Ricoh RS-1420C
The CD-R burner that got working musicians onto disc in the mid-nineties. A 2X writer with a 2MB buffer.
Overview
The Ricoh RS-1420C is a third-generation CD-R recorder and player. It is an external drive, and Ricoh built it for a working studio rather than a corporate IT closet. Its advertising was aimed at people who had already spent a small fortune on consoles, mics, tape machines and outboard gear. The message was that after all that, there was no sense settling for just any CD recorder. The marketing is marketing, but the spec sheet behind it is sensible for the period.
The heart of the thing is a 2MB buffer. In an age when a buffer underrun meant a ruined disc and a wasted blank, Ricoh described 2MB as "generous," and pitched it as the reason the drive could record reliably across a wide range of host systems. That last part matters, because whether a drive would burn without coughing depended heavily on which computer you plugged it into. The RS-1420C writes at double speed (2X) or single speed (1X), and it reads CD-ROMs at quad speed (4X). It could back up a finished project's sound files and free the hard disk for the next job.
Ricoh's promotional copy ran repeatedly in the trade press through 1996 and 1997. It framed the drive as a companion to a Digidesign rig. Mated with a system running Pro Tools, Sound Tools or Audiomedia alongside MasterList CD software, the RS-1420C could cut a one-off Compact Disc, whether that disc was a master for replication or just a handful of demo discs to pass around. The drive could also digitally bounce tracks from a music CD to hard disk in several different file formats, so it was useful well beyond the final burn. Mix (July 1996, p.31) carried the same "No Compromise" pitch, and the copy reappeared in the magazine's pages well into the following year.
The RS-1420C is the external version of the RO-1420C. The internal RO-1420C was sold at a lower price, and Ricoh's ads were careful to note that the photo in them showed the internal model. The external unit is compatible with both Intel- and Macintosh-based systems, and Ricoh billed it as very easy to use and affordably priced. Period advertising in Mix (September 1996, p.75) repeated the core claim, quad-speed CD-ROM reading and 2X/1X recording, as the drive's headline capability.
Nobody chases the RS-1420C for its sound, because it has none. It is a data device. What it let people do was put a finished project on a disc without a duplication house, and archive a session's files before the hard drive filled up. The 2MB buffer and the 2X ceiling date it firmly to the mid-nineties, so anyone buying one now should treat it as a period-correct way to burn and read discs on a vintage rig, not a daily driver. It depends on host software, MasterList CD and the Digidesign ecosystem in particular, so a complete working setup is as much about the computer and software as the box itself.
The record leaves out the details collectors lean on. There is no confirmed production run, no original list price beyond "affordably priced," and no published service history to speak of. The advertising is the loudest surviving voice on this model. Ricoh sold it as the sensible choice for studios already deep into outboard gear, and kept it in the magazines for the better part of two years.
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