CompuServe Messages

Steven, A couple of caveats to the opinions which follow: I have only had my AD516 for about a month and a half. I have never done professional recording although I do have three DAT recorders and a high end audio system. My impressions of the AD516 are very positive. Sound quality of music recording recorded at 44.1 kHz and 48 kHz to hard disk are equivalent to CD recordings played back on good mid-fi equipment. The AD516 produces no artifacts that are audible to my ears. The S/N of the AD516 is not quite the equal of the best CD playback equipment, but is more than adequate for all but the most critical applications. One thing you must be prepared for if you are going to use the AD516 for recording and mixing complete songs (or for any other purpose) is the need for a fast high capacity disk drive. I purchased a Micropolis 1.2 GB drive with a 10 msec average access time simultaneous with the purchase of the AD516. So far, I am absolutely delighted with this drive. I prepared one 18 minute video tape in which all of the sound was digitized (at 44.1 KHz), stored on the Micropolis and synchronized with the video by the AD516 reading SMPTE time code off the video tape and playing the selections from HD at the appropriate moment. Everything worked great, and at one point in the video tape I had five tracks playing back simulataneously with no problems. In short, I believe the AD516 would meet your needs if paired up with a sufficiently high capacity fast HD. Would it be better to purchase an 8-track tape recorder? I can't answer that because I don't have enough experience with multi-track recording or the type of work that you would be doing. I hope this helps in some way. Tom