Tascam DA800
A 24-track DASH machine that cost as much as a house. Its reputation rested on a proprietary converter circuit Tascam called ZD.
Overview
Ninety-nine thousand dollars. That's the number that goes with the DA800, a 24-track DASH-format digital recorder that Tascam put at the very top of a product line running from the $499 Porta 05 Ministudio up to this machine. The company's own advertising in Mix (March 1991, p.55) paired the DA800 with the M700 console and called the combination "destined to be the best-sounding 24-track around." That's marketing copy doing what marketing copy does. The spec sheet behind it was serious, though. It had proprietary ZD circuits in the optoisolated D/A converters, two-times oversampling in both record and playback, analog and digital cue tracks, a 30-point autolocator, a 40-character alphanumeric display, and both AES/EBU and SDIF digital I/O ports.
The ZD circuit was the center of the sales pitch. Tascam's advertising in DB Magazine (September 1992, p.2) described the problem plainly. Digital audio had always been synonymous with superb sound, "yet marred by the harshness inherent in the normal A/D and D/A conversion process." The ad presented the DA-800's exclusive ZD circuit as the answer and claimed it dramatically reduced that harshness. Whether it delivered is the kind of thing that gets argued about in mastering rooms decades later. It is the reason the DA800 is a distinct model rather than just another DASH deck.
Power consumption was reportedly held to just 850 watts thanks to extensive use of LSI circuitry, which is a big help when you're specifying the electrical service for a machine room. Onboard synchronization was standard, so the DA800 could run either as a slave or as a master code source. Other features included emphasis and control logic switching at the remote control (tucked under a hidden panel), an hours/minutes/seconds calculator, and an optional second meter bridge for remote use. The 30-point autolocator and 40-character display put it in the same operational territory as the big analog machines of the era, just with a digital transport underneath.
This was a facility purchase, not a project-studio purchase. The DA800 sat at the apex of a multitrack lineup that also included the ATR-80 series of 2-inch analog recorders (the 24-track ATR-80-24 at $34,999 and the 32-track ATR-80-32 at $44,999) and the budget-minded MSR-24 analog 24-track at $12,499. Tascam was selling the whole spectrum, and the DA800 was the digital flagship at the top of it.
DASH-format tape itself is the practical problem today: the format is long dead, the transports are complex, and the electronics are dense. Collectors and facility engineers who keep DA800s running do so for the ZD conversion and the DASH workflow, not because parts are easy to find. The $99,000 original price and the 36-unit installed base make it a genuine rarity — the kind of machine that surfaces in studio liquidations and gets bought by someone who already knows what it is.
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