transport (recording)

A transport is a device that handles a particular physical storage medium (such as

magnetic tape Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic storage made of a thin, magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic film. It was developed in Germany in 1928, based on the earlier magnetic wire recording from Denmark. Devices that use magne ...

audio CD Compact Disc Digital Audio (CDDA or CD-DA), also known as Digital Audio Compact Disc or simply as Audio CD, is the standard format for audio compact discs. The standard is defined in the ''Red Book'', one of a series of Rainbow Books (named fo ...

CD-R CD-R (Compact disc-recordable) is a digital optical disc storage format. A CD-R disc is a compact disc that can be written once and read arbitrarily many times. CD-R discs (CD-Rs) are readable by most CD readers manufactured prior to the in ...

, or other type of recordable media) itself, and extracts or records the information to and from the medium, to (and from) an outboard set of processing electronics that the transport is connected to. A transport houses no electronics itself for encoding and decoding the information recorded to and from a certain format of media. It only extracts and records information to the media, as well as handling mechanical operations for accessing the media itself, such as playing or rewinding a tape, or accessing the tracks on a disc. An example of a transport for a storage medium would be an

audiophile An audiophile is a person who is enthusiastic about high-fidelity sound reproduction. An audiophile seeks to reproduce the sound of a piece of recorded music or a live musical performance, typically inside closed headphones, In-ear monitors, open ...

-grade

transport, which houses no D/A converter, unlike most ordinary audio CD players. Instead, the audio CD transport is connected to an external D/A converter via a coaxial (

SPDIF S/PDIF (Sony/Philips Digital Interface) is a type of digital audio interface used in consumer audio equipment to output audio over relatively short distances. The signal is transmitted over either a coaxial cable (using RCA or BNC connectors) ...

) or optical (

Toslink TOSLINK (from ''Toshiba Link'') is a standardized optical fiber connector system. Also known generically as optical audio, its most common use is in consumer audio equipment (via a "digital optical" socket), where it carries a digital audio st ...

) digital audio connection to convert the digital audio information to analog for interfacing to most audio equipment. Here are some other examples of transports for recorded media: * A 16-track magnetic

reel-to-reel Reel-to-reel audio tape recording, also called open-reel recording, is magnetic tape audio recording in which the recording tape is spooled between reels. To prepare for use, the ''supply reel'' (or ''feed reel'') containing the tape is plac ...

tape recorder (using 1" wide tape) manufactured by

Honeywell Honeywell International Inc. is an American publicly traded, multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. It primarily operates in four areas of business: aerospace, building technologies, performance ma ...

(the model 5600E) that was originally designed for recording

instrumentation Instrumentation a collective term for measuring instruments that are used for indicating, measuring and recording physical quantities. The term has its origins in the art and science of scientific instrument-making. Instrumentation can refer to ...

data, which was adapted for the

Soundstream Soundstream Inc. was the first United States audiophile digital audio recording company, providing commercial services for recording and computer-based editing.Robert Easton, ''Soundstream, the first Digital Studio'', Recording Engineer/Producer, ...

digital audio recording system developed in the mid-70s, and referred to by Soundstream as the "HTD" or ''Honeywell Tape Drive''. It was in this case connected to external digital audio processing hardware (the "DTR", or ''Digital Tape Recorder'', although it housed just the electronics for the HTD) designed by Soundstream, * The

S-VHS , the common initialism for Super VHS, is an improved version of the VHS standard for consumer-level video recording. Victor Company of Japan introduced S-VHS in Japan in April 1987, with their JVC-branded HR-S7000 VCR, and in certain overseas ...

videocassette Videotape is magnetic tape used for storing video and usually sound in addition. Information stored can be in the form of either an analog or digital signal. Videotape is used in both video tape recorders (VTRs) and, more commonly, videocassette ...

mechanism utilized by

ADAT Alesis Digital Audio Tape (ADAT) is a magnetic tape format used for the recording of eight digital audio tracks onto the same S-VHS tape used by consumer VCRs. Although it is a tape-based format, the term ''ADAT'' now refers to its successo ...

-format multi-track digital audio recorders made by

Alesis Alesis is an electronic music company that designs and markets electronic musical instruments, digital audio processors, audio mixers, drum amplifiers, amplifiers, digital audio interfaces, recording equipment, drum machines, professional audio ...

, * The

Hi8 The 8mm video format refers informally to three related videocassette formats. These are the original Video8 (analog recording) format and its improved successor Hi8 (analog video and analog audio but with provision for digital audio), as well as ...

videocassette mechanism utilized by DTRS-format multi-track digital audio recorders made by Tascam such as the

DA-88 The DA-88 was a digital multitrack recording device introduced by the TASCAM division of the TEAC Corporation in 1993. This modular, digital multitrack device uses tape as the recording medium and could record up to eight tracks simultaneously. ...

, and * A standard

video cassette recorder A videocassette recorder (VCR) or video recorder is an electromechanical device that records analog audio and analog video from broadcast television or other source on a removable, magnetic tape videocassette, and can play back the recording. ...

(particularly using

U-matic U-matic is an analogue recording videocassette format first shown by Sony in prototype in October 1969, and introduced to the market in September 1971. It was among the first video formats to contain the videotape inside a cassette, as oppo ...

cassettes) used for recording

digital audio Digital audio is a representation of sound recorded in, or converted into, digital form. In digital audio, the sound wave of the audio signal is typically encoded as numerical samples in a continuous sequence. For example, in CD audio, sa ...

with a

PCM adaptor A PCM adaptor is a device that encodes digital audio as video for recording on a videocassette recorder. The adapter also has the ability to decode a video signal back to digital audio for playback. This digital audio system was used for mast ...

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