Tascam offers the new 564 Digital Four-Track Portastudio with numerous random access functions designed for the musician who wants fast and flexible editing with clean, noise-free digital sound. Based on the Mini-Disc or MD format, the 564 has all the features and more you'd expect from a digital mixer/recorder including: complete and instant random access to any location within your song, data entry and transport shuttle control via the jog wheel, auto punch in/out with rehearsal, three-band equalizer with a sweepable mid-range, two auxiliary sends, four mono channels, four stereo channels and balanced XLR mic/line inputs.

Any unwanted tracks or parts of tracks or performances can be erased and conversely any desired tracks copied and moved to new locations. Songs can be divided into up to 20 different "Patterns" and "flagged" with index markers. With the Index Program function, you may then arrange these Patterns into cohesive finished Songs. All patterns and Songs can be named and saved to disc for easy, future re-editing.

Recording on the 564 is on four tracks with up to 37 minutes of total recording time and up to five "takes" on each track. So once you decide which take or combination of takes is best, you then can assign that take to a track. You can ping-pong and "fly" tracks around your song and now there is a Bounce Forward function. Bounce Forward allows you to create a series of submixes with effects and EQ and carry that submix forward to another location on the disc. This mix is used for reference to record additional parts or to try alternate arrangements or just experiment with wacky ideas and edits. The original tracks stay safe and separate at the original location if you should want to revert to them later. The 564 supports MIDI Machine Control (MMC) so all transport functions can be controlled from your computer sequencer's main page. Furthermore, the 564 stays "locked" to your sequence by way of MIDI. Tascam points out that the 564 is the only MD multitracker that provides a S/PDIF digital output so you can digitally archive (as a backup for the MD disc) all audio and files to a DAT machine.