Cassette Portastudios The first Portastudio, the TEAC 144, was introduced on September 22, 1979, at the
AES Convention in New York City. The 144 was the first product that made it possible for musicians to affordably record several instrumental and vocal parts on different tracks of the built-in 4-track cassette recorder individually and later blend all the parts together, while transferring them to another standard, two-channel stereo tape deck (
remix and
mixdown) to form a stereo recording. In 1981,
Fostex introduced the first of their "Multitracker" line of multitrack cassette recorders with the 250. In 1982, TASCAM replaced the 144 with the 244 Portastudio, which improved upon the previous design with overall better sound quality and more features, including:
parametric EQ,
dbx Type II noise reduction, and the ability to record up to four tracks simultaneously. including the "Ministudio" line of portastudios that offered a limited feature set and the ability to run on batteries at even more affordable price points, and the "MIDIStudio" line which added MIDI functionality. Other manufacturers, including Fostex,
Yamaha,
Akai, Audio-Technica, Sansui, Marantz, Vestafire, Clarion, Studiomaster and others introduced their own lines of multitrack cassette recorders. Most were four-track recorders, but there were also six-track (Sansui) and eight-track units (TASCAM and Yamaha). Later Digital Portastudio models, some with the ability to record 24 or even 32 tracks, utilize
CD-R, internal
hard drives, or
SD cards, and commonly include built-in
DSP effects. ==Impact and legacy==