Roland VS-2480 How Recordings Are Played Back

6—Understanding the Hard Disk Recorder
Roland VS-2480 Owner’s Manual www.rolandus.com 87
How Recordings Are Played Back
Random Access
When your VS-2480 plays back your music from a hard drive, it uses something called
“random access” playback. The phrase “random access” has its roots in computer
programming, but what it means to you is this: The recorder can instantly play any
audio in a project located anywhere on its hard disk.
Random access playback produces a couple of very important benefits:
• You never have to wait for the recorder to rewind or fast-forward to a location in a
project. The VS-2480 gets where it needs to in a heartbeat.
• The VS-2480 can employ pointer-based playback and editing.
What’s Pointer-Based Playback?
When you play a recording, the VS-2480 uses a set of “pointers” to identify the audio
you want to play. Each pointer is simply a chunk of information about the audio.
Among other things, pointers allow the VS-2480 to play parts of a take, rather than
having to play the entire disk file from beginning to end.
A simple set of pointers would include information such as:
• the identity of the take that contains the desired audio
• the time location within the take at which playback is to begin
• the time location within the take at which playback is to end
Phrases
A set of pointers is called a “phrase.” Every time you make a new recording—or punch
in and out—the VS-2480 automatically creates a new phrase to play the new audio.
Each phrase appears in the Home screen’s playlist (Page 122) as rectangle.
Phrases are also created in other ways:
• Any time you re-record a portion of a track—typically by punching (Page 191)—the
new recording appears on the track as a phrase.
• You can create a new phrase that plays a currently unused take.
Virtual Tracks, or “V-Tracks”
As you record audio, punch in and out and edit it, you create a string of phrases
positioned one after the other in the order in which they’ll play back. This string of
phrases is called a “Virtual Track,” or “V-Track” for short.
Of course, if you’ve made a recording but haven’t done any punching or editing, the
V-Track that plays it will consist of just the one phrase that plays the recording’s take.
You can perform various editing operations on phrases, and edit regions of audio
within phrases, as we’ll discuss later in this chapter, on Page 90.
From here on in the VS-2480 Owner’s Manual , we’ll refer to a string of phrases by its
short name: “V-Track.”
Each phrase is a rectangular box. This
illustration shows a string of three
phrases.
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