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INTRODUCTION

There seems to have been a dearth of quality professional recorders in the “upper middle” (£2k to £5k) range in recent times. Plenty at the cheap end, a few around the thousand mark – and then almost nothing until you get to the expensive 8 and 10 track machines in the £8k+ bracket.

So far Sound Devices seem to have had this area to themselves – until now that is.

Enter the new NAGRA VI.

Nagra have always had a reputation for quality and reliability, right from the very beginning. Back in 1952 a student from Switzerland, Stefan Kudelski, won the very first International Amateur Recording Contest (IARC)* using a wind-up tape recorder he had made himself. This so impressed Swiss Radio that they immediately asked him to make half a dozen recorders for them. This he did and this was the start of the Nagra company (Nagra is Polish for “will record”) – specialising in top quality portable recorders which were the industry standard for many decades; the NAGRA VI is the latest to wear this famous badge and is the first portable multi-track from Nagra.

Making a portable recorder is always a difficult mix of design decisions – having to balance the need for a small size, yet having all the facilities demanded and with controls that are easy to use that are not cramped and fiddly. Having a bright display that can be read in the brightest sunlight, yet needing a long recording time on batteries (preferably a full day) without having to recharge. Quite a balancing act.

Nagra took the decision that sound quality and ease of use was more important than trying to make the recorder as small as possible, so it is a little larger than first expected – but all the controls are well laid out and it is pretty instinctive to use.

The Nagra VI is a six-channel recorder, recording at 16 or 24 bits with a sample rate selectable between 44.1, 48, 88.2 and 96 kHz (with 0.1% pull up/down). It has timecode as standard which runs from a “Stratum III” TXCO crystal, aged to maintain stability, guaranteed to have an overall stability better than ±4.6ppm over a period of 15 years throughout a temperature range of -20° to +70°. The drift due to temperature change is less than 0.28ppm. This is the most accurate crystal ever used on a NAGRA recorder – so if timecode drifts, it won’t be the NAGRA. The NAGRA VI is fully compatible with iXML. The internal hard drive is a 120GB drive, selected for its quality and reliability. There is also a Compact Flash bay with no limit to the size of card used. Although you can record directly to the card, its main use would be to back-up the recordings from the hard drive.

The NAGRA VI has four very high quality microphone pre-amplifiers which can be switched for condenser and dynamic mics. (selecting “dynamic” brings in a high quality transformer, optimised for dynamic microphones), six line inputs and two AES3 inputs – all selectable.

LAYOUT

Front Panel – this contains an ultra-bright 3½” TFT display that is used to show the status as well as the levels and menus of the recorder. It was chosen for its ability to be “sunlight readable” and perform well over a wide temperature range and have an extremely wide viewing angle. This display shows (see Dia.1) along the top: Date & Time, Drive used & Folder name, remaining time of the drive and battery status. The left side of the display shows the “play” status (stop, play, record, etc.), index number, “tape” counter, project name, take number, time code, user bits and file type (eg: 24/48k 6ch mono). The right side of the display shows the 6-channel modulometers; underneath them is the recording status of the six channels: REC on or off, SouRCe (Mic., Line, digital, off, etc.), 48V phantom on or off, LIMiter on or off, FILter on or off and PHAse reverse on or off. A “star” button dims the display when the light is poor and you don’t need it so bright. There is also a “night” display mode that turns all the white text blue so the display is not too bright and annoying when recording at night. There are various other display modes for the display including one that hides all the recording status displays except the channel record status so you get a larger modulometer display (“Cinema” mode), “Music” mode is the same but hides TC and metadata as well; “Meters” mode only shows the modulometers in a large easy-to-read format.

To the right of the display are three user definable buttons, the light “star” key and the menu
navigation keys. Then come the main input level controls for the first four channels (channels 5 and 6 can be a mixdown of the first four, or direct line-in, or AES3 in without level control). Underneath these are the marker keys and forward / rewind keys. Above them are switches for loudspeaker on/off, reference tone on/off and the slate mic.. These three keys are protected by a small hood to minimise the risk of accidental use.

On the far right of the front panel is the standard NAGRA rotary main function selector (off, test, record, stop and play), this has a red line across that is hidden when the selector is in the “off” position. There is a small hole in the red line; this is the internal slate mic. and it’s protected and hidden in the “off” position. Next to this are the monitor level control and a standard ¼” headphones jack socket.

Above these are two rows of six switches – the top row selects the monitoring “pan”: left, centre or right – the bottom row selects the monitoring status: off, on and solo (solo is spring loaded and switches back to “on” when you remove your finger).

Left Side – this contains an XLR-4 DC input socket and two small Hirose 12V DC output sockets (for powering radiomic. receivers or a Neumann AES42/AES3 digital microphone adaptor, for example). There is a standard 5-pole LEMO connector for timecode. There are six XLR-3 sockets; the first four are selectable mic or line and the last two are selectable AES3 or line.

Right Side – this contains the CF card slot, a standard ¼” headphones jack socket (wired in parallel to the one on the front panel), a start/stop remote control socket, USB sockets (one for future connection to an external USB device – such as a remote keyboard – and the other for downloading the files to a PC), a 9-pin D-connector (two AES3 outputs, MIDI and wordclock in and out), an XLR-3 for AES3 out and two XLR-3 for line-out left and right.

Screwed to each side is a T-shaped handle. This makes the recorder easy to carry and also
protects the front panel from damage. These are easy to reposition as “feet” to tilt the recorder at an easy-to-use angle for tabletop mounting. When used with the Nagra case, they are removed completely and the shoulder-strap screws in, in their place. The bottom only has four rubber feet and the top only has the single monitoring loudspeaker; this can optionally be set to only operate in “play” mode so there is no risk of it coming on while
recording.

The back has the connection sockets for the screw-on battery pack.

BATTERY

The NAGRA VI comes supplied with a 4.6Ah, 10.8V Lithium-ion battery pack that can power the recorder for about four or five hours of continuous operation. There is an optional 13.8Ah pack that will give about twelve to fifteen hours of continuous operation. The smaller capacity pack takes about two hours to recharge and the larger about five hours. Personally I prefer the larger pack as it will safely work all day and charge overnight. The supplied mains power supply unit plugs into the battery pack via a 3-pin LEMO socket and will charge the battery and power the recorder at the same time. The XLR-4 on the recorder is mainly for powering the machine from a car battery or for powering it when no battery is connected. Personally I prefer powering from the mains via the battery, so the recorder will continue seamlessly to work in the case of mains (or generator) failure. The back of the battery pack has four sturdy feet to protect it if you stand it on the ground. Also on the back are two status LEDs: one showing when on external power and the other is the charging status light (on when charging and off when the pack is fully charged).

IN USE

To test out the NAGRA VI, I decided to use it in over-the-shoulder mode. As Nagra GB had run out of the optional carrying case I borrowed one from Richmond Film Services (thanks Nigel) who already have a couple of NAGRA VI in their hire stock. Armed with an ORTF pair of my new Sennheiser MKH 8040 cardioid microphones I set off for the Whitley Bay International Jazz Festival in sunny Newcastle. This annual festival has top quality performers from all over the world and was an ideal place to test out the NAGRA VI in awkward conditions. I was recording, sitting in the audience, with the recorder at my feet and the microphones on a foldable tripod stand with the capsules on remote cables sitting in Rycote INV-2 shockmounts.

Setting levels was very easy as there is a little “fuel gauge” display which shows when you move a level control and tells you the exact level set – so it’s easy to get a stereo pair to exactly the same setting. On this first firmware version there is no stereo ganging control, which I found a bit awkward – but, as I expected, Nagra were already working on this and full selectable level control ganging is now on all new NAGRA VIs (and can easily be added as a firmware upgrade to earlier machines – go to www.nagraaudio.com and then: Pro – Support – Nagra VI and follow the instructions in the Owners Manual) – this means that once the levels are set everything can easily be adjusted with a single knob.

I found the menu very easy and instinctive to use. Instead of scrolling through loads and loads of options, the menu is laid out in chapters and sub-chapters. This means that it is quick and easy to find what you need and changing anything while in the field is pretty simple and hassle-free.

I set it up to record only on channels 1 and 2 (stereo). I selected condenser mic. and entered the sensitivity of the mic. to get the correct level. I turned on 48V phantom power and also the limiter (as it was a live recording with an audience all around); the limiter is easy to link to operate in stereo mode, this is selectable channels 1+2 and/or 3+4. As I was recording inside with people all around me, I found it best to set the display to “night” mode and the light level to “dim” – this was still plenty bright enough to see. I also set the display to “cinema” mode while recording to give the extra long modulometer display. You can set the display defaults for “stand-by” and “record”; so I set the “Default” screen for “stand-by” which shows all the setting options and “Cinema” mode for “record” which gives the longer modulometers. My wish for a new firmware upgrade is to add a “playback” option. Playback uses the “stand-by” option but with a blank at the bottom as there are no record options showing in playback – so my wish is to either default to longer modulometers here and fill the blank area, or to allow a “playback” setting option.

You can set the recording to be poly files or mono files. For the first day I had the settings in “poly” mode so I was recording a stereo file. The NAGRA VI is set so that when the 2GB file limit is reached it automatically starts a second file and seamlessly continues recording. So, on the first day, as I was recording at 24/96, I had one recording split into one file of 1:02:02 duration and one of 0:16:28 – these were easily identified as the take number remains the same, though the file number increased by one.

On the second day I set the NAGRA VI to record mono files as this doubles the recording time before the file splits (stereo recording) – these are also easily identified as the files have the suffix _1 and _2 (up to _6 if you are recording all six channels).

The monitoring on the NAGRA VI is excellent and the headphone amplifier seems high quality and quiet. I was monitoring on low (70-Ohms) impedance and very efficient (120dB) Sennheiser HD 25-1 headphones (almost the industry standard nowadays). I found that I had to have the headphones volume set at maximum to get the level I needed (in fact, on occasions I would have liked it a bit louder), with headphones of less efficiency I feel it would have been too quiet. I queried this with Nagra as it is possible I was doing something silly – but this was the only slightly negative thing I found. Nagra listened and investigated this – and the latest version of the NAGRA VI now has the option to increase the monitor level by +6dB or +12dB (earlier versions can easily be updated in firmware as I described earlier).

I recorded several sessions of the Bratislava Hot Serenaders (probably the finest 20s Jazz Orchestra in the world) from back in the audience and a session of an international mix of musicians (who came together for this event only) from the front. Other than wishing I could throttle the people who insisted on talking through the performance, everything came out very well and both groups asked me for copy CDs of the sessions. I also recorded a wonderful off-the-cuff jamming session into the early hours of the morning with several of the best musicians at the festival.

I found the battery seemed to live up to the claims – I recorded about two hours of 24/96 with two microphones running on phantom power and the battery read about half way when I finished. The second day I topped the battery up at the meal break and recorded over three hours with the battery still above the red. I’m not sure how far into the red is safe (as it’s a Li-ion battery), but would say that 4 hours with a pair of phantom powered mics. seems fine in reality (that’s equivalent to 12 hours recording with phantom power on with the large battery).

I must say that the recorder remained cool throughout all this time, it did not get warm at all; so no power was being wasted in making heat, so maximising battery time and showing that Nagra were not driving components too hard – this bodes well for a machine that needs to be reliable over many years of hard use.

In all, I had almost 8 hours of recording – this download to PC (320GB external laptop drive) in less than an hour. Now all I have to do is to import the files into Sequoia (you can use the program of your choice, of course) for editing and CD burning.

I downloaded direct from the NAGRA VI to the laptop by using a USB cable directly from the
recorder. If I wished, I could just as easily have copied the files from the hard drive to a Compact Flash card(s) in the recorder itself and then used the CF cards to download to the computer. CF cards have plummeted in price over the last year or two – an 8GB SanDisc Ultra II is now under £40 and the equivalent 16GB card is under £100 – I paid about £200 for the same 8GB card about 18 months ago!

CONCLUSIONS

I did not find over-the-shoulder use too arduous (the NAGRA VI weighs in at 3kg without batteries and, I guess, the standard battery pack adds only about 0.5kg to this). Yes, a smaller machine would have been easier, but you would sacrifice the easy-to-use layout of the Nagra with knobs that are still easy to manipulate in gloved fingers; so I think I prefer the Nagra option. On a trolley or on a table in a fixed situation the larger size comes into its own and is the much better option.

This is a very high quality recorder with analogue circuits up to Nagra’s top of the range standard; with mic. pre-amps that equal or better anything Nagra has ever done and a proper switch-over for dynamic microphones means that there are absolutely no compromises on this front.

I found it easy and instinctive to use, the menu easy to navigate (made even easier with familiarity) and the set-up was very easy. The limiter worked well and efficiently with no obvious artefacts and I was happy to leave it switched in all the time to take care of unexpected peaks.

I was very happy with the NAGRA VI and my only reservation about the headphones amplifier has now already been fixed.

The big question – does it perform well and pass my perfectionist standards to the extent that I would actually fork out the money (Scottish ancestor and all) and buy one? The answer has to be “Yes”; I really liked this machine – I don’t compromise on sound quality and neither does the NAGRA VI, coupled with the instinctive layout and ease of use – no contest.

And yes – I *did* actually order one – the “burgundy red” version with the high capacity battery and Nagra GB’s Carrying Case (though the picture below shows the Nagra original case).

The NAGRA VI retails at £3,999 +VAT in the UK and comes complete with the standard 4.6Ah battery pack and a universal (100-240V AC) switch-mode power supply unit which plugs into the battery pack for charging and powering the machine. There is a choice of colour for the front panel: “slate grey” (pictured at the top), “midnight blue”, or “burgundy red” (pictured above) – the choice is yours. The larger 13.8Ah battery pack retails for £ 514 +VAT and the optional case is £ 135 +VAT.

Nagra GB
3U Long Spring
Porters Wood
St. Albans
Herts.
AL3 6EN
Tel: 01727-81-00-02
Website: www.nagraaudio.com

You can see more on the NAGRA VI on Nagra’s website HERE and there is another “First Look” review of the NAGRA VI on THIS PAGE.

* The IARC is still going strong and the 57th contest will be held in Saabrücken, in Germany, in October this year. The reviewer, John Willett, was last year elected as President of the International Federation of Soundhunters that runs the IARC and this year’s contest will be the first one with him at the helm.

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John
President - Fédération Internationale des Chasseurs de Sons