open 4 track portastudio recording on an 8 track portastudio!

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Member Since: Mar 19, 2007

Is this possible? Im looking at purchasing a tascam 488 mk2 (second hand ebay job)to play around with and would like to open up and dabble around with some 4 track recordings made on a tascam porta 07, or at least as a bare minimum be able to use it to listen to my old stuff and transfer it to another media for posterity.

Iknow its a bone question so please be gentle here im really new at this!!

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Administrator
Since: Apr 03, 2002


Mar 19, 2007 07:46 am

I am not sure...if the tape heads are lined up in order, then tracks 1-2 will be track 1 from your 4 track, 3-4 will be track 2 from your old deck...

however, most 8-track cassette recorders are staggered, so, in order, the tracks go 1,5,2,6,3,7,4,8.

If you can you'd be best served by running 4 direct ours from your 4 track into the first four tracks of your new 8 track...if you have 4 outs on the 4 track.

Welcome to HRC.

Czar of Midi
Administrator
Since: Apr 04, 2002


Mar 24, 2007 10:05 pm

Ya, I don't think the Porta 7 had direct outs. I owned one long ago and don't recall it having that. But dB is correct most of the way here. But I think with the tape there is a catch when trying to play it back on an 8 track. The 8 track cassette will have a much smaller track footprint then the 4 track will. Reason being is the tape is now divided into 8 separate sections now instead of 4, so in reality one single track on the 4 track will cover two heads on the 8 track unit. Honestly I have never tried that before but am curious if it would actually work out. I don't think it would as it wouldn't be very readable by the smaller head of the 8 track unit.

But you can by all means export the 4 tracks as a stereo mix into two tracks of the 8 track unit in real time by playing them back on the Porta 7 and recording on the 488.

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