Hi, I'm going back and forth with myself regarding the purchase of a great
sounding but old peice of gear, to put in my home studio. I'm not one of the
guys who has to have the latest gear and I beleive that great records are
made on all kinds of formats. I also beleive that the only concern my
clients have is weather or not it sounds great. Here's my problem;

I have a 16 bit Yamaha O2R console, which I am fine with, for now. I have a
deal pending to buy a 16 bit Otari Radar 1 system for $1300.00 . Problem
number one, is that this particular deal doesn't come with a "back-up"
drive. The 8mm Exabyte drive was usually found on these. Without it... I
can't back up my work. To also work with clients that saved their work to
these drives, I think I would need it. oHowever, for under $100 I could
probably get a used one from Ebay.

Major problem #2 is that the only way I could get 24 tracks back over to the
O2R console is to either use the analog outs on the Radar (which sound
great) or buy an Adat link card kit (which I've located for $500.00). So now
I'm up to about $1900.00 for an older... but great sounding hard disk
recorder. I mjust want to add that my O2r has 2 adat cards with lightpipe in
it now so I was hoping to buy 1 more to accomodate 24 trks of digital.

I've been told that the Radar 1's are becoming more desireable than the
Radar 2's in Europe. But even if I spend the extra money ($100 for the
drive, $500 for the link kit) for the Radar 1, how can I dump Radar tracks
into my Macintosh G4 to work with programs like Pro Tools and Nuendo?

Question is; Is the Radar 1 worth doing all this for? I do love the sound
and the machine but there's other hard disk recorders out there, like a used
Mackie HDR for around $2000.00 . I've heard good and bad about them, but I
wouldn't have to jump through all these hoops. How is it compared to the
real deal? That's what I want to know?

Thanks and please email me at;