Sound On Sound

[nay]

Could someone tell me how the sound on sound works on reel to reels? I have an old Akai reel to reel that allows you to record more than 2 channels with sound on sound.

[Grizzly]

Howdy,
Well I used to have one of those old decks, In fact I wish I still had it. But the EX took it..But that's another story..
Sound on sound effectively turns off the erase heads on the recorder, So if you punch in track 2 the original signal is not erased and the new signal is added to the original. It takes a little creative inventiveness but you can create soom really cool effects this way and end up with a decent mix.

Hope this helps.

GRIZ

[Dom Franco]

Be careful;
When you record sound on sound, you will not be able to separate the new track from the old one. If the balance is not right or if you make a mistake, you will be stuck with it....

You might be better off finding a second recorder, and combining the live parts with the previous recording on the new tape.

This is "sound with sound" and offers the advantage of keeping the original track un-changed. My first experimentation with multi-tracking was done this way. Using two monophonic tape recorders, a small Radio Shack mixer and my Guitar amp's reverb I was able to sell a few song ideas to a real record producer! (Of course this was in 1971 and a 4 track was the ultimate!)

Sincerely;

Dom Franco

[Max Output]

Also, the first track will get slightly erased since the record head uses the
same bias voltage that the erase head uses. So the first track should go
on pretty hot and the second track a little less to account for the loss.
I did a lot of recording on an old Radio deck that I added switches to the
erase heads.

[Uli_the_Grasso]

I know them Akais. They have a first-class tape transport and fine sound heads but sometimes lazy electronics, that is that the record amplifier clips still before tape saturation is reached in the trebles.

Does your Akai have a built-in mixer? Else, you can mix in the air. It is astonishing how good four generations of air mixing using simple speakers and microphones can sound.

Sound-on-sound needs two tracks. One track is played back, and the sum of this signal and the signal that you play live to it is recorded on the second track.

Do you have a compact casette tape deck? You can record the first track, mostly the rythm, to the CC deck, and then do two times SOS on the Akai, and then go back to the CC. Now you have recorded four generations and have all of them still available.

[Han]

Or you could get a Tascam/Teac 3440 with DBX, you'd have 4 tracks at 15 ips and it goes for some 150-200 bucks.