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Multitrack Recording
Multitrack recording (MTR), also known as multitracking or tracking, is a sound recording technique that was invented in 1955 that allows for the simultaneous recording of numerous sound sources or sound sources recorded at different periods to create a unified whole. When the idea of simultaneously recording distinct audio channels to independent discrete "tracks" on the same reel-to-reel tape was established in the mid-1950s, multitracking became conceivable. A "track" was simply a separate channel recorded to its own discrete area on the tape, preserving the relative sequence of recorded events and allowing simultaneous or synchronized playback.

A multitrack recorder allows you to record one or more sound sources concurrently to separate tracks, which you may then process and mix individually. Consider a band that includes vocals, guitars, a keyboard, bass, and drums and that you want to record. A multitrack recorder can capture the singer's microphone, the output of the guitars and keys, and each individual drum in the kit independently. This lets you to fine-tune each track individually before integrating them into your ultimate masterpiece, such as raising the voice or lowering the chimes.

History
Clément Ader showed the first technique for creating stereophonic sound (using telephone technology) in Paris in 1881. The pallophotophone, designed by Charles A. Hoxie and originally exhibited in 1922, recorded optically on 35 mm film, with some versions having up to twelve parallel tracks on each strip. [1] The tracks were recorded one at a time in separate passes and were not intended for later mixdown or stereophony; instead, the numerous tracks simply increased the maximum recording duration feasible, considerably decreasing cost and weight, as with later half-track and quarter-track monophonic tape recording. In 1933, Alan Blumlein, a British EMI engineer, invented technologies for recording stereophonic and surround sound on disc and film. The advent of stereo tape recording, which divided the recording head into two tracks, launched the history of contemporary multitrack audio recording on magnetic tape in 1943. In 1948, the Armour Research Foundation in Chicago stated that physicist Marvin Camras, one of its employees, had developed a 3-channel machine with "three parallel magnetic tracks on the same tape."