Studer A800 MKIII
A transformerless refinement of the multitrack that studios had already trusted with more than 500 installations.
Overview
The A800 MKIII was an evolution, not a clean-sheet design, and Studer's own advertising said so. The pitch ran repeatedly through the mid-1980s in the trade press and opened with the line "First we proved it. Then we improved it." The proof, per that same copy, was the roughly 500 A800 multitrack recorders already installed in studios worldwide over the preceding four years. The improvement was the MKIII.
The headline change was the removal of all transformers from the record and reproduce paths. A transformerless signal chain is the defining engineering claim of this version. Recording-Engineer (December 1982, p.117) carried the launch announcement under the banner "Studer A800 MKIII Transformerless," and made the transformerless topology the central selling point. For a machine at the heart of a professional multitrack room, that says how Studer wanted the electronics to behave: fewer magnetic stages between tape and console.
The second major addition was interfacing. The MKIII added connections for Solid State Logic and Neve/Necam automation, plus support for SMPTE/EBU synchronizing and editing systems. The recorder no longer stood alone in the control room. It had to talk to the console automation and the synchronizer, and the MKIII was built to do so. The microprocessor control software was also updated, according to the company's period literature, to meet what it described as the most demanding industry requirements. Studio-Sound (January 1985, p.100) repeated the same announcement and described the software revision as part of the same package of improvements.
The record shows where the machine sat in the market. It was a 24-track two-inch multitrack - later trade listings also reference a 16-track two-inch headblock version - and it was expensive, serious, and bought by professional rooms. A 1986 classified in Studio-Sound (March 1986) advertised a mint, low-hours 24-track MKIII at offers around £23,000. Studios like Ridge Farm in Surrey ran a pair of A800 MKIIIs in a machine room wired for all digital formats, alongside an Ampex ATR-100.
The A800 MKIII was the refined version of a workhorse that had already proven itself. The refinements were transformerless paths, automation and sync interfaces, and updated control software. The advertising said the pursuit of perfection had become an ingrained habit at Studer.
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