Studio C is the smallest of the control rooms in CARA. This is not to say it is not sophisticated and powerful, however. In fact, it is possible in any one of the CARA control rooms to take a project from conception to mastering on compact disc. Studio C utilizes a Mackie 24x8x2 mixing console as the central hub. The console is connected via patchbays to 2 TASCAM DA-88 digital recorders. These recorders as known as Modular Digital Multitracks or MDMs for short. They each can record 8 channels and several units can be chained together in perfect synchronization to extend the number of track available. The TASCAM DA-88 is the workhorse of CARA. In all there are 8 of these recorders. This allows students to move from one control room to the next using the same format of digital audio tape. They can start a project in Studio C and finish it in Studio A, for example. Furthermore, the TASCAM DA-88 has become established as the industry standard MDM - it is likely that an engineer will encounter them in various environments outside of CARA.
Likewise the Mackie console in Control Room C has been widely adopted and can be found in both hobbyist studios and also in professional environments. It is rather a marvel of audio technology in that it has very superior sonic properties, very low noise levels and offers a sophisticated mixing tool in a fairly inexpensive package.
This photo shows the Mackie together with the two TASCAM DA-88s (on the right). This Control Room also has 4 digital effects processors, 8 channels of audio gates and stereo compressors. These are all housed in the racks above the console. Integrated patchbays connect Control Room C with Studio C and also other places within CARA. Stereo mixdown can be recorded directly to DAT or cassette or, for CD mastering, to the Digital Audio Workstation (DAW).
Digital Audio Workstation is a fancy name, widely used in the professional audio communitiy, for a a computer which as been specifically designed for working with audio recordings. In Control Room C, a Pentium-200 microcomputer is used a the DAW. It has a large amount of storage capacity - audio recordings take up a lot of room on a disk drive - a CD-Recordable dirve and a special digital audio interface card (SP/DIF). Both hardware and software combine to make the DAW.
On this DAW we use SoundForge, CD-Architect, Csound and other various applications to record, modify and master sound for CD creation. Similar tools are found in each of the CARA Control Rooms.
