Hello, I have an old Fostex A4 reel to reel and a bunch of pre recorded tapes and a few take up reels from the original owner and a Tascam M-208 8 channel mixer that was designed for Tascam reel to reels in the late 70s. I'm having great difficulty setting up a basic 4 channel multi track setup where i can record and overdub while monitoring previously recorded tracks. I have been using 4 track cassette units for years and was put off by this setup just due to the confusion. From reading lots online and the manuals for both the mixer and reel to reel i concluded the basic setup was 4 Rca cables going from the Fostex outputs to the tape in jacks on the first 4 channels of the mixer, and 4 Rca cables from the PGM OUT jacks on the mixer into the 4 inputs on the recorder. My problem is monitoring and clear audio. I followed these steps and with a pre recorded tape tested a microphone through channel one. I was able to hear what i was saying very clear and with the Fostex set to record could also see the recorders meters responding. The real problem is playback. Im convinced this is me not understanding something about the mixer. I get super faint muffled playback with the mixer channel set to tape and the reel to reel set to tape as well. Occasionally i will hear old demos fairly loud on the tape from the previous owner but nothing of that level of my own. What am i doing wrong? Im monitoring with active fostex studio monitors out of the main outs on the back of the mixer with no issue as advised from others i've seen using similar monitors with reel to reels. Am i not using the right switches or is something not panned correctly? Forgive my ignorance as this mixer has quite a few unusual features for me as i have experience only with more modern stereo mixers. I'm pretty sure the reel to reel heads are fine due to the louder playback on parts of pre recorded material. But i for the life of me cannot figure this out. My playback is all messed up and i can't understand this mixer. Ive included pictures of what i'm working with. Please help a guy out!
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