Akai DL-1000

A rack remote that turned up in 1990 with a promise nobody could quite cash yet - centralized control of up to seven magneto-optical recorders, one unit at a time.

Overview

The DL-1000 is not a recorder. It is the remote controller for Akai's DD-1000 optical disc recorder. It exists because of the DD-1000's central limitation: the recorder could only record one track at a time and play back two, no matter how many tracks the disk format nominally supported. Owners who wanted to get past that were told to chain two or more complete systems together. The DL-1000 made that chaining practical, offering centralized control of up to seven complete DD-1000s.

The two units did not arrive together. Studio Sound (July 1990, p.29) noted that the DL-1000 remote was "to be launched around September" - so the remote trailed the DD-1000 itself. The DD-1000 was already shipping as a 5U rackmounting unit with a large 240 x 64 dot backlit LCD (40 characters by seven lines) and a disk price of around £250 that reviewers expected to fall as demand rose. Early adopters spent a few months with a machine that could do the work but not yet the coordinated control.

The core of the DD-1000 is a Sony 650MB magneto-optical drive. Mix (1990, p.16) described the DD-1000 as a 4-track recorder that manipulates audio data with full recording, replaying, and erasing/re-recording. That is a hard-disk-style workflow on removable optical media, which is a different proposition from tape. Removable disks meant a client's project could physically leave the rack and go on a shelf, and they were sturdy in a way that tape never was. Recording Engineer (July 1991, p.66) ran a short item headed "AKAI DL1000 REMOTES," confirming the remote's arrival in the trade press roughly a year after the DD-1000's own launch coverage.

The DD-1000 connectivity list shows what the DL-1000 was controlling: AES/EBU in and out compatible with S/PDIF from most DAT machines, an optical interface, RS422, SCSI, a Centronics port for printers, two footswitch inputs, and MIDI. Front-end software for the Apple Mac was also available. Version 1.3 of the DD-1000 firmware, an early update, added SCSI connection specifically to the DL-1000 remote controller. So the remote's integration with the recorder was a firmware feature, not a launch-day given. That same update also introduced uninterrupted recording across four disk drives for longer record times using additional DD-1000 units or external drives, which is the other half of the chaining story the DL-1000 was built to serve.

The DL-1000 was less about new capability than about ergonomics at scale. Running a single DD-1000 from its front panel is fine. Running several, in a rack, with a client waiting, is not. The remote put the transport and edit controls somewhere a person could actually reach them. Akai also offered a cheaper, less comprehensive alternative, the DL500, intended purely as a remote playsheet controller - a stripped-down option for users who only needed to fire takes, not to manage a multi-machine rig.

The DD-1000's own feature set is what the DL-1000 was reaching into. There is an edit cuts mode with non-destructive editing of up to 50 cuts per take, entered on the fly. A playsheet mode gives instant playback of up to nine takes or cuts via a numbered keypad, capped at two takes sounding simultaneously. A song mode chains takes and cuts like a sequencer. A cue list mode assembles takes, cuts, fades, and MIDI cues into a sequence. External sync works to SMPTE/EBU time code, PAL/NTSC video, or digital word clock, plus MIDI time code and start from incoming MIDI clock. Time display runs in all four SMPTE/EBU formats, feet/frames, sample points, or bars-beats-clocks. The 5U chassis carried a 6-line backlit LCD, dedicated function buttons, and a rotating jog wheel.

Period users left two operational notes that apply to the whole DD-1000 ecosystem the DL-1000 was bolted onto. First, MIDI clock sync was a bad idea. Different manufacturers calculate song pointers differently at a given tempo, so the DD-1000 could locate to a slightly different point than a sequencer when started mid-sequence. MIDI time code worked far better. Second, optical disks do not tolerate dust. Leaving a disk in the drive overnight, or for weeks over a holiday, let grime accumulate on a shutter that sits open inside the machine, and read/write errors followed. The fix was routine cleaning and a Sony MOA-L55 cleaning cartridge for the drive lens, which the reviewer felt Akai ought to have bundled.

The DD-1000's documented weaknesses were these: no four-track simultaneous recording, submixing required to hear more than two stereo tracks, VITC support needing the DL-1000 remote plus an optional card, a closed architecture that limited future expansion, no traditional delete-style edits, and no sort function in the disk directory. The remote did not fix the architecture. It made the architecture usable at the scale broadcasters and post houses were already running it.

The DD-1000 found strong adoption in broadcasting, with auto-load software later catching on in post-production. The removable optical media allowed rapid data retrieval and let operators move from one client to the next without waiting on a transfer. One on-line observation from the period described a DD-1000 rig with an Akai sampler and expander as offering up to 64 Mbytes of RAM, 32 voices, and six tracks of digital audio from three rack-mount units, all under central computer control. That would have cost considerably more via a dedicated system.

A DL-1000 is a remote for a machine that is itself scarce, and a remote without a DD-1000 to drive is a paperweight with a jog wheel. The DD-1000's system pricing started at $14,500, so the install base was never large and was concentrated in professional facilities, the kind of buyers who eventually decommissioned entire racks at once. That is the supply chain for both units now: studio liquidations, not estate sales. Anyone considering one should assume the recorder, the disks, the Mac front-end software, and the firmware ICs are all part of the same project, and that cleaning the optical drive is not optional.