Woah! I had an ARIA Studiotrack IIII pass through my hands recently. Actually I still own it, but I'm trying to sell it so it's in the store. I couldn't find anything about it either. I think you probably have the exact same model.
The logo says ARIA- but if you look, on the back it says Arai and Co. So try searching Arai and Aria. As far as I can tell it's a Japanese unit, built like a tank. I have no clue how old it is- everyone that I've asked has been stumped! With a good mixer and some outboard gear it will defintly give you some good routing options with it's effect send on each channel- main and monitor outs (all RCA).
The thing sounds very different than my TASCAM. The only thing that bummed me out is that there is no noise reduction. I got it planning to use it to bouce tracks back and forth and too try and pull of some other tricks, but with no noise reduction, it didn't work so well for me. I'd still keep it around but I'm behind on my bills and I don't really need it right now.
I recorded very little on it while I had it actually. but what I did record on it sounded real nice and fat, very saturated sound. For my Rhodes it worked really well. I didn't like it at all for
acoustic guitar 
The electic tones I got were nice though.
I used the mic pres on it for micing drums, sending it to a compressor and then into the TASCAM, snare and the big tom specifically. I liked the crunchyness on the snare, and on the big tom (22" gong drum) it accentuated the high overtones a little more and it was less flabby- which is a good flavor for that drum. If I kept it it would be for those grungy mic pres.
If you find out anything about it let me know. I'd be very intrested.
I hope your friend can get some good use out of it. Just clean the heads and demagnitize. Hopefully the heads are still in good shape.
-jhe
[This message has been edited by James HE (edited 05-09-2000).]
