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Marantz Cdr300 Keeps National Band Festival Moving at High Speed
Organisers of the National Concert Band Festival found the perfect recording device in their attempt to merge a playback CD of each band’s work with constructive appraisal from an adjudication panel.
Consolidated as a charity, each of the 50 bands participating in this year’s national festival — held at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester — was recorded on a Marantz CDR300 Professional portable CD recorder.
Explains the NCBF’s business manager, Kevin Cooke: “This is not a competition but an adjudication by professional musicians and composers against a set criteria, based on musicality and tonality. These recordings enable up to 160 bands, at the regional stage, to assess how well they are progressing.”
In the past, he says, NCBF have used a battery-powered portable cassette recorder. “The results were pretty dreadful — but then we discovered the CDR300.”
The organisation uses one channel to record the band direct to CD, using a Behringer mic, while the adjudication panel overlays comments on the second channel via a Shure SM58.
“This device is ideal for direct to CD-R recording,” continues Kevin. “With 50 bands going through in two days — each playing a 25-minute set — there is no time to write the performance to hard disk. This means we can work at high speed allowing each band to go away with their CD labelled up, listen to the full performance in mono ,and then pick up the adjudication on the other channel.
“We love the CDR300 because it is portable and durable, writes direct to CD, and most important, it is easy to use and set up, with automatically-adjustable record levels. Any of our staff can operate it.” The CDR300 also comes with an automatically adjusting dual voltage power supply for international use.
But one CDR300 is simply not enough, Kevin acknowledges. Now the NCBF are hoping to add a further seven units in preparation for next year’s event, when the national festival will be held at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama in Glasgow.
26th April 2005
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