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1 – Introductory concepts–Further reading
18 TASCAM 788 Digital PortaStudio
SCSI devices and backing up
The 788 contains a large, fast hard disk, which allows
the recording of many songs on the same disk.
However, if you keep all your material, eventually
this disk will fill up, and you must do some “house-
cleaning” to sweep away the unwanted material.
The 788 incorporates a very useful feature which
allows you to back up a song to CD-R or CD-RW
media. These discs can hold a lot of data. In the case
of a song being too big to fit on a single disc, the 788
will automatically create multi-disc archives on
which you can store your work. This, of course, is in
addition to you being able to use a CD-R/RW disc as
the final mastering device (mixdown of the final mas-
tered stereo tracks to CD-R/RW via SCSI).
In case you do not have a CD-R/RW drive, we sug-
gest the use of an external SCSI device which uses
removable disks: the Iomega® zip® and jaz® drives
can hold large amounts of data, as can magneto-opti-
cal (MO) disk drives. The songs on the internal hard
disk can be copied to the external media for archival.
Note that you should not attempt to install an internal
disk drive (either hard disk or removable) in your
788. This is an operation that should be performed
only by authorized TASCAM service agents.
Further reading
This section does not pretend to be a comprehensive
listing or explanation of all these issues. If you have
the time and interest, reading about these subjects is a
very good way to add to your practical experience
with the 788.
If you have Internet access, the Web is an excellent
source of information. The following books are also
useful reference sources, if you wish to explore these
subjects in more depth.
Sound & Recording, 2nd edition 1994, Francis Rum-
sey & Tim McCormick, Focal Press, Oxford, is a
good general introduction to recording theory and
practice, starting from basic principles. However, the
section on hard disk recording is not very long.
For detailed information on digital audio, including
disk recording theory, The Art of Digital Audio, 2nd
Edition 1994, John Watkinson, Focal Press, Oxford,
is invaluable, but is somewhat technical in places.
MIDI Systems and Control, 2nd Edition 1994, Fran-
cis Rumsey, Focal Press, Oxford, has an excellent
section on synchronization and machine control
(chapter 6).
There are also many resources regarding SCSI. It’s
not a subject that you usually need to know in enor-
mous detail, but an Internet search for “SCSI primer”
will probably give you all the information you need.
If you are using your 788 with a sequencer, make
sure that you read and understand the relevant sec-
tions of the sequencer manual, as well as the 788
manual. This will probably avoid many problems
with regard to synchronization.