Akai MG1214
Most of what survives about the Akai MG1214 comes from its own advertising. The ads tell a clear story anyway. Akai's launch campaign in Mix Magazine (September 1987, p.49) presented the MG1214 as a 12-channel mixer and 12-track recorder in one box - an "all in one" personal recording studio - with SMPTE sync, a programmable auto-locator, and computerized patching. The same spread aimed the machine at the serious musician. Next to it, Akai promoted the MG14D/ML14 rack-mount 14-track recorder with remote auto-locator, for those who wanted the same idea in separate components.
The specification blocks Akai ran in Mix Magazine (February 1988, p.147) show how unusual the format was. The MG1214 recorded its twelve tracks on half-inch tape in a cassette shell - Akai's proprietary MK20 cassette - at 19 or 9.5 cm/s, using a Super GX record/play head. Advertised figures were strong: wow and flutter 0.03% WRMS at 19 cm/s, third-harmonic distortion 0.5% at 0 dB, dynamic range 115 dB at 1 kHz, and 94 dB S/N (NAB). These are the manufacturer's claims, not independent measurements. No review with lab results on the MG1214 has surfaced.
Advertising brackets its commercial life from September 1987 through August 1989. Production years, original price, and sales figures remain undocumented. Half-inch tape in a cassette-format multitrack puts it in a small class of its own.
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