The Nagra VI, One Year Later

The Nagra VI, One Year Later…

“Under-promise, over-deliver”. When this philosophy is behind a product, the customers who use it are well served. It is the sign of a confident and mature company, a hallmark of Nagra, and it is apparent in the continuing history of the Nagra VI.

Possibly the best thing about the digital age for our profession is that equipment can evolve, adapt, and transform to better suit our needs, without changing a single wire, simply by revising the operating firmware. This re-evaluation is about some significant firmware enhancements of the Nagra VI. Therefore, in addition to this article, the original Nagra VI review should be read first to fully understand this recorder. (https://www.trewaudio.com/recorders/nagra-vi-review/)

When I first reviewed the Nagra VI in June of 2009, it was a 6-track recorder. Impressive as it was, I still managed to find room for improvement, and made a few suggestions that I shared with Nagra in several discussions while writing the article. To their credit, within just a few days, even before the review was published, Nagra emailed a file that updated version 1.5 to 2.0, which nicely implemented some of my suggestions. But it was still a 6-track portable recorder in an age of portable recorders sporting 8 or more tracks. Magically transforming the 6-track Nagra VI into an 8-track recorder seemed too much to hope for, and the price seemed to be in line with six tracks, so my wish-list was limited to improving the internal mixer and menu navigation functions.

At the time of the 2009 review, a major shortcoming of the internal mixer section was that there was no gain above unity for the mix track(s). This meant that the mix track(s) could never be a higher level than the iso tracks, which would typically result in either a mix track that was too low, or an ISO track that would breech digital max. Most mixers accommodate this by having 12dB of gain above unity, available on each input fader (notice on a typical fader scale that a “0” is usually printed 12dB below the top). Once the problem was understood, Nagra acknowledged that a change was needed, and actually came up with a solution that makes 12dB of gain available to the mixer output. When this 12dB of gain is utilized by turning a virtual master output control full up (where it should be, in my opinion), the unity position of the input knobs lines up at about 3 o’clock (where you’d expect it on a traditional mixer), allowing another 12dB of gain at each input, when needed (which will be often). I strongly believe this “virtual master fader” should be put in the full-up +12dB position, and left there for the life of the recorder, or until there is a reason to adjust it (and I can’t imagine what that reason could be).

There are two methods of setting the Nagra VI’s internal mix master. The first is by assigning, in the SETTINGS menu, the headphone volume knob to become the master output fader, at which point the knob gives 12dB of gain in the full-up position. This seemed like a good solution when I first heard about it, but it means the headphone level cannot be adjusted by the knob without first reconfiguring the menu settings. Since it’s probably fair to say that the headphone level is adjusted more often than the mixer output level during portable film/video scenarios, this is not an ideal choice. The second method (which I believe is much preferred) involves increasing the mix level with a virtual fader in the mixer’s menu settings (SETTINGS/AUDIO SETTINGS/MIXER/MASTER). And, as mentioned earlier: turn it all the way up and forget about it.

Even though this mix track gain increase was needed, there is a shortcoming associated with it. It’s true that 12dB of gain is available, but only if recording a mono mix to just one track. When routing an input to both mix tracks, the assignment is made by turning virtual pan pots to the center position. The problem is that when sharing the level between two mix channels with a pan pot, the 12dB increase suddenly becomes only 6dB on each channel. For me, this would usually not matter because my mix track is almost always a mono mix on just one track. However, a lot of people are still in the habit of recording a two track mix for one reason or another. So for those people, they would have only 6dB of gain over input unity, which is not enough. Since film and video production almost never uses partial panning for stereo imaging, a better solution for the film/video crowd would be virtual assignment “switches”, for assigning inputs to the mix tracks without any loss in level. So, my suggestion to Nagra is to provide the option for virtual assignment switches instead of virtual pan pots.

One item on my wish list that has still not been addressed is the ease (actually the lack thereof) of adjusting the input trim settings while mixing. The only way to do this still is with the input knobs. This means that, if using the knobs to mix while recording prefader ISO tracks (the norm, these days), then the knob has to be reassigned for input trim function, then make the trim adjustment, then reassigned the knob back for post fader mixing. To be fair, this issue of “input trim accessibility” has been a challenge for other manufactures of virtual mixers/recorders as well, and for some the answer has been outboard control panels. As recommended in 2009, I still believe that input trim adjustments from a single screen, without the need for knobs – and while the knobs were still available for postfader mixing – could still be accomplished and would solve the problem.

And now for the big news: The Nagra VI is now an 8-track recorder…

Even as little as a year ago, many – if not most – thought six tracks enough, and eight tracks unnecessary. But when considering that it’s now a common occurrence for a scene to require four lav mics and two boom mics, six tracks are no longer enough when the convention is to isolate each mic on its own track plus record a mono mix (6 ISO tracks plus 1 mix track = 7 tracks).

While tracks 7 and 8 are a welcome addition to the Nagra VI, it is important to note that these new tracks can only be used as mix tracks from inputs 1-6, or ISO tracks of its AES-A and AES-B inputs. So, to utilize all eight tracks when using an external mixer, it would require a combination of six analog outputs and two digital outputs from the mixer. To put that into perspective, it needs to also be pointed out that a very capable analog mixer such as the Sonosax SX-ST or the Cooper 208 can only utilize six tracks of the Nagra VI unless these two mixers had the digital output option. In the case of the Cooper 208, even if it has the AES output option (the Cooper’s AES outputs are only available from its post-fader mix busses) only six inputs could be isolated on the Nagra VI without the help of an outboard A-D converter. Again, the only way to use tracks 7 and 8 of the Nagra VI is with its internal mixer or with AES outputs from another mixer.

Soon after the Nagra VI became an 8-track recorder, a bug was discovered where the mix track was not copied to the Compact Flash or DVD disk for dailies if only track 8 – but not track 7 – was selected to be copied. Since most recordists in film/video only use one track as their mix track, this was discovered quickly, by many users, and Nagra fixed the bug even faster with a firmware revision. So now, with current firmware, any combination of tracks, including any single track, can be copied.

A word of caution about using the mix track(s) with the Nagra VI internal mixer: The mix can only be recorded to track 7 or track 8, or tracks 7 and 8. So, when copying all of the tracks of the day’s work to CF card or DVD-RAM, the mix track(s) will be on 7 or 8 or both. The problem is that the Fostex DV-40 (which is still used for telecine transfer of usually only the mix track) is only a 6-track track machine (most only playback 4 tracks, actually). This means that a Fostex DV-40 would not even see the mix tracks if there are more than 6 tracks on the disk, and could not transfer them. For this reason I would suggest turning in a disk or CF card with only the mix track(s) (no ISO tracks), which would then show up as tracks 1 and 2 for telecine transfer. As always, a conversation with postproduction about these things is highly recommended.

A bit about pulling up and pulling down timecode frame rates and sampling frequencies…

When needing a “pulled up” sampling frequency of 48.048 or a pulled down frequency of 47.952, the CLOCK REFERENCE menu of the Nagra VI has choices of “+0.1%” or “-0.1%”. The thing to remember is that, not only do these settings pull up or down the sampling frequency to 48.048 or 47.952 with 48K is selected (for example), but also automatically pulls up or down the selected timecode frame rate by the same 0.1%. Therefore, if the desired timecode and sampling specifications are 30 and 48.048, the selection would need to be 29.97 and 48.000, with the addition of the +0.1% selection in the CLOCK REFERENCE screen. The displayed timecode and sampling frequency will still be the target frequency of, in this case, 29.97 and 48.000K. While this topic can be very confusing, the system is not unique to Nagra, and is often referred to as the “Fostex method”.

Summary

So, though the Nagra VI is the same beautifully designed ergonomic layout it always was, it has learned some nice new tricks. These refinements have not only made the recorder better for its original capabilities, but with its track count now at 8, the Nagra VI has grown with the increased demands and trends of our industry. Kudos to Nagra for going about the development and enhancement of the Nagra VI in their familiar, endearing, and respectable fashion to under-promise and over-deliver.