Transport (recording)
A transport is a device that handles a particular physical storage medium itself, and extracts or records the information to and from the medium, to an outboard set of processing electronics that the transport is connected to.
A transport houses no electronics itself for encoding and decoding the information recorded to and from a certain format of media. It only extracts and records information to the media, as well as handling mechanical operations for accessing the media itself, such as playing or rewinding a tape, or accessing the tracks on a disc.
An example of a transport for a storage medium would be an audiophile-grade audio CD transport, which houses no digital-to-analog converter, unlike most ordinary audio CD players. Instead, the audio CD transport is connected to an external DAC via a coaxial or optical digital audio connection to convert the digital audio information to analog for interfacing to most audio equipment.
Other examples of transports for recorded media include:
- A 16-track magnetic reel-to-reel tape recorder manufactured by Honeywell that was originally designed for recording instrumentation data, which was adapted for the Soundstream digital audio recording system developed in the mid-70s, and referred to by Soundstream as the "HTD" or Honeywell Tape Drive. It was in this case connected to external digital audio processing hardware designed by Soundstream,
- The S-VHS videocassette mechanism utilized by ADAT-format multi-track digital audio recorders made by Alesis,
- The Hi8 videocassette mechanism utilized by DTRS-format multi-track digital audio recorders made by Tascam such as the DA-88, and
- A standard video cassette recorder used for recording digital audio with a PCM adaptor.