experiments with tape
Home > Home Recording Forum > Recording Techniques > experiments with tape
Posted on Mar 20, 2006 06:59 am
jh5dl
Member Since: Feb 13, 2006
Hi,
I've been recording to a mac through 01X yamaha desk. And decided to experiment adding some tape compression to each track. Initially I tried mastering everything onto just normal denon tape deck and back into digital and was suprised that even that had a quality to it. Then had the idea of running each separate track of a song (i.e. guitar, snare,bass,floor etc.) onto tape and back into digital, then realligning in logic-but unfortunately - (I guess because of the inconsistency of the tape tension/speed) I could align tracks at the beginning but by the end everything got way out of sink.
I wondered with a proper 8track tape machine or 2 track mastering machine built for professional recording etc.-would it be possible to do that. - i.e. is it just that my tape maching is for domestic use & was not built 4 consistent play back. Or would there always be problems with tape tension etc?
thanks
[ Back to Top ]
Mar 20, 2006 07:14 am Rather than going through all that trouble, have you ever considered, or tried using saturation effects like PSP Vintage Warmer or Steinberg Magneto? They are surprisingly warm and you then avoid all the issues of tape syncing and noise introduction from bouncing from digital to analog and back. Because it's very likely you will have problems lining them all up exactly. And personally, I would never spend all the time doing each track, but only the master mix.
Mar 20, 2006 01:01 pm i donno, if i had the time (and money) tracking drums and bass to 2" R2R could be very nice, aswell as mixing to it....but as for the 'portastudio' type 8 track machines, i wouldn't bother, the S/N ratio just isn't worth it.....
find a tape saturation plug!
my 2 scents *poof*
flame...bringing sexy backMember
Since: Jul 01, 2002
Mar 20, 2006 01:07 pm got an old VHS around? record the audio onto that!
Mar 20, 2006 01:15 pm ya know, i was just reading about that the other day....lemme see if i can dig it up...
brb....ok here it is, pretty interesting stuff, just make sure you're hittin' it at -10db for the RCA inputs.
gearslutz.com/board/showt...hlight=vhs+tape
Mar 20, 2006 06:59 pm If you use a QUALITY machine you won't run into this problem. We recorded onto a 24 track Otari then dumped it to digital. Then we brought it back to the reel to reel on 2 tracks for stero. The 2 tracks where just basically for reference. Then we recorded the rest of what we wanted on the reel and dumped that to digital as well.
I'm pretty fond of the sound of tape myself. You may be able to find a studio that would dump it down to tape and then back to digital. You would get quality that way. It may be worth checking out. It wouldn't take long to do it so the cost wouldn't be too bad.
Mar 21, 2006 03:13 am Can't you sync a tape machine with your DAW using smpte?
That would ensure your time code would line up...
RigsbyUltra MagnusMember
Since: Nov 13, 2004
Mar 21, 2006 03:31 am You should be able to, that's how we used to do it.
Noize2uCzar of MidiAdministrator
Since: Apr 04, 2002
Mar 21, 2006 08:34 pm That is how I used to do it, even dating back to my Atari days. Then it took dedicated hardware to stripe and read the sync. Lots of cables and keeping everything in top shape. Including the tape machine.
