The TASCAM Portastudio was the world's first 4 track recorder based on a standard compact audio cassette tape. When it made its debut in 1979, the Portastudio was a revolutionary creative tool. It allowed musicians the ability to record any number of instrumental and vocal parts on different tracks of the built-in 4 track recorder and later blend all the parts together while transferring them to another standard 2-channel stereo tape deck (remix and mixdown) to form a stereo recording.