Studio Monitor: Tascam Marks 25 Years Of Audio Innovation

Few companies have the distinction of revolutionizing their industry once, let alone two or three times. But Tascam, a trailblazer in the personal recording field for 25 years, is celebrating not only its silver anniversary this year but also its singular track record for changing the face of the business.
It all started in 1974, when Tascam's predecessor, Teac, introduced the A3340, a four-channel, open-reel unit intended as a quadrophonic recorder but widely adopted as a 4-track deck for musicians who wanted to experiment with multitracking in their homes.
For all the impact of the A3340, it was the 1979 Tascam Portastudio-the industry's first cassette 4-track-that kicked down the door that separated musicians from the top-echelon studios that were their only avenue for recording up until that time.
The compact, affordable Portastudio was unveiled at the 1979 Audio Engineering Society (AES) Convention, using tracks from the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" to demonstrate its capabilities.
At the time it was introduced, the Portastudio-still in use today-offered musicians and home-recording enthusiasts unprecedented flexibility and sound quality. Then, in the early '90s, when the lo-fi aesthetic emerged as an antidote to the slick sound of commercial radio, the Portastudio underwent a renaissance as the weapon of choice for musicians who wanted to create edgy music in the privacy of their homes.
Throughout its history, Tascam bolstered its position as an innovator in the home recording market and middle-level studio arena with a series of other products tailored to those users, including various 2-, 4-, 8-, and 16-track recorders and a line of mixing consoles.
As digital technology evolved, Tascam addressed the need for a digital counterpart to the Portastudio with the DA-88, the company's biggest success so far.
Introduced in 1993, the modular, digital multitrack (MDM) recorder has been a resounding success, selling in excess of 60,000 units, winning an Emmy Award, and revolutionizing the way records are made.
It is rare these days to encounter a recording project that doesn't use an MDM somewhere along the way, if not as the major recording medium, then at least as an adjunct to an analog or digital system.
"The DA-88 is the biggest product in our history," says Gene Joly, Tascam Division manager since early 1998. "It's big in music recording, but it really transformed the film and video industry."
More recently, Tascam responded to the trend toward higher-resolution digital recording with the DA-45HR, the industry's first commercially available, 24-bit DAT recorder.
All of those products form the backbone of a tradition of being in the forefront of the industry-of designing, building, and supporting products that change the very process of making music.
Although Joly is a relative newcomer to Tascam, he is well-steeped in the company's history from his 23 years as a Boston-area retailer. He considers Tascam's heritage to be one of the company's most cherished assets.
"We invented the personal recording industry, so there's a real legacy there, a source of pride," he says. "It has had a larger-than-life impact on everybody who works here. We have a tradition to uphold."
Joly adds that Tascam is on the verge of introducing other products that promise to shake up the industry, but he declined to reveal specifics in advance of this year's AES show, scheduled for Sept. 24-27 at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York. "We often go back to what made past products successful," he says. "We have a pressure and an inspiration to maintain that kind of heritage."
Besides keeping Tascam on the cutting edge of the industry, Joly has taken it upon himself to spruce up the company's image. Traditionally, Tascam was regarded as a low-key company with little or no press profile, despite its enormous impact on the business.
Joly says, "I personally think image is important. We're in a specialized business, and it's a small industry. It's one where you can compete, but you also have to communicate."
One of the elements in Tascam's image campaign is a new Internet site-www.Tascam.com-that contains ample historical background, as well as clearly laid-out information about the company's entire product line, with frequently asked questions and troubleshooting guides.
"For a company with such a great heritage, we were lacking in written history of the company," says Joly. "New hires should know more, the Web site should have more information, and dealers should know more."
It's too early to tell how Tascam's new PR orientation will play out, but one thing is clear: The stakes are higher than they've ever been.
The musical instrument retail market has followed the consolidation trend that other retail sectors have experienced in the past five years, and the digitization of recording technology has resulted in a faster-paced, software-based world in which potential competitors are constantly coming out of the woodwork.
Furthermore, two of the fastest-growing areas of the business-digital mixers and digital audio workstations (DAW)-are not ones in which Tascam is particularly strong.
The company was behind the competition in introducing a digital mixer and stumbled by making its debut product in that category, the TM-D8000, incompatible with Alesis' Adat format, the chief rival of the DA-88. Since then, Tascam has recovered somewhat with the small-format, low-priced TM-D1000 digital mixer.
"It's a very strong market with higher-budget, very technically astute customers," says Joly of the digital mixer sector. "It's going to be a long market to develop at lower levels, because if people are used to mixing at all, it's with knobs and faders that have some obvious correlation to the signal path. The market is still absolutely going to go in that direction, but it's going to take time."
As far as DAWs are concerned, Tascam had yet to enter that market as of this writing.
Still, for all the competitive threats that lurk from companies such as Alesis (in MDMs), Panasonic (DATs), Digidesign (DAWs), and Pioneer (CD-Rs), Tascam is on solid footing with a battery of well-regarded, reliable products; a reputation for innovation; and intelligent research-and-development and product-planning policies.
The company's worldwide annual sales are just above $100 million per year, and it employs 375 people worldwide in various capacities, from engineering to manufacturing to sales.
Based in Montebello, Calif., Tascam is the second largest of four divisions of Teac Corp, a $1.2 billion Japanese manufacturing company that specializes in digital and analog recording technologies. (The other divisions, in order of size, are Data Storage Products, Industrial Products, and Consumer Products.)
Formed by the Tani brothers in 1953, Teac debuted with an open reel recorder. In the late '60s, the Tani brothers and one of their engineers, Dr. Abe, formed an audio subsidiary, Teac Audio Systems Corp., or TASC.
The latter division's American distributor, TASC America (Tascam), was established in 1972 under Dr. Abe's direction and evolved into a stand-alone brand in 1974 with the introduction of the Series 70 reel-to-reel recorders and the Model 10 mixer. (The groundbreaking A3340 recorder, which preceded the Series 70 and Model 10 products, was introduced under the Teac name, as were subsequent products in that series.)
Tascam's R&D team remains in Japan, but the company operates a software development team in Northern California that accounts for many of its initiatives in that area.
Joly says one of his mandates is to act as a liaison between the Tokyo headquarters and the U.S. division, as well as encourage growth in other global markets.
"We have an international committee to coordinate our global initiatives," says Joly. "There's a mandate and a common goal and common plan."
Although the U.S. is the company's largest market, Tascam is also strong in Germany, the U.K., and other European territories, as well as in South and Central America and Asia, according to Joly.
As the industry becomes more globally oriented and sophisticated, Tascam is committing ever greater resources toward the critical area of product and customer support, according to Joly.
"As things are getting very digital, with multiple digital components, word clock becomes a big issue," he says. "We have four full-time technical support people, and we're budgeted to add three."
Joly says Tascam's higher profile, its increased commitment to product support, and its momentum with two generations of groundbreaking digital and analog products are all part of the mix of making the recording experience more joyful and less cluttered with technical obstacles.
"It's an exciting time because the capabilities are astounding, but it's also a confusing time for people," says Joly. "We're trying to make it a satisfying and rewarding journey."
News Flash: Piers Plaskitt, an industry veteran who helped establish British high-end console manufacturer Solid State Logic's (SSL) U.S. operation, has joined competitor Euphonix as president of worldwide sales and marketing, according to an Aug. 30 statement from Palo Alto, Calif.-based Euphonix.
Plaskitt's latest career turn is ironic in that it follows a reverse move by Rick Plushner, who left Euphonix in 1997 to take over the reins of SSL U.S.A. At that time, Plaskitt departed SSL to pursue other interests, most recently as VP of video post facility Post Perfect.
Referring to Euphonix's planned foray into digital mixing for music, post-production, and broadcast, Plaskitt says, "It's great to be with Euphonix, a company that is setting the new standard in digital consoles."