Reel to reel Tape Deck into Daw

R

roddick1993

New member
Months ago I was set on the fact that I wanted an all analog studio/sound. I've recently discovered that digital might've been the much better and easier route but I'd like to try and make this work. This is the gear I have:

-Tascam M-308 Mixer
-Fostex A-8 Tape Deck
-Tascam 246 Four Track Cassette Desk
-Focusrite Isa One Preamp
-Avantone Cv-12 Condensor Mic
-Shure Sm-57 Mic
-Pair of Rokit 5 G3 Monitors
-Akai MPC 2000XL
-Bass Guitar
-Various Electric/Acoustic guitars

Now I want to record everything to my tape deck and then into my daw. I figured there's some sort of way that I could record up to 8 tracks on my Fostex then bounce it into my daw. I know there is some tape delay which I would fix with the plugin voxengo.

I guess my main question is what's the right signal path and setup with the gear I have. Is there a way where I can record through my tape deck and daw at the same time to get that tape saturation effect but not having to bounce and lose any degradation?

I'm sure there is a way and it's probably made more studio professional decks like Studer. Maybe I should purchase just a more professional two track and record one track at a time and bounce into my daw. I'm just wondering if this is a pipe dream and maybe a mistake lol. I'd appreciate the help.
 
You need a 3-head deck for that. The A8 has a single head for both record and playback, which means that you have to rewind the tape and play it back into the DAW. On a three head deck, you can monitor off the playback head and pull it into the DAW as you go. There will be a delay of about 1/15th second which should be pretty simple to correct in the DAW afterwards. If you don't need to bring in more than two inputs at once, a stereo deck should be fine for that.
 
I have a Tascam 38 8-track, but I use a JL Cooper PPS-1 Sync, striping smpte to track 8 on my Tascam. I can easily sync DAW to tape but give up that extra track. Usually though, once I record a bunch of tracks to tape, I just transfer them to DAW tracks anyway if needed.
 
I'm a little confused as to what the problem is - the recorder is a capable beast with decent performance, and the machine can record all or some of the 8-tracks and sync is built in. The only real awkwardness comes from the routing with the mixer - so sending the individual channels to the recorder means some rewatching for 5-8. However - loads of us used to do that anyway back then. For ordinary mixing, your mixer is ok having 8 channels plus some axes. Your interface is the real headache because of it's severe lack of channels. However - it's easily fixed, but just takes 8 times as long! When you record - you need to make sure that at some point, normally before the music, you record something to ALL channels at the same time - you might need some splitters to do one output to two inputs, but they're handy for the record routing anyway. The idea is you record a clap, or a on/off hiss, or a tone that suddenly starts to ALL the channels on the recorder. You then get on with recording music. When you play the thing back 8 times into the DAW, the noise source becomes your sync point. You don't need clever plug ins or delays - just line each burst up by eye with them one on top of each other on screen. Once you get them aligned on the noise - the music that follows will also be perfectly in sync. Most DAWs let you zoom in close enough to be very accurate.

Does that make sense?
 
rob aylestone said:
I'm a little confused as to what the problem is - the recorder is a capable beast with decent performance, and the machine can record all or some of the 8-tracks and sync is built in. The only real awkwardness comes from the routing with the mixer - so sending the individual channels to the recorder means some rewatching for 5-8. However - loads of us used to do that anyway back then. For ordinary mixing, your mixer is ok having 8 channels plus some axes. Your interface is the real headache because of it's severe lack of channels. However - it's easily fixed, but just takes 8 times as long! When you record - you need to make sure that at some point, normally before the music, you record something to ALL channels at the same time - you might need some splitters to do one output to two inputs, but they're handy for the record routing anyway. The idea is you record a clap, or a on/off hiss, or a tone that suddenly starts to ALL the channels on the recorder. You then get on with recording music. When you play the thing back 8 times into the DAW, the noise source becomes your sync point. You don't need clever plug ins or delays - just line each burst up by eye with them one on top of each other on screen. Once you get them aligned on the noise - the music that follows will also be perfectly in sync. Most DAWs let you zoom in close enough to be very accurate.

Does that make sense?
Click to expand...

Actually 4X recording back since you can record channel 1 and 2 into the DAW with each one on a track.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top