Overview Of The Studer A827 Multi channel Recorder

This is the Studer A827 24 track recorder.

Seen here with the trolley mounted remote controller, it was the last analogue multi-track recorder product made by the Swiss company.
The successor to the A820 2” 24 track the 827 made some cost saving compromises to Studer’s multi-track offering I guess in an effort to keep analogue recording in the studio environment a viable proposition a, nearer its introduction, the ascendancy of digital multi-track recording was clear and its take-over not far away.

The 827 borrowed heavily from the A820 using a near identical transport although the heads were 318 types, an improvement over the 317 used before.

Most cost saving was made in two areas: Simplified audio electronic and a removal of noise reduction and some control features found on the A820.

Unlike the A820, where the audio card function where on discrete cards per channel i.e., one card for the record amps, another for the replay, a further one for the sync function, which in turn required expensive hardware racks and labour-intensive internal inter-connection wiring. In this image of an A820 you can see the three card racks slid out from the under the deck plate, each holding 8 complete audio channels worth of cards, the A827 used a single card for two channels for all audio functions and this image shows the 12 cards and we come onto these in more detail a little later.

Here we have an overview of the transport and the lineage of the A820 is unmistakeable, with the spaced spool hubs, capable of taking 14” reels, the many guides and rollers either side of the head block, the forward mounted pinch roller contacting with the back of the tape and, head type aside the same head-block design.

In the front are the large transport buttons that Studer adopted for all their large footprint machines from the A80 onwards.

To the left of these is the tape counter and secondary controls and more on these later.

It’s the overbridge the other place obvious cost savings were made. Gone were the multi-display options of the A820 LED meters and the function buttons, to be replaced with moving coil VU meters the same time of which can be found on the consumer grade Revox C270 series machines and it has to be said, of no where near the same quality, as the meters found on the A800. Incidentally the two lights flashing under the channel 3 VU meter are indicating that this is the channel the alignment settings are acting on.

Moving down to the alignment controls these used the same display and operational approach as the A820, but the big grey counter function control buttons had gone to be replaced with controls much more streamlined. It’s here the different tape types the machine can be aligned for are selected as well as the three speeds of 7.5, 15 and 30 ips it can run at.

Unlike the A800 and A820, where the record action of each track can be set either on the remote unit or on the machine, the A827 has to have the remote controller to do this. Again, another cost saving by not duplicating these buttons.

The headblock cover has been removed from this machine as it was being aligned during the shooting of this video.

Back to the 12 audio cards. These are located under the transport deck plate. External connection for audio, control and power are made both by connections on a back mounted basis board and an umbilical connector seen here on the lead at the front of the card.

The cards are removed form the crate by removing this umbilical connector and then releasing the top and bottom catches.

A legend on the rear of the fold down front flap shows a schematic of a card with the location of hardware jumpers and adjustment controls.

So that’s an overview of the Studer A827 24 track multi-track recorder.