Podcast Audio and Podcast Gear is HERE! …New Media Gear

Today, A look backwards then forward at the cart machine. The cart machine has been an integral piece of broadcasting for decades, providing quick hits, intros and reaction effects. A cart machine was perfect for playing back several 30 or 60 second spots back-to-back. As these machines became more accepted, they were used as the primary playback device for all of a stations program material.

The cart machine used an endless loop of quarter inch tape that was spliced together and loaded onto a cart, similar in appearance to an 8-Track. The production studios were usually the only place you would find the record amplifier for the deck. The record deck would not only record the program material to tape, but would also record the tone bursts that would ‘cue’ the program material, supply a secondary tone at a segue point and sometimes use a tertiary tone as well. Sophisticated, newer decks would provide automatic splice finding so your program material started right after (and not during) the splice.

The cart deck grew up quickly and stations started using them for music as well. Vinyl cuts were recorded to a cart and the master was archived. Entire stations ran on multiple cart decks, the ITC Delta series likely the most popular deck found in radio.

I remember major-market stations playing vinyl until the early 80’s, so I’m sure that the ‘real’ cart machines are still in use at some stations …somewhere.

However, cart decks require constant maintenance, cleaning, alignment and the tapes themselves had to be ‘re-loaded’ with fresh tape after extended use.

Today, the cart deck lives on but in more of a virtual world than that of large drive motors, capstans and pinch rollers… Tones, splice-finders, head cleaning and roller replacement are all in the past.

There are many different software incarnations of the cart deck. I recently installed WaveCart 4.0 after installing the new audio console. I chose WaveCart because it offers remote hardware triggers, is reasonably priced and has just enough features to completely replace a hardware cart machine without going into studio automation.

WaveCart 4.0 now has a USB trigger option that lets me stop and start unique decks using the stop/start buttons on my console. I can also assign each virtual deck to a stereo pair of TRS outputs on the FirePod giving me 4 unique ‘decks’, each with their own stop/start controls and each on a different fader. Another great feature is the ability to stack audio files into a deck. …just like a real cart machine, I can rotate liners or other program material within a single deck. As the cart plays, you get an up/down timer and a progress meter below to let you know, at a glance just how far into the cart your player is running. You can also loop cuts or sequence decks to play in order ‘hands free.’

If you don’t want or need the remote triggering, you can always set up hotkeys on your keyboard to launch a deck. If you have a touchscreen, the oversize play, pause and eject buttons work great.

If you are looking for the closest thing available to replace a cart machine, you may want to look at WaveCart 4.0 from BSI. This software does require a USB dongle and the remote USB trigger is sold separately.

Direct Price for WaveCart 4.0: $349

USB Trigger for remote start/stop: $99

Best,
MarkJensen

Filed under: Podcasts