History of multitrack recording

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Multitrack recording of sound is the process in which sound and other electro-acoustic signals are captured on a recording medium such as magnetic tape, which is divided into two or more audio tracks that run parallel with each other. Because they are carried on the same medium, the tracks stay in perfect synchronization, while allowing multiple sound sources to be recorded at different times.

The first system for creating stereophonic sound (using telephone technology) was demonstrated by Clément Ader in Paris in 1881. The pallophotophone, invented by Charles A. Hoxie and first demonstrated in 1922, recorded optically on 35 mm film. Some versions used a format of as many as twelve independent monaural tracks in parallel on each strip.^[1] Each track was recorded one at a time in separate passes and were not intended for later mixdown or stereophony due to the fact that each monophonic program was unrelated to the next - any more than one random album would be related to the next. Unlike with later half-track and quarter-track monophonic tape recording, the multiple tracks simply multiplied the maximum recording time possible, greatly reducing cost and incredible bulk.

Alan Blumlein, a British engineer at EMI, patented systems for recording stereophonic sound and surround sound on disc and film in 1933. The history of modern multitrack audio recording using magnetic tape began in 1943 with the invention of stereo tape recording, which divided the recording head into two tracks. In 1948, Chicago's Armour Research Foundation announced that its staffer, physicist Marvin Camras, had produced a three-channel machine with "three parallel magnetic tracks on the same tape".^[2]

The next major development in multitrack recording came in the mid-1950s, when the Ampex corporation devised the concept of 8-track recording, using its "Sel-Sync" (Selective Synchronous) recording system, and sold the first such machine to musician Les Paul.^[3] However, for the next 35 years, multitrack audio recording technology was largely confined to specialist radio, TV and music recording studios, primarily because multitrack tape machines were both very large and very expensive – the first Ampex 8-track recorder, installed in Les Paul's home studio in 1957, cost US$10,000 – roughly three times the US average yearly income in 1957, and equivalent to $108,483 in 2023 in an era when a midline new car was the same price.

Affordable home multitrack recorders were introduced in the 1970s using reel-to-reel tape. In 1979, the introduction of the TASCAM Portastudio, which first used the same 1⁄4-inch (6.4 mm) reel-to-reel as quarter-track stereo and then migrated to the inexpensive compact audio cassette as the recording medium, making good-quality four-track (and later eight-track) multitrack recording available to the average consumer for the first time. However, by the time the Portastudio had become popular, electronics companies were already introducing digital audio recording systems, and by the 1990s, computer-based digital multitrack recording systems such as Pro Tools and Cubase were being adopted by the recording industry, and soon became standard. By the early 2000s, rapid advances in home computing and digital audio software were making digital multitrack audio recording systems available to the average consumer, and high-quality digital multitrack recording systems like GarageBand were being included as a standard feature on home computers.