Roland VS-1680 V-XPANDED, User Manual, Page: 32 / 282

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Chapter 1 Before You Start (VS-1680 Terminology)
Track Minutes and Recording Time
With cassette tape recorders, the amount of time you can record on a tape is predetermined by the length of that tape. Moreover,
any unused portion of the tape is wasted.
fig.01-15
By contrast, with disk recording, although the available recording time is determined by the amount of disk space, only the disk
space used for recording is spent. Thus, depending on on the number of concurrent tracks and phrases you record, the amount of
available recording time will vary. Therefore, it is a good idea to have a standard unit of measurement that corresponds to the
time of one continuous monaural signal being recorded on one track. This unit is referred to as a “track minute.”
fig.01-16
For example, 10 track minutes can be used for 10 minutes of monaural recording—this corresponds to the term’s basic
definition— or for five minutes of stereo recording since it uses two tracks, or two minutes and 30 seconds of recording on four
tracks, and so on.