All through the end of the 20th century the DAW (digital audio workstation) wars raged. It was getting cheap, cheap, cheap to put a digital studio together, and change was rapid. The question for me was- how much did I trust the current personal computers not to crash? My answer was- not much. I worked with 'em every day, and they were damned unreliable. I was taking a chance on this big boy because it was brand new at the time, but I had a lot of warm fuzzies about Yamaha gear in general. What won me over were the moving faders, essential for mixdowns. digital 16 track with automation- Dec 22, 2000. Sure, I got lucky. Even though the product was soon discontinued, because working "in the box" was winning the market, I've used this machine for over 20 years and had two minor crashes. The CD burner did take a dump, and that would be a disaster because they're hard to find, but there's still a dedicated user base, and someone was clever enough to show us how to replace the CD drive with a solid-state card adapter. digital 32 track with automation. It's remarkably easy to keep strapping them together. I've never needed more than three. recording orchestra and chorus onsite. It packs up in a jiffy and doesn't require much room. Great for live events. For the most part this thing has not been improved upon by anything for what it does. With what is known as the Waves card and some I/O cards it can produce professional quality recordings to this day, and do it quickly and without spending a lot of time on maintenance. I'm chiefly a singer/songwriter, so this was just what I needed.

somewhere out west