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Comment by 20after4 | Hacker News Reader

An extremely high quality analog 4 track. Not to be confused with (not even in the same universe as) the cheap 1980s or 90s tascam 4-track cassette tape recorder that people are much more likely to have encountered.

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Any idea how much the device cost at the time?

Not sure about at the time, but I have had the opportunity to record onto one of the tape machines they used (they had multiple) and the studio had paid around £30,000 for it.

That device is just the recording medium used for those recordings, don't forget the £100k in microphones and signal routing, plus the £1M in the building itself.

Not really if you compare it the 1969's Abbey road, which sounds quite a bit better. American productions were sounding much better though the mid to late 60s as well.

Abbey Road sounds clearer because it was the first Beatles to be produced with a transistorized mixer. The mixer used in Sgt. Pepper had vacuum tubes.

It's less "tinny" sounding than the earlier albums. Interesting because tubes are the alleged choice for a warmer sound today. So there must be additional factors in the new equipment.

By now solid state equipment can do everything tubes do, only better. I think only nostalgia and audiophile stupidity remain as reasons for tube equipment to continue existing. Certainly there is no reason to build new tube gear.

Admittedly cheap solid state gear sounds worse than high quality tube gear but that has way more to do with good design and quality components than the tubes themselves.

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