Topic: Slaving two R-44s together?

[acidjack]

Are there any quirks or other tips I should be aware before atttempting this? 

I believe all you need to do is:

1. Connect the R-44s by a coax cable
2. Set one to "MASTER" (which it already is)
3. Set the other to "SLAVE"
4. Start recording on the "MASTER"

That is, my understanding from the manual is that the "MASTER" will control starting/stopping recording.  The Master and Slave will individually control the levels of the microphones or other inputs attached to them. 

Does the "MASTER" deck take all 4 Stereo WAV files, or does each deck record the inputs it is taking, and you then mix the four files in post?

[flintstone]

The R-44 manual says to use a mini-TRS cable (male to male 1/8" stereo cable), which is generally not described as a coax cable.

Once linked and set to master at one end and slave at the other, the pair of recorders will make clock-synchronized recording of up to 8 channels, according to the manual.  The master machine controls record start, record standby and record stop on the slave.

This scheme is different than the SMPTE time code sync that's available on
the Edirol R-4 Pro, Sound Devices 702T and other more expensive recorders.  SMPTE time code is used to sync the recorder with a video
camera's frame rate.

Flintstone

[kirk97132]

NO they WILL NOT make clock sync'ed recordings.  There are major discussions about this in the Team R-44 thread.  The cable allows for start and stop control on the slave deck.  Word clock will be different for each recorder

[boojum]

NO they WILL NOT make clock sync'ed recordings.  There are major discussions about this in the Team R-44 thread.  The cable allows for start and stop control on the slave deck.  Word clock will be different for each recorder

That confirms what I remember, too.  You just do not get the clock sync.

[DSatz]

I think you would get sync only if you fed both R-44s with S/P-DIF input that shared a common word clock source.

Even then, the start and stop times wouldn't be quite the same--the wire hookup only gets you accuracy to within some number of milliseconds. So it would still be necessary to use a clapstick or a clicking frog or something like that to line up the tracks for later editing.