Akai 4000DS - new to R2r recording!

epsilon114

New member
Hi everyone. Today I bought an old Akai 4000DS for $25 in an auction along with heaps of tape.

I'm totally new to recording on tape, but I like the idea of recording analogue. I've tried to a bit of reading around the web on recording on tape, but the information is a bit scarce in places.

I'm hoping to do some sort of rough multitrack recording on this machine, and playing around today I got it in a rough field but still had some latency. Apparently this machine has a 'Sound on sound' feature, which sounds like it's some sort of method of bouncing audio to one track. Question is, is there any way I can minimize latency on this machine using the 'sound on sound' feature? Otherwise, are there any methods with multitracking that make it a bit easier to get rid of the lag?

Otherwise, it's a great machine! I'm not too worried at the moment about calibrating it to be perfect; currently I'm just trying to teach myself how it all works and the hands on feel of working with tape.

Cheers!
 
The Akai machines aren't really broadcast quality, they were cheap but good mass-produced consumer machines from the early 70s. My dad used to have one until the mid-1980s, which is probably what inspired me to go down this path.

Anyway, the 4000 had crude sound-on-sound features, but I'm not sure how they work. What I think it probably does is allow you to copy from the left channel to the right channel while adding a new recording. Then you can bounce the right channel back to the left again, adding another layer.

e.g

1. Record drums on left track : left track has drums, right track is empty
2. Copy to right, while adding bass : left track still has drums, right track has drums + bass
3. Copy to left, while adding vocals: left track now has drums, bass + vocals, right track still has drums + bass

...at the end of it you'll have a single, mono track containing everything with no possibility of stereo or changing the levels afterwards. It was handy for recording demos in the late 60s or early 70s, but it isn't exactly hifi.

There was another SOS facility in some decks which worked by disabling the erase head, but it didn't get you much quality and if you made a mistake you had to start the entire song again. With the L+R copying technique you could go back and start again from the previous bounce.

TL;DR - the 4000 is a nice consumer-level deck, but if you're planning to use it for multitracking, you're in for a disappointment. I'd look out for a TASCAM or TEAC 4-track deck which is going to be closer to what you're looking for.
 
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