Vintage Digital

Audio Recorders

Classic Recording Studio Equipment

Audio Recording formats, encompassing both stereo and multitrack configurations, are essential tools in the creation and preservation of audio content. Stereo recording formats capture two audio channels, typically left and right, providing a simple yet effective method for reproducing sound with spatial accuracy. Stereo formats are commonly used in music production, broadcasting, and consumer audio devices, offering immersive listening experiences across various media platforms.

Multitrack recording formats, on the other hand, enable the simultaneous recording of multiple audio channels or tracks onto a single medium. This allows for the independent manipulation of each track during the mixing and editing process, offering unparalleled flexibility and creativity in audio production. Multitrack formats are widely used in professional music studios, film and television production, live sound reinforcement, and podcasting, enabling artists and engineers to craft complex arrangements, add effects, and achieve precise control over the final audio product.

Both stereo and multitrack recording formats have evolved over the years, from analog tape-based audio recorders to digital technologies such as hard disc recording, solid-state recording, and computer-based digital audio workstations (DAWs). These advancements have democratized audio production, making high-quality recording accessible to a broader audience while pushing the boundaries of creativity and innovation in the field of sound engineering and music production.

In the world of two track analogue mastering audio recorders, the Ampex ATR-100 Series recorders are regarded as the finest reel to reel audio mastering recorders ever made. The fact that they are still in use today, more than forty years later is surely testament to that.
The Mitsubishi X-80 Digital Recorder was a pioneering audio recorder that offered significant improvements in fidelity and accuracy over analog recording technologies upon its release in 1980.
The year was 1982, Tascam introduced the Tascam 244 Portastudio, and in doing so they managed to change the recording world forever, particularly for home musicians! This was also a game changing moment for recording studios.
The Tascam 234 Syncaset 4-channel cassette deck was a groundbreaking audio recorder based on the Portastudio transport, that was introduced in 1983. It failed to achieve the wide acceptance of the all mighty Portastudio however.
Upon the release of the Fostex B-16 Multitrack Tape Recorder, it provided smaller project studios with a 16 track tape machine that offered performance and value for the very first time.
The Studer A721 is a professional cassette recorder with superb audio performance, reliability, and convenient operating concept, including a four-motor tape transport mechanism and modular audio electronics with automatic record parameter calibration.
The Sony DTC-1000ES Digital Audio Tape Deck was the world’s first DAT machine, and although it was a consumer machine, it proved to be very successful in the professional world too, perhaps even more so as DAT never really made it in the consumer world.
The Sony PCM2500 DAT Recorder took over from the Sony PCM-1630 Series Recorders, and kept the DAT format alive for years to come in the studio, (with many successful albums having been mastered to it) but DAT as a format, failed to succeed in the domestic market.
One of the most unusual tape recorders released during the golden period of the 1980s, is without a doubt, the Akai MG14D, a tape based analogue recorder that offered excellent sound quality in a relatively compact chassis, released hot on the heels of a wave of digital multitrack recorders..
Tascam, in 1988, pulled off the impossible by releasing the Tascam 238 Syncaset and cramming 8 tracks onto a single cassette tape, and somehow they got it to work without compromising sound quality.
The Tascam DA-50 Digital Audio Tape Recorder was the first US-legal DAT tape recorder with SCMS Copy protection, it was also a rebadged high-end TEAC or in Japan, Esoteric DAT recorder with some cosmetic changes to suit professional studio use.
The Tascam BR-20 Series are highly flexible and reliable professional stereo audio recorder/reproducers that use 1/4-inch-wide tape on 5, 7 and 10-1/2-inch reels, at two selectable speeds: 15 inch/s (38 cm/s) and 7.5 inch/s (19 cm/s). All models are switchable between NAB and IEC equalization.
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