Otari MX5050 MkIII
A half-inch eight-track that put a fully professional compact multitrack within reach of the project studio, at, as Otari's own copy put it, a "non-ultimate price."
Recording Engineer (December 1981, p.123) listed the MX5050 MkIII-8 as the heart of a "Pro System" package alongside a Ramsa WR-8816 console and UREI 615 power amp.
Overview
The pitch Otari ran in the trade press for the MX5050 MkIII-8 was blunt about its ambitions: a "new, fully professional compact 8 track recorder" that carried the company's "hallmark of superb performance and reliability," billed as "the ultimate ½" 8 track - at a non-ultimate price." A half-inch eight-track was the working format for a whole tier of small commercial rooms and serious home setups in the early 1980s. Otari wanted the MkIII to be the one you bought when you couldn't justify a two-inch machine.
The transport is the heart of the thing. Otari fitted a DC servo capstan with direct drive at 15 and 7½ ips, and gave it ±7% varispeed on both record and playback, which is unusual for the price bracket. For overdubs against a fixed reference, that range is handy. You can tune a take to a temperamental piano or nudge a tape that was cut slightly off-speed somewhere upstream. The motion-sensing control logic with dynamic braking is the other half of the transport story.
Punching in and out is where the MkIII shows its professional breeding. Otari built in automatic sync/input changeover on punch-in/out and made the punch itself click-free. The deck also carries a wide-range bias adjustment intended to suit all tapes. That matters on half-inch eight-track, where tape stock choices actually change the sound, and the bias range keeps the machine useful as your supply of a given formulation dries up.
The electronics are laid out sensibly for service. Each channel lives on a single card module, and Otari made the electronics adjustments externally accessible. That's a small thing on paper and a large one when you're chasing a drifting channel at eleven at night. Line input and output are both switchable between +4 and −8dBm, with variable or fixed level on the input and switchable output, all on XLR connectors. That let the MkIII slot into a proper console-based room or a more ad-hoc setup without a rack of interface gear. A built-in 1kHz/10kHz test oscillator and an LED tape timer round out the working features.
The MkIII-8 turns up repeatedly in the studio listings of the period as the multitrack at the center of small rooms. It also appears in the classifieds with some regularity through the 1980s and into the 1990s, sometimes paired with the CB110 remote and a roll-around stand.
The MkIII is not a two-inch machine, and nobody at Otari pretended otherwise. Eight tracks on half-inch tape is a real step up from quarter-inch four-track, but it is not the headroom or the track width of a professional two-inch. The MkIII offered professional transport behavior, serviceable card-based electronics, and Otari's build reputation in a package a small studio could afford and fit through a doorway.
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