Mitsubishi X-86 digital reel to reel tape recorder
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- Опубликовано: 7 апр 2007
- Showing some of the X86's operations. This is a digital 2-track mastering recorder with time code and analog cue track.. It cost around $30,000 in 1987. 16-bit resolution at 44.1 or 48 khz. Machines like this are what high-end recording studios often used to record an album's final mix to in the 80's & early 90's.
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I lusted after those recorders in the 80s. I remember a setup that Tom Jung (DMP records) had with some Duntech speakers and Thresold power amps.
The X850 uses an Otari MTR-90 transport and control logic.
It should not be a surprise that nobody really records with these anymore, I just play with them as they're overbuilt and esoteric chunks of kit, but thanks for the trolling.
awesome. Thank you. Even in 2015, very very cool.
What an awesome machine !!!! So cool !!
ya think?
these machines are dinosaurs... if they were everywhere I wouldn't have bothered sharing vids of them on YT :)
Fantastic reel to reel machine!
I see occasional comments like this, so to those people: clearly you misunderstand why people used these machines in the day. These are not an analog replacement; there are very easy-to-understand reasons why most of these are gone, much like how analog was mostly traded in for HDDs.
Those actually familiar with these machines know that tape saturation/formulation is audibly irrelevant on a digital machine. This is little more than cool history. Understand your gear if you're gonna criticize it!
Yep. With DASH and ProDigi, so long as it can accurately record and play back the encoded tracks, it didn't matter what the tape bias and saturation was. This is digital, where it's either there or it's not. In the case of recording digital sound too hot, that's not related to tape limits, but to encoding limits, which is why saturation is a non-issue with digital tape.
You had a peak limiter just below 0 dB to keep the level from actually going over that. Nevertheless the sound must never go over or you'll have hard clipping distortion. But the reason why there is a peak limiter is because, without it, really going over 0 dB means that the recording completely drops out at that moment in time as the level exceeds the encoding limit; with no quantization value from level that's out of bounds to assign with the sampling value for frequency at a moment of time, there cannot be sound at that time as frequency can't exist without level. And that's all because of encoding limits, which has nothing to do with saturation like it would with clipping on analog tape.
But, once high quality digital recording could be practically done without tape, what point remained for continuing to use tape? Eliminating tape solves a lot of problems, none of which are about sound quality but all of which are about dealing with tape's physical hassles as well as mechanically servicing the decks to ensure proper tape handling by the equipment.
Then there's also the expense of tape, especially metal particle tape that DASH and ProDigi equipment required. Those kinds of tapes weren't cheap when they were available. However, that tape is no longer made and there is no demand for it. You certainly can't use the stuff on an analog deck with acceptable results no matter how hard you try to calibrate to it, and the metal formulation may be too hard on the heads of an analog deck. That kind of tape will likely never be made again, so what's left would be old stock ... provided that there's any left ... and which you'd never really want to stake your livelihood on today with lucrative projects because it's still old tape even when it's unused, subject to deterioration over the many years since it was made new.
All digital audio tape formats are obsolete because of more reliable, more durable, and less expensive ways to record digital sound. Digital audio tape machines today are professionally used mainly for archival purposes, such as migrating taped assets to modern formats.
@analyzingfunny Well I didn't say I wish I could record an album on one; from the built in splice block to the massive wood panels, it's simply a monster. Just a big bad ass machine. I think it's kinda cool. Today you get lightweight, cheap, and mass produced. These kind of machines earn a certain level of respect in my book regardless of audio fidelity.
The video is nice but why didn't you feed the audio directly into the video? You can't tell anything about sound quality when using the microphone.
Have you heard a CD before?
cool gear, i wish i owned one of these
Ew, old digital! There's nothing worse than the sound of old digital machines. So cold and brittle. It really makes me appreciate what we have now. It's a cool demonstration and I'm glad to have seen it. But realy, if I'm going to use tape, it'll be analogue. The fact that it has an analogue cue track is cool. I never knew how people supposedly hand cut digital tapes till now...so THANKS!
Roger Dat man, I just parted out Walter B and Donald's machine, It had the Apogee retro filters fitted in the 2 track, and the sony 48 track box and remote as well had some mods performed By Bill D in From L.A. It was all still out in Hawaii at Walt's place where he had a nice little room with a view set up. I finally just got around to getting back out there and crating it all and shipping for an arm and leg, Plus it just kept giving me headaches and aggravating my intestines to envision going back and it being dark empty and kind of well bitter in the air. so yea cold and brittle is the warmest way to describe that stuff But he had a 76 Neve from the old power station in front of it all and had the DACs SWAPPED OUT AND INFACT IT WAS RATHER IMPRESSIVE AFTER THAT. But I sold the NOS sealed boxes of tape for about what it cost to ship it all to the states. Whoops caps were stuck on there. Yea that guy that wants one of these is not prepared for the constant brake band issues and the weak transport in the 2 track shown here, and the Sony springs and solenoids needing to be replaced every year almost. Oh and the damn LEDS on the meter panel of the Sony would loose small segments and if in the peak range one never really knew where you were at. LOL
Quantegy quit making 467 in Feb '07. Somebody might make tape for the Nagra D but it would only be available on 5" or 7" reels (Emtec 931 perhaps?). That would be about all you could actually buy new these days, aside from old stock.. Sony D1/4 and 3M 275 are long gone.
@BucketFurter In Premiere Pro you have a shuttle control that sounds just like that when you reverse or fast forward. As far as speeding up or slowing down the audio you could easily do that with ProTools, and choose whether or not you wanted to retain pitch or time amount, or both, etc.. and at 24 bit 48k it sounds a lot better than this machine (not to mention the improvements in A/D conversion over 20 years)
First gen units created problems today. Many had plugins that were not standardized. Many tapes cannot play on newer decks, and some have missing tracks or no data at all.
I've already got an Otari MX5050BII. I'd still like to have one of thoese though. :)
Andrew Poulain This song is M83 - Carresses
super tonband!gutes video!mfg wurm 1220 aus wien!
I just found one of these for sale that's supposedly in mint condition with Apogee electronics for under $800 but it would probably cost me at least that much to ship it. I'd love to have one anway even though tape is next to impossible to find. It would sure make a sexy doorstop at least. :D
At least you could still buy tape for these. Try doing that for one of the exceedingly rare 32-track machines.
any idea where the fuse is located for this machine?
thanks!
not an unusual opinion :) ..an easy one to have in the age of hard disks, but if you wanted digital in 1987 you didn't have many options.
Quantegy quit making tape Feb of this year.
If a tensioner position sensor fails the tape could snap as this machine has a simple analog closed-loop system controlling torque. You might have had a lemon, as that's an easy fix, or it could just be operator carelessness.
So what was the highest frequency you could record without fear of aliasing?
What song is that on the tape anyway? Is it something YOU did?
Hey, what kind of tape does this recorder use? Regular digital tape?
Which is considered best? Prodigi or DASH?
Nice demonstration, but I hate the noise it makes when you use shuttle...
hey whats the song
Машина супер! Сколько стоит эта машина? Спасибо.
Whatever. Great engineering is what makes recordings sound great. But that cold brittle veil of old digital is something with which I'm very familliar. Dire Straits "Brothers in Arms" is a classic example. Well engineered but cold sounding. The same thing for Metallica's late 80s albums. Lousy equipment in the hands of a great engineer can sound great. Likewise great gear in the hands of a lousy engineer will sound lousy. The equipment just adds flavor.
sure beats my Dokorder all to hell.
If you want to impress people with a door stop, get an analogue deck. You can at least get new tape readily for open-reel analogue decks.
If it's for free, i want it!
It can playback X-80 tapes.
I wasn't the biggest fan of the samples either, but I have a hard time not liking anything M83 does..
(song: M83 - Carresses)
Opasna je micu buši.
You contradicted yourself, but the idea isn't lost. Digital isn't for everybody, and actual hardware is for even less people these days.. not everybody has the same needs, maybe he's not recording drums? Evangelism isn't necessary, anybody considering an obsolete digital machine realizes what they're getting into.. Amazingly enough, some people like the sound of the apogees and keep a mits machine around not to run tape, but to utilize the analog I/O as a post-processor. Flavor.
analog crushes digital
You wish ! :p
Yes, that's exactly why the Flim & The BB's recordings from the early/mid 80's sound so damn horrible./sarcasm Dumbass. Tom Jung recorded their stuff on primitive 3M digital machines and it sounds incredible.
Analog produces better bands!
Even worse was the x-850.
Wow-16 bit digital reel to reel. Utter pieces of crap. Why dont you show when the transport messes up and snaps the tape. Oh , btw- do they even make that tape any more?