This was the last two track digital reel to reel to be produced by Sony, the recorders production life spanned from 1991 to 1997. The machine was designed to behave much like an analogue reel to reel when editing, DAT machines could not have splice marks in the tape, these machines had 8 digital tracks recording a digital signal, 4 tracks could be out and the recorder would still payback perfectly, I have seen all the 8 track lights flashing and there has been no difference in the output sound. The recorder overcomes two big flaws of analogue machines, wow and flutter and signal to noise.