Sony PCM-3324S
A fourth-generation DASH multitrack that studios trusted with the master.
Overview
The PCM-3324S is the fourth generation of Sony's DASH-format digital multitrack. By the time it arrived, the format had been shaken down enough that working engineers stopped treating digital 24-track as a science project and started treating it as the house recorder. It holds word-sync lock while you nudge varispeed during a mix.
The layout is simple. Twenty-four digital audio tracks live in the box, and when a project outgrows them you cable a second PCM-3324 to the first. Mix (September 1988, p.100) pointed to the sync behavior in Sony's own advertising: a pair of these machines can hold word-sync lock even in varispeed and editing situations, yielding 48 perfectly synched tracks with zero audio phase shift. Lock that survives varispeed is what separates a machine you can mix on from one you fight all day.
Editing is a strong point. Fly-ins, single or multiple track, are handled from the front panel or the remote, and crossfades are variable from 1 to 370 milliseconds. Recording Engineer (March 1988, p.23) ran the same "Track team for the long run" pitch, framing the 3324 as a machine built to survive format changes rather than be outgrown by them.
The 3324S replaced the earlier PCM-3324, and by April 1993 Studio Sound (p.29) reported that over 70 PCM 3324Ss had been sold. The same piece noted the 3324S could be expanded upward by recording tracks 25-48 on a PCM 3348, and that the 3324S is actually half the weight of the PCM 3348. Anyone who has carried a digital multitrack up a flight of stairs will see the point.
The Hit Factory in New York ran one as its recording device and storage technology. Bernie Grundman Mastering in Hollywood listed it among its mastering facility gear. Mix (May 1988, p.64) carried Record Plant president Roy Cicala's endorsement that the studio was a firm believer Sony digital would prevail as the leading recording format.
For a collector or a working studio looking at one today, the appeal is not nostalgia for tape — it is the sound of early DASH conversion and the discipline of a machine designed for people who could not afford a bad take. The half-the-weight-of-a-3348 build is a genuine practical advantage if the unit has to move. The 1-to-370-millisecond crossfade range is a musical tool, not a spec-sheet curiosity. And the two-machine sync capability means a pair of 3324S units still constitutes a 48-track digital studio, which is not a small thing.
What owners should expect is a machine that wants to be maintained like the professional instrument it is — it was sold to studios, serviced by studios, and it rewards the same treatment now. The 3324S is not a toy and was never priced like one. It is a piece of the digital transition, built by the company that arguably pushed hardest to make that transition happen, and it still does the job it was hired to do.
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