Home recording has come a long way in the last 40 years, things we take for granted now weren’t even an idea back in 1984. In this article we take a trip down memory lane to look at what people were buying and using in their home studio in 1984.

Portastudios

By 1984 Portastudios were really starting to take off, with the two main players in the market being Tascam and Fostex. Tascam were often considered to be the better of the two, with their Tascam 244, the Fostex equivalent was the Fostex 250. Both were cassette based 4 track recorders featuring basic mixers. The Tascam used dbx noise reduction, while the Fostex used Dolby C. The other major difference is the EQ system, with the Tascam using a parametric EQ and the Fostex having basic tone controls.

Ingenious home recording engineers could take a 4 track recording and get 10 tracks down, all through smart bouncing ideas. It did mean that once a track was down the sound was committed, EQ and effects and all. 

Both units retailed for around £700 in 1984, that’s over £2100 today. In 1983 the average salary in the UK was £8,528.

If you couldn’t afford one of the more costly Portastudios then there were cheap alternatives. From Fostex the X15, retailing at £299 (£935 today). The X15 was hugely popular, a very basic portable 4 track recorder, perfect for laying down basic ideas. Tascam recognised the popularity of the X15 and responded with their own lower priced machine as the baby brother of the 244, the Porta One Ministudio. It was a higher spec machine, offering more features at £429.

Other players were coming into the market such as Clarion, Yamaha and even guitar manufacturer Aria tried, but the market was dominated by Tascam and Fostex. Many of our older readers would have started their career on one of these machines.

Tape Machines

In 1984 the big news for home recording was the Fostex B16. A 16 track tape recorder on ½” tape, using Dolby C noise reduction. This is what Ian Gilby wrote about it for a January 1984 review in Home Studio Recording Magazine;

“With their model A8 recorder, Fostex brought the creativity and convenience of 8-track recording within reach of the home musician. To say confidently that the B16 will do a similar job for 16-track would be foolhardy. At around £3,000, the machine is unlikely to sell in vast numbers like the X-15 or the Multitracker, but what it will do, however, is bridge the abyss that currently exists between affordable 8-track and 16-track packages. Quite simply, there is nothing to beat it for the price.”

Yes, this 16 track tape machine cost £3000 (£9,354.26 today) in 1984, that’s before you purchased a mixer, you couldn’t use one without a mixer.

Of course the B16 wasn't the only tape machine available for home recording at the time. Fostex also offered their A8, offering 8 tracks on ¼” tape. Tascam offered the 34, the follow up to their 3440, recording 4 tracks on ¼” tape, and the 38, offering 8 tracks on ½” tape. It’s worth noting that the Tascam machines used tape that was twice the width of the Fostex options, offering better quality, they were also more expensive. Fostex machines included Dolby noise reduction, noise reduction was an external hardware option for the Tascam machines.

Again, a mixer was required to use any of these tape machines, which meant for most mere mortals working at home, the Portastudio was the machine of choice. Costs and space made a tape machine and mixer simple out of reach.

Mixers

We won’t cover mixers in any great detail in this article, although during this period some of the main players were AHB (now Allen & Heath) System 8, Soundtracs (purchased by Audiotonix), and Soundcraft, which at the time offered some very nice low cost modular mixers such as the 200, 400, 600 and 800 series.

Suffice to say, a mixer of this quality wasn’t cheap, for example the Soundtracs 16:8:16, often paired with the Fostex B16 was just under £2000. If anyone is wondering about the infamous Seck 1882, that wouldn’t appear until a year later in 1985.

Perhaps some reading this were fortunate enough to be able to afford a tape machine and mixer based home studio, some will have had record company advances to help. Remember them!?

Monitors

For many recording at home in 1984 monitoring was often through a set of hi-fi speakers and an amp, forget all the room correction, flat response stuff, it was all most of us could afford.

If you were able to set up monitors then one of the popular speakers at the time was the Tannoy Stratfords with a Quad amplifier, the whole system would set you back around £400. Alternatives from the USA were the JBL 4401 speakers.

At the lower price point were the ubiquitous Fostex 6301, first made in 1982 and still manufactured today. With their tiny size, they were hardly going to offer anything close to full range monitoring for mixing. Of course there were also Auratone C5 and the AKG LSM50, which looked strikingly similar to the C5. 

Just The Start

As you’ll realise when reading this, what we’ve outlined so far is the basics of a home recording set-up. There’s no outboard, reverb, delay, microphones, stands and cabling, that all had to be added on top. Suffice to say, recording in the early 80s was a costly affair, even for a basic set-up. 

My first set-up was woeful compared to today’s starter setup, it consisted;

• Tascam 244 Portastudio

• Sony Hi-Fi Amp

• Realistic Minimus 7 speakers

• AKG D90 dynamic microphone

• Yamaha DX7

• Roland TR909 Drum machine (sold at a later date mint condition in a box for £50! 🤦🏼‍♂️)

If you want to see costs compared between now and then for a typical set-up in the 1980s check out Home Studio Setup Costs Compared - 1980s And Now

What about you, were you just starting out in the 80s? What was your first set-up? Let us know in the comments.