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Any carts today?

Charlie said:
You're right, there are a couple of errors in the cart logic/features - I'll add a "sequence play" option in a day or so. I'll try and remove the fast-cue fx from the Delta3, but the way the software works is the Sonifex's is where all the code is and the other 2 machines call the relevant routines when their button is pushed - so, in short, all the Cue buttons point to the same bit of code. This saves having triple the amount of code for essentially the same 3 operations.

But aside from these minor tweaks, I doubt anything else will be done to it - as you say, purely a toy unless I make a row of 6 ITCs and see if Z100 want to return to the good'ol days ?!
Click to expand...

As a former Chief Engineer of Z100 in the bad old cart days, I say that if you want realism, don't forget the 1% wow and flutter, unpredictable cart-to-cart high frequency response, inherent noise level that requires noise reduction (dbxII at Z100) in order to be merely acceptable, and bass bumps that accentuate certain musical notes at the expense of others. Did I forget anything?
;D


Kind Regards,
David
 
Reading about all the whirring and clunking takes me back to WDDT, Greenville, MS. Our on-air console was a Gates President. That board's main feature was two parallel horizontal rows of push buttons located at center bottom below the cue speaker volume and some switches. The carts and turntables were fired from these push buttons. There was a button at the right end of each row that cleared the currently pushed button. So, to go from spot to jingle to song required clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk as you started the jingle, cleared the row with the commercial, started the turntable and cleared the row with the jingle. All these clunks were produced conveniently inches from the RCA 77 mike. When I am in need of a good dose of nostalgic humiliation and listen to the old airchecks, it all comes clunking back to me.
 
Back in the day, KIUL had an ITC 3 slot that had been used so much that head alignment was starting to become a challenge because there were “groves” on the deck where the carts had worn “ruts”. Carts are handy when airing live local sports when the commercial schedule and what is really happening do not match up.
 
secondchoice said:
Back in the day, KIUL had an ITC 3 slot that had been used so much that head alignment was starting to become a challenge because there were “groves” on the deck where the carts had worn “ruts”. Carts are handy when airing live local sports when the commercial schedule and what is really happening do not match up.
Click to expand...

HA! The RUTS! I forgot about ruts! I once successfully knocked the edges down on a worn head, and decided I should have just bought a new headafter so much work. Strangely though, the high frequency response of that deck overall became much better than it had ever been before
while I'd owned it, especially on record, and the playback of recordings made after.


robgrayson said:
Reading about all the whirring and clunking takes me back to WDDT, Greenville, MS. Our on-air console was a Gates President. That board's main feature was two parallel horizontal rows of push buttons located at center bottom below the cue speaker volume and some switches. The carts and turntables were fired from these push buttons. There was a button at the right end of each row that cleared the currently pushed button. So, to go from spot to jingle to song required clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk as you started the jingle, cleared the row with the commercial, started the turntable and cleared the row with the jingle. All these clunks were produced conveniently inches from the RCA 77 mike. When I am in need of a good dose of nostalgic humiliation and listen to the old airchecks, it all comes clunking back to me.
Click to expand...

I loved the on-air clunks. If you'd care to provide airchecks of your clunks, I'd be very happy.
I would work them into my playlist so it sounds like I have one deck with a bad mute circuit.
I'm not being funny, i'm actually LOOKING for authentic clunking as heard on-air.

I have an element called 11 seconds of dead air. I love listening to my station and hearing THAT one come up.
It almost makes the automation sound human. Now I just need a few more with "alarmed board op in control room" mike SFX at -20db cutting directly to next element.

I'm still wishing I had a really nice recording of a dead channel AM with 20kc audio of good ole fashioned midwestern thunderstorm. This I would add on special occasions in the winter to make it feel more summery.
I only need an hour or so, of varying intensity.. 8)
 
I filled a construction sized dumpster about 8 years ago that not only included around 3000 carts, but ITC recorders/players, PRE consoles, MCI tape decks and a multitude of other stuff I couldn't give away. I did have one consulting engineer I used come down and pick up about a half dozen perfectly good analog STL systems, a couple of consoles and some other spare RF and remote control gear I had retired. Believe me, I contacted everyone I knew and posted to all the boards and had no takers for any of the stuff. It made me sick to do it, but I was ordered to clean out three storage facilities we had been paying for for years. There was enough there to build several studios and everything but transmission line and transmitters, although I gave away two retired transmitters that actually got put into service as backups.
 
secondchoice said:
Back in the day, KIUL had an ITC 3 slot that had been used so much that head alignment was starting to become a challenge because there were “groves” on the deck where the carts had worn “ruts”. Carts are handy when airing live local sports when the commercial schedule and what is really happening do not match up.
Click to expand...

I remember the 'trenches' already worn in the triple decks (I think they were BE) we were using in 1993 when I started. They stayed on the air until about early 1998 when a computer based spot system (wavecart) brought us to semi-automation on all but the music.

Since the alignment of the decks was NEVER again going to be adjusted, I had my favorite decks for playing liners and jingles... They were deck 1, slot #2 and deck 2, slot #3. Deck 3, slot #1 was by far the muddiest, and was used by me ONLY for playing the weather voice cart (which mixed over the jingle intro and bed playing in Deck 1) Since the weather voice was recorded off the phone line, it did not have much high frequency content anyway.

The other problem was that the cart recorder in production left a nice audible bias 'click' when the record mode was disengaged. Since it was a necessary evil, it was best to leave the deck recording for a few seconds after the spot, and let the 'click' occur where it would be buried in the next spot if someone didn't pot out the previous cart, or played them all in the same deck on the air. Inevitably, someone would always let a cart recue all the way in the record mode, placing the 'click' right at the beginning of the spot!
 
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