Does the 1680 record 24-bit words directly to disc?
– In MT-Pro mode, the 1680 is able to maintain the benfits of 24-bit audio through an enhanced version of our Roland Digital Audio Coding (RDAC) technology. Audio captured by the 20-bit Analog to Digital Converters is bumped to a 24-bit word length as soon as any processing is done (mixing, DSP etc.). The S/P-DIF inputs on the 1680 can capture audio directly in 24-bits, and maintain this word length. Before audio is written to disc, it is processed by the RDAC algorithm, and saved in a special format which when read back from the disc, allows for restoration back to 24-bit. Though one of the obvious benefits to this system is reduced storage requirements, it is important not to think of this simply as data compression. RDAC uses a method of writing audio data to disc which differs from linear encoding, offering comparable (and in the case of MT-Pro, improved) sound quality, with one of the many benefits being the use of less disc space.
