Studer A820-2
The half-inch two-track that studios bought by the pair, and still list by the pair when they finally sell.
Overview
The A820-2 is the half-inch stereo member of Studer's A820 family. The way working studios deployed it tells you most of what you need to know. In the studio directories of the era, rooms didn't buy one, they bought two or three. Sounds Interchange in Toronto listed a single A820 2-track with Dolby SR alongside its 24-track and 8-track A820s. Metalworks in Mississauga ran three A820 2-tracks next to its A800 III and Otari MTR-90 II. Sisapa Studios in Columbus went further, listing a pair of A820 2-tracks - one with center-track SMPTE time code and Dolby SR, one with Dolby SR alone - beside two A820 24-tracks and a Sony digital machine. When an inventory sheet repeats the same two-track model three times, that's a machine doing real work every day.
Studer positioned the half-inch version specifically for the top of the chain. According to DB Magazine (March 1986, p.66), the A820 was introduced in a standard quarter-inch stereo configuration in 1985, with the half-inch stereo and quarter-inch center-track SMPTE variants arriving afterward — and the magazine was explicit that the half-inch two-track was aimed at "extremely high quality music mastering applications," with the added tape width delivering meaningful gains in signal-to-noise ratio and tape saturation behavior over the quarter-inch format. That's the whole argument for the A820-2 in one sentence: same transport, same electronics, wider tape, better numbers where mastering lives.
The center-track time code variant solved a problem every film and post room had been fighting. DB Magazine (March 1986, p.66) reported that the A820-TC used two separate heads to record and reproduce SMPTE time code on the center track, keeping the code isolated from the audio. Studer had first introduced that approach on the A810. For a house syncing tape to film chain or to a 24-track, that separation is the difference between a lock that holds and a lock that fights you. The Mix studio directories show the TC-equipped A820-2 turning up where you'd expect it. Studio Saint-Charles in Longueuil ran an A820 2-track with center-track time code next to an A810 with the same, and Studio 306 in Toronto did the same. These were rooms doing interlock work.
The resale numbers are documented too, and they're sobering. Mix (June 1995, p.218) carried a classified listing a Studer A820 2-track half-inch with low hours at $13,500, in the same column as an A820 24-track with Dolby SR and full remote at $67,000. Whatever these cost new, the resale gap between the multitrack and the stereo machine is enormous. The 24-track was the center of a room. The two-track was the machine you had two or three of, and when a studio closed, the spares hit the market first.
The A820-2 is the half-inch mastering deck from the last generation of Studer analog transports, built when the company's multichannel A820 was setting the standard the A827 would later be measured against. Recording Engineer (November 1989, p.2) called the A827 the first new Studer multichannel since the "standard-setting A820-24." The two-track shares that lineage and that build.
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