AKG PHONES AHEAD?

Good though they can be, not too many Hi-Fi headphones are accurate enough for true monitoring purposes, so leading producers AKG have just launched what could become the definitive studio/home recording cans - the D240DFs.

The idea behind the new AKGs is to simulate ideal listening conditions so that, although using headphones, the user receives a true monitor standard sound, as if they were listening in an idealised acoustically treated room - hence their great potential for critical home recording use where few rooms have been properly 'de-bugged'.

Developed in response to a request from the Institute of Radio Technology of Munich, for '...an international standard for an acoustically diffuse field equalisation design headphone' (I'll have six of them, squire!), the new D240DF is a development of the much vaunted K240 Hi-Fi cans, and features an 'advance specification' performance, AKG claim, with a frequency response of 20Hz-20kHz.

More details from AKG Acoustics Ltd., (Contact Details).

MTR GO MOSFET

Hang onto your voice coils - there's a big 'un coming from MTR: the TP1200 MOSFET 600 watt per side power amp, apparently offering 'unbeatable performance' and a low RRP of just £848 inc. VAT.

Envisaged as a 'no compromise' monster amp by designer Tim Isaac, the rack mounting 4 units high TP1200 is aimed at the Studio and PA markets, and features fan-free cooling, silent turn-on, input compression for transient surges, complete thermal cutout protection and a massively solid construction. Bandwidth is quoted as being 15kHz-40kHz ±3dB and distortion of only 0.25% at 4 Ohms, 1kHz at 600 watts.

Also new from MTR is their new PB-One Patchbay, offering 32 way jack front and back connections in a standard 19" rack format (measuring 2u high). Using fibreglass solder-resist circuit boards and high quality jack sockets, the PB-One comes 'normalised' (ie top rear jacks are normally connected to the bottom one in a pair), but socket pairs can be 'unnormalised' by the simple cutting of a single link wire.

The price of the PB-One? Just £51 inc. VAT.

More details from MTR Ltd. at (Contact Details).

DIGITAL RECORDING IN FLOPPY STATE

Followers of the advances in digital recording should note the recent signing of an agreement between Britain's venerable Ferrograph Company and the U.S.A.'s Compusonics. The agreement licenses Ferrograph to manufacture a digital recorder based on the revolutionary Compusonics DSP1000 - a system which uses high density floppy discs and 32 bit microprocessors to convert analogue signals to the Compusonics format.

Why is this important? Because it can give up to 45 mins recording time on a 5 1/4" floppy disc, with full editing possibilities via a standard IBM PC micro. This gives (in effect) the potential for users to fully remix recorded sounds (including other people's albums!) on their own PCs! Addon modules for music synthesis and restoration of noisy source material are also provided, and the former of these two, especially, could open up a new potential era in home recording of both analogue and digital sounds, with editing/mixing facilities also from the same PC. The implications for home and smaller studio owners should be obvious! Production of the new Ferrograph machine will commence late in 1985, IN TUNE understands.

More than just on-site recording looks possible using the system, however. According to a recent article in Science Digest, U.S. giant AT&T 'is working on a high-speed telecommunications line that will transmit any digital data, including audio signals, at 56,000 bits per second. Combined with the DSP-1000, this service would permit users to receive and record music via telephone.' Even sooner, the article continues, recording studios will be able to be linked by 'phone, with perfect digital signal interchange of any musical or other recorded source.

Compusonics, incidentally, also happen to produce a 140mB hard disc recorder - their DSP-2000, a professional recording studio digital mixer/recorder which enables engineers to work completely digitally from 'source at mike' stages to master recordings.

IT will be keeping an eye on developments; meanwhile more info, can be obtained from AVM-Ferrograph Ltd., (Contact Details).