TUTORIAL: How to set up the Automatic Recording Feature
First, we have to make sure our input source is suitable. Coaster is a dumb machine, and being that it cannot tell apart essential, i.e. musical content from gaps in between "intelligently". Coaster relies solely on the level of the incoming signal. And not on the average incoming level, but the absolute level at any time. What does this mean? If you record from vinyl, and you have a little pop or crackle between songs, Coaster will recognize this as signal because these spikes/peaks are relatively energetic. So, when trying to record from vinyl, you should expect that things don't go as easy as they should - unfortunately.
If you record from CD or cassette tape (where it's only low level, constant noise or hiss), things should be a lot better.
Automatic Gain Control (AGC)
If you have set AGC (Automatic Gain Control) to ON, choosing appropriate values might be extremely difficult since the built-in circuitry tries to bring up the input signal to a maximum level (also the silence!). So, if ever possible, switch off AGC.
Setting up "Auto-Pause" parameters
1. Set up Coaster for recording. Select the Input Source you want to use. Select the Sample Rate. Select the Sample Size, and finally mono or stereo recording. Now set the input gain level (in tandem with the output level of the recording source, if possible) so that you get a headroom value of about 3 dB. You might also click on the level meter display while experimenting, which resets the headroom display. Make sure you do this while playing back the probably loudest passage of the material you are going to record.
2. Now, play back a passage that you want Coaster to recognize as "silence". Cmd-Click on the level meter display. Instead of a dB display, you should now see absolute levels. Click into the level meter area again to reset the headroom display once more. Still play back "silence".
3. The values in the headroom display now are your reference for detecting silence. Think of them as "this level is the maximum silence level". Remember these values.
4. Now, open the Automatic Recording Settings dialog. In Auto-Pause Threshold, select the "Absolute" display with the popup. As value, enter a value that is a little higher than the value you remembered from step 3. Ok, what is "a little"? That depends on the Sample Size. If it is 8 Bits and you get a silence level of about 3 to 5, add another 3 to 5 level steps. If it is 16 Bits and you get a silence value of about 30 to 60, add another 40 to 80 steps.
5. For Postroll, enter the amount of time the input signal must have dropped below the Threshold level (constantly) before Coaster should regard it as silence. This is useful for music that sometimes has short "breaks", where all instruments remain silent for a beat. It should, however, be shorter than the shortest gap of silence that will be present in your material! I recommend using the ms display mode for this parameter. Normally, this should be set somewhere aroung 600 to 1000 ms (i.e. 0.6 to 1 second).
Now we're done with these two parameters.
Setting up "Auto-Resume" parameters
1. Have a look at the value in Auto-Pause/Threshold. Auto-Resume must be set higher than this value in any case. And, it should be considerably higher. Let's also use the absolute display mode for setting up Threshold. Say, we're recoding 16 Bits and have set Auto-Pause Threshold to, say 130. Now, we want to set Auto-Resume Threshold to a value of about 800 to 1200 (or even higher). This ensures that Auto-Resume doesn't trigger too early.
2. Now, we finally have to set Preroll. This is the time we want Coaster to record/capture before the Threshold level was hit. A good value is around 40 to 60 ms. Keep in mind that Threshold and Preroll in a way go hand in hand: If we increase Threshold, we want to also increase Preroll, so that the complete attack phase is recorded correctly. Because that higher Threshold level for resuming the recording is reached later, we must increase Preroll to make up for that time.
Here, we've completely set up the Automatic Recording Settings, and we're settling for a try.
Close the dialog hitting OK, and start a test recording. Works everything as expected? Fine! Then we can start the "real" recording. (Don't forget to Delete the test recording we've just made, so that the track numbering works well afterwards!)
%&#*, it doesn't work!!!
Here, we have to differentiate between two cases:
Problem 1:
The recording is not paused when the silence part is reached.
Solution:
Auto-Pause Threshold is too low and/or Postroll is too high. Fiddle with the values. Or, Auto-Resume Threshold is set too low. For testing this, set Auto-Resume Threshold temporarily to, say, 70-90 %. This will trigger resume only at very loud passages. Now, try again. Does the recording stop now at the gap? Fine! Now readjust Auto-Resume Threshold so that it resumes correctly. (See also Problem 2).
Problem 2:
The recording does not resume when the music starts again.
Solution:
Auto-Resume Threshold level is set too high. Lower that value.
Things you should know…
* You can set values in the Automatic Recording Settings dialog while there is a recording in progress. The new values take effect as soon as you close the dialog with the OK button.
* When starting a recording with Automatic Recording ON, Coaster first enters Recording Pause mode and starts recording when the Auto-Resume Threshold is first detected.
* Clicking the Pause button automatically disables the Automatic Recording feature. So you can manually Pause a recording while Automatic Recording is in effect, but it doesn't automatically resume the recording. (Reason: When you manually pause a recording, there's probably a good reason you do so, so you don't expect Coaster to automatically resume it.)
* You can re-enable Automatic Recording at any time (also during a recording). It is effective immediately.
I hope you now have a good grasp of the workings of the "Automatic Recording" Feature of Coaster.
