFS+, the 
audio files are copied to their new location, and are 
converted to SDII in the process.
The reason for this behavior stems from the fact the 
SX-1 (and MX-2424) always writes SDII files to 
Mac volumes. FAT 32 and BFS volumes must always 
use Broadcast Wave files. When a Copy is done from 
one volume type to another, the audio files are auto-
matically converted along the way.
TIP
This is actually a very fast way to batch-convert a num-
ber of audio files between formats! 
Thus, if you Copy a project from HFS to FAT32 or 
vice versa:
• The Data, Track and Project files are copied to their 
new locations.
• All of the audio files are converted to the native file 
format of the volume.
If you Copy a Project from one volume to another, 
and the project already exists on the destination vol-
ume:
• The Data, Track and Project files are copied to their 
new locations.
• The SX-1 will search the destination drive, looking 
for the audio files that are linked to the project  
						

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being copied. If those audio files already exist on 
the destination volume, they will not be copied. 
This saves time and disk space.The preceding description is the same for a project 
being Restored from a Backup.
Explanation of Disk Cleanup and Low Level Format
After a number of projects have been created and 
backed up on your drive, and a number of projects 
have been deleted, a number of orphan files will exist 
on your drive. Disk Cleanup on the Drive Manage-
ment Screen can take care of this.
What Disk Cleanup does involves searching out the 
entire hard disk, looking for audio files that no longer 
reference any EDLs on the drive. This means that the 
SX-1 looks for any files that don’t belong to any ses-
sion currently stored on the drive being cleaned. If 
the SX-1 finds any files that don’t belong to any 
Project file currently on that drive, it will delete 
them. This is an easy way to free up a potentially 
large amount of disk space.
CAUTION
The behavior of disk cleanup means that you only select 
it when you know you have backed up every file that you need! If you are not absolutely sure that you have 
everything backed up to your satisfaction, wait until 
you are before you perform a Disk Cleanup. Files 
deleted with Disk Cleanup are not recoverable by any 
normal means.
Low Level Format is a standard term that refers to an 
operation that “zeros the disk”. When a drive is sim-
ply “intialized”, all of the header data pointing to 
files on the disc are zeroed. The data itself remains 
on the plates until something is physically written 
over it.
When Low Level Format is chosen, all of the data on 
the drive is zeroed, meaning that the drive is wiped 
completely clean. This is a very good procedure to do 
whenever you are wiping a drive. 
How the Backup file is made
When you make a Backup to a CD-R or other backup 
media (DVD-RAM, for instance), the SX-1 creates 
one file to go onto the backup volume. This is done 
by searching out every relevant file to the Project 
being backed up, and creating a separate archive for 
them. 
If you were to move an SX-1 SCSI volume to your 
Windows machine or Mac, you would see a file in 
the root directory named TL_WAVEFORM_DB (with a number after “DB”). This file holds the entire 
waveform database for that hard drive in it, which is 
why it is likely larger than all of the other text files in 
the Project folders. When you create a Backup, the 
SX-1 searches through the Waveform database file 
looking for the overview (waveform) data relevant to 
your Project, and those overview files are included in 
the Backup file.
Quick general behavior
• Like a Mac, once the SX-1 has mounted and recog-
nized a CD-ROM in its drive, that CD-ROM can-
not be ejected by the button on the front of the 
drive itself. The drive must be ejected from the SX-
1 itself.
• The SX-1 can only mount SCSI volumes once per 
boot, which means that to switch out a removable 
SCSI drive, you have to power cycle.
• Remember that devices designed only for backup, 
like tape drives and non-formatted DVD-RAM 
(which do not have a directory), can only be glo-
bally initialized. This means that you cannot erase one tune at a time, you must erase the entire vol-
ume. This is standard for all backup media.
• A backup CD produced on an SX-1 is a standard 
ISO dic structure. This allows it to be mounted on a 
PC, for example, allowing data to be transferred 
and consolidated with other PC-based data of the 
same project (subject to proper directory structure 
being maintained).
• A Low Level Format will take longer, but should 
be done anytime you are wiping an entire drive. 
This is to insure drive health and data safety.
• When you are exporting an SMF or some similar 
type of data, the files go into the TL Export folder. 
						

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Backing Up
To ensure that your projects do not become damaged 
or lost, it is important to back up your working ses-
sion drives on a regular basis (say, at least every 20 
hours—or whenever you have done a significant 
amount of work that would be impossible to recre-
ate). This guarantees that if something does happen 
to your project files, you will have a backup copy 
that contains a good portion of your work.
See the previous section for a fuller explanation of 
the backup file format, etc.NOTE
The SX-1 will create a backup file in the Timeline BU for-
mat from these screens. This format condenses all of the 
individual elements of a project into one file that can 
be imported by any TASCAM/Timeline machine (MX-
2424, MMR-8, MMP-16). The type of target (or destina-
tion) backup volume does not influence the type of file 
made from a 
Backup screen. 
If you wish to take your work to a non-TASCAM device 
(a DAW such as Nuendo or Logic Audio that supports 
Open TL, for instance), you’ll need to Copy your project 
onto a valid connected FAT32 or HFS drive. An MX-2424 
can always read all of the files that the SX-1 creates.
Backup Displays
Backup controls are available from both VGA and 
LCD screens. Use these screens to facilitate a backup 
of your working drives.
VGA Project Backup Tab
From the MAIN DISPLAY MODE section, press 
PROJECT/ BACKUP to reach the Project screen. Then 
click on the 
Backup Projects tab.
Vo lu me  This menu selects the drive that contains 
the project you want to back up.
Project In this window you select the project you 
want to back up.
BACKUP Click here to begin the backup process of 
the selected project.
RESTORE Click here to restorea previously backed 
up project. 
						

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VERIFY Check this box to enable data verification 
on backup and restore operations.
Backup Volume In this field, you select the vol-
ume you would like to back up to (or the volume 
where the project files that you want to restore 
reside).
Backup Project In this window, you select the 
project files that you want to restore.
“CD” icon Ejects media in the CD-RW drive.
ERASE This command erases the selected backup 
volume. In the case of CD-RW, a blank disc must 
first be erased before it is usable. After it has been 
erased, a CD-RW disc will show up as a valid backup 
volume.
LCD Backup Screen
This LCD screen reflects the Backup Projects param-
eters found on the 
Backup Projects tab of the VGA 
Project screen. Most of the parameters found on this 
screen are identical to the parameters found in the 
VGA 
Manage Projects tab and are explained on the pre-
vious pages. Only those parameters that are unique to 
this LCD screen are explained here.Press 
SHIFT on the Keypad. Then, from the MAIN 
DISPLAY MODE
 section, press PROJECT.
BACKUP Begins the backup process of the selected 
project.
RESTORE Begins the restore process of the selected 
project.
ERASE MEDIA Pressing this soft key will erase 
the currently selected backup volume.
EJECT MEDIA Ejects media from the CD-RW 
drive.
SELECT TARGET This selects the volume you 
want to use for the backup. It functions the same as 
the Backup Volume list on the VGA’s 
Backup Projects 
tab (in the 
PROJECT screen).
Drive Settings
Before using a hard drive with the SX-1, it must be 
formatted.Controls for formatting hard drives are available 
from both VGA and LCD screens.
VGA Drive Setup Tab
From the MAIN DISPLAY section, press the PROJECT key. Then click once on the Drive Setup tab.