So why use tape at all to record digitally? Let’s take a look back to the state of technology in the late 70’s and early 80’s. Although today personal computers with gigs of ram and terabytes of storage space are ubiquitous, this was definitely not the case 30+ years ago. Computer technology was developing rapidly, but even corporations that needed to back up large amounts of data were using tape-based computer storage. (Tape for data storage) In some recording projects today one song can take up 1-2 gigs of space. Consider the fact that the best commercial grade hard drive in 1979 might hold .5 gigs and would be extremely expensive. Personal computers didn’t even include hard drives as standard equipment until the late 1980’s. Magnetic tape was an established technology with a proven track record, and was also one that all recording engineers would be familiar with.
The basic operation of a digital tape machine is the same as an analog machine. It has record, playback and erase heads. The PCM 3324 is what is known as a DASH machine, which stands for Digital Audio Stationary Head. This means that the recording and playback heads were fixed and could not move. Later digital tape technology employed rotating heads that helped to encode more data into a smaller length of tape. The difference between an analog machine and a digital machine is that the digital machine must have circuitry to convert an analog electrical signal into a series of ones and zeros that are then stored on the tape as electrical pulses. These electrical pulses are then played back off the tape and sent through another converter that changes them back into an electrical wave that can be sent to speakers and played back. Click HERE for full article
The machine is looking very beautiful and I would like to tell that I too have used such machine when I was learning the course of audio engineering from Pro tools training.
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