ADAT HD24
ADAT HD24 tech specs
The ADAT HD24 multitrack recorder was released by Alesis in 2002, as the successor to their ADAT recorder released ten years earlier.
Instead of recording 8 tracks onto an S-VHS tape, it can record up to 24 tracks onto a hard drive. (12 if you're using a sample rate higher than the human ear can make use of.)
By the time of its release, people had generally moved on from dedicated hardware to DAWs, but for anyone stubborn enough to want a drop-in replacement to their old ADAT recorder, this takes up the same amount of space as one, but does the work of three.
Up to five HD24 machines can be linked together, providing a total of 120 tracks.
Being professional studio grade, it has 24 balanced inputs and 24 balanced outputs. However, as you'll need to preamplify the signals going into it, for a home studio you might as well get something like the Behringer ADA8200 and use the HD24's digital inputs instead.
Remember, it's "just" a multitrack recorder, so you'll still need a mixing desk. If your studio is a little cramped, this may be the bottleneck that determines how many tracks you can actually use. For example, with my HD24 hooked up to an ADA8200 set of preamps and RX1602 line mixer, I have 8 tracks to play with, and another for striping (turning it into a sync track), leaving 15 tracks unused. Even then, it beats recording to S-VHS tape.
Rather impressively, it comes with a primitive but fully functional built-in FTP server. Although it's slow, and tricky to set up the very first time, I've found it surprisingly convenient for transferring recordings to a computer.
It's quite possibly the last and best dedicated multitrack recorder.
External links
Reviews
- "Alesis HD24" Paul White, Sound On Sound, Feb 2002
Alesis: ADAT | ADAT HD24 | MicroVerb III | MicroVerb III guide | QuadraVerb