Although there is
Although there is a precedent with a record of the year 1941, the person who is credited as the inventor of multitrack recording was the guitarist, composer and inventor Les Paul, who made contributions in the design of the electric guitar Gibson Les Paul model for the Company Gibson Guitar Corporation at the beginning of the 50s. Paul had experienced the “dubbing” (overlapping recordings of the same instrument) to the end of the 40s and it was in 1947 when the U.S. label Capitol Records introduced to the public a disc (78 RPM) in which he played Les Paul eight different parts of a melody on electric guitar. These parts were recorded on wax discs teachers rigida, what Paul did was to record a track on a disc, then record another disc listening to the previous recording, while it joined the current implementation to complete the 8 tracks. However, the resulting recording, like others of the time, it was mono.
In 1948, a friend of the musician, singer and actor Bing Crosby was a gift of the first production units of the open-reel Tape Ampex Model 200. Within a few hours, Paul had the idea to modify the equipment by adding additional head recording and playback to enable it to simultaneously record a new track while monitoring the playback of previously recorded tracks. The experiments of Les Paul and was progressing quickly in order to Ampex 1953 when construction of the first 8-track tape recorder in the world with its own resources.
Ampex released the first commercial multitrack tape recorders in 1955, naming the recording process “Sel-Sync.” (Selective Synchronous Recording, Selective Synchronous Recording). Coinciding with the advent of recordings under Method FFRR (Full Frequency Range Recording, Recording of wide frequency range), and stereo vinyl microgroove hifi, the multitrack tape soon became indispensable to singers such as Crosby and Nat King Cole.
The first teams were similar machines of two or three tracks that allowed a solo voice was recorded in a dedicated track, while the two remaining tracks are used for accompaniment, and this system was also used extensively by the producer Phil Spector in 60s.
In 1958, the U.S. label Atlantic Records became the first company to install an 8-track tape recorder in his studio. However, the tape with four or more tracks were restricted mainly to the recording studios in the United States until the mid-60s, mainly because of import restrictions and high cost of technology.
In England, the independent producer Joe Meek all its first innovative recordings of the 60s using tape monophonic. The producer George Martin, the record label EMI, was considered an innovator for his use of two-track tape as a means to make better recordings Monophonic, carefully balancing the voices and accompanying instruments. The famous English recording studio Abbey Road not installing four tracks, but in 1963, so the first recordings of The Beatles before this year were carried out with two tracks recorders.
Some countries were delayed significantly in the installation of multitrack recorders in their studies. For example, Australia does not install a four-track tape, but in 1966 and the first 8-track recorders appeared in the late 60s.
The artistic potential of the multitrack recording draw public attention in the 60s, when artists like The Beatles and Beach Boys began performing extensively multitrack recordings, and then virtually all popular music was recorded in this way. Technology develops very quickly during these years.
During the’70s, the burners 16, 24 and 32 tracks were common along with the tape recording of 2 and 3 inches wide (5.08cm and 7.62cm, respectively). By contrast, the advent of the cassette to 1963, led to the advent of portable machines such as the four tracks ofthe company Portaestudio Tascam appeared in 1979. Although the cassette equipment could not provide the same audio quality that the open-reel, served as a useful tool for semi-professional musicians and professional music recording models.
Alesis HD24 Multitrack Digital Recorder
Today, multi-track recorders can be analog or digital, and are available with many more tracks. Multitrack analog computers can be up to 24 tracks on a tape, 2 inches wide, or 32 tracks in a 3-inch tape, but digital equipment can have an almost unlimited number of simultaneous tracks and can record and playback from media and various formats including digital tape (DAT, ADAT, etc..) hard drives and optical discs (CD formats and derivatives).
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