Need some assistance with my TASCAM 244

[cjacek]

Hi,

Ok, I'm working on compressing and eq'ing some of my older tracks which I recorded to my 2 track cassette deck years ago. I put them on cd and wish work on 'em via my 244 mixer. I have only a 1 channel compressor, which I inserted to the "send, receive" jacks at the back of the 244 (for "access 1"). Now, here's the deal ... I'm going rca outs from my cd player to the mic/line in of the 244 to take advantage of the compressor on channel one and eq. Problem is that some of the tracks were done in stereo and going in to just channel one of the 244 leaves one of the tracks (of my song) completely out. I then thought that I really don't care if my song is going to be stereo or mono, as a final copy, but how do I take the sum of the 2 tracks (from my cd) and take advantage of taking these to the 244 and comping and eq'ing them ? I only have one channel compressor, as I said, and am wondering how I should patch or route the signal and where etc ... ? I hope you understand this rather complex little issue of mine. If there's any other way of doing this please let me know.

Thanks for the help,

Daniel

[The Ghost of FM]

The proper way would be to get a second compressor of the same make and model so that the processing characteristics would be the same and maintain the original stereo recording.

Collapsing a stereo track down to mono through a splitter cable would mono the track and allow you to process this new mono mix with the singular compressor but, expect to run into serious phasing issues which may destroy what ever fidelity those tracks had unless there was perfect phase alignment, (azimuth), when it was transfered to CD in the first place.

Doing an overall compression on a finished track may also be of little benefit to you because these type of compression processes are best suited to specific applications like making your recording as loud as possible without clipping, which is a terrible effect that is over used in the industry by too many artists these days. The music just ends up yelling at you like a typist who uses ALL CAPS, ALL THE TIME! Do you really need this effect on your recordings?

Better still, let's ask you what are your goals in doing this compression process? What do you think ideally this compression exercise is going to do for you? Answer that and we can go from there.

As to the hook-up, get a patch cord Y adapter that has two male RCA plugs on one end and a singular female RCA jack on the other and then connect an RCA to 1/4" cable into your Portastudio's input and insert your compressor into the access send receive ports to affect the channel in use with the compressor.

Cheers!

[cjacek]

Originally posted by The Ghost of FM
The proper way would be to get a second compressor of the same make and model so that the processing characteristics would be the same and maintain the original stereo recording.

Collapsing a stereo track down to mono through a splitter cable would mono the track and allow you to process this new mono mix with the singular compressor but, expect to run into serious phasing issues which may destroy what ever fidelity those tracks had unless there was perfect phase alignment, (azimuth), when it was transfered to CD in the first place.

Doing an overall compression on a finished track may also be of little benefit to you because these type of compression processes are best suited to specific applications like making your recording as loud as possible without clipping, which is a terrible effect that is over used in the industry by too many artists these days. The music just ends up yelling at you like a typist who uses ALL CAPS, ALL THE TIME! Do you really need this effect on your recordings?

Better still, let's ask you what are your goals in doing this compression process? What do you think ideally this compression exercise is going to do for you? Answer that and we can go from there.

As to the hook-up, get a patch cord Y adapter that has two male RCA plugs on one end and a singular female RCA jack on the other and then connect an RCA to 1/4" cable into your Portastudio's input and insert your compressor into the access send receive ports to affect the channel in use with the compressor.

Cheers!

Thanks Jeff!

I got meself a proper patch cord and will see what happens with the processing. I fully agree with you on flat as a ruler dynamics and normally I don't use this type of comping but .... the recordings I made quite a while ago had backing tracks which were compressed but my voice was not. It ends up being unbalanced with the backing music. I also was too close to the mic and ended up with overly boomy sound at quiter parts. So, I guess I have to reduce the bass frequencies a bit and comp the voice, which pops in and out (mostly out ) of the song at times. I'm pretty much fixin' the recordings, which were not all recorded well at the time, to give them a more steady sound and less boominess and bass on the voice. We'll see what happens. Thanks again Jeff!

Daniel

[The Ghost of FM]

Ah! OK.

Based on what is wrong with the original recording, you might be able to calm some of the level anomalies by compressing this recording by using a milder setting ratio of somewhere between 2:1 to 5:1 and carefully setting the attack and release ratio knobs so that the louder levels are detected quick and released relatively almost a quick. Also be very mindful of input level threshold setting on the compressor as this will determine which levels remain unprocessed and which peaks above that level get the treatment.

This will drag down what ever backing instruments are on the recording as well when the vocal peaks are detected so, it won't be a magic cure all, unfortunately but, if used with some discretion, it should calm it down a little without it being too noticeable as a processed effect.

Good luck with the project!

[cjacek]

Originally posted by The Ghost of FM
Ah! OK.

Based on what is wrong with the original recording, you might be able to calm some of the level anomalies by compressing this recording by using a milder setting ratio of somewhere between 2:1 to 5:1 and carefully setting the attack and release ratio knobs so that the louder levels are detected quick and released relatively almost a quick. Also be very mindful of input level threshold setting on the compressor as this will determine which levels remain unprocessed and which peaks above that level get the treatment.

This will drag down what ever backing instruments are on the recording as well when the vocal peaks are detected so, it won't be a magic cure all, unfortunately but, if used with some discretion, it should calm it down a little without it being too noticeable as a processed effect.

Good luck with the project!

Thanks again Jeff! Much appreciated, as always!

Daniel