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Author Topic: fostex dmt8 (1995?) Digital Multitracker  (Read 3809 times)

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Offline chrisNova777

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fostex dmt8 (1995?) Digital Multitracker
« on: December 12, 2015, 01:38:09 AM »
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/1995_articles/dec95/fostexdmt8.html


Quote
Fostex DMT8
Digital Multitracker
Published in SOS December 1995
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Reviews : Multitrack Recorder
PAUL WHITE visits the future of home recording, where tape heads never need cleaning, cassettes never jam and mistakes can be undone at the touch of a button.

 

Our recent product preview of the Fostex DMT8 disk-based multitracker sparked off more interest than Nick Leeson's bank statements, but what really impresses me is that Fostex already have the finished models on their way to the shops -- this time there's no interminable waiting for vapourware to condense! Though it doesn't offer anything new in the way of technology, or even features, the DMT8 attains a high coefficient of uniqueness due to its ferociously aggressive price and its simple, deliberately cassette-like user interface.

Packaged to look and feel as much as possible like one of Fostex's existing multitrackers, the DMT8 is a dedicated 8-track digital recorder based upon a 16-bit, 44.1kHz sample rate system, offering simultaneous recording on up to four tracks. The storage medium is a 540Mb internal IDE disk drive which can provide a recording time of around 12.5 minutes (for 8 tracks), just a couple of minutes less than you'd get from a double speed cassette multitracker. Recordings can be backed up to DAT via the machine's optical connectors, which takes around 45 minutes, but there is no apparent means of extending the recording time by adding an external drive or by increasing the size of the internal drive; an obvious limitation. No digital phono S/PDIF sockets are fitted but an inexpensive optical-to-phono adaptor is available from Fostex.

Though designed to operate much like a cassette multitracker, the DMT8 offers additional random access features unique to tapeless systems -- such as cut/copy/paste editing and, perhaps most importantly, undo. There are no virtual tracks or playlist-type edit features, however, and the maximum recording time is fixed at 12.5 minutes regardless of whether you fill up only one track or all eight. The editing facilities are non-destructive -- you can always undo the last move you made, and as I understand it, part of the disk is used for temporary file storage, so if you intend to do a lot of editing, then it pays to leave a couple of minutes of disk space unused.