ADAT

Alesis Digital Audio Tape or ADAT, first introduced in 1991, was used for simultaneously recording eight tracks of digital audio simultaneously onto Super VHS magnetic tape - a tape format similar to that used by consumer VCRs. Greater numbers of audio tracks could be recorded by synchronizing several ADAT machines together.

While this had been available in earlier machines, ADAT machines were the first to do so with sample-accurate timing, which in effect allowed a studio owner to purchase a 24-track tape machine eight tracks at a time. This capability and its comparatively low cost were largely responsible for the rise of project studios in the 1990s.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License found at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html. It uses material from the Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADAT.

An Alesis Digital Audio Tape machine. Image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons (contributed by LainF).