Portastudio live recording good! Mixdown Not!

[k1enneth]

I used my Tascam 414 mk ii to record my southern rock cover group last nite.
I used only two shure mics...sm57 covering the drum kit and bass amp...sm58 covering both guitar amps. Routed those two mics into a Aphex 107 mic preamp, then to the portastudio. I am totally impressed with the results, good levels all around, nice seperation of instruments, crisp recording of snare -hi hat-cymbals.
As far as the original master tape, I could not ask for more.
Now I'm mixing down to my home stereo tuner and 2 track cassette deck. The playback of the master from my portastudio is clear as a bell...I go to listen from the stereo tuner headfon jack from the same playback and it's lost some clarity across the frequency, both high and low. BEFORE it's even hit the tape head. I also tried to send it to my home VCR to master and same problem. Could there be that much signal loss coming out of your portastudio master tape to your mixdown amp. ? My home stereo is a yamaha stereo receiver rx-730 and my mixdown cassette NAD...middle of the road equipment not high end. Thanks.

[k1enneth]

I fixed above problem. I bypassed the stereo tuner amp, and fed the portastudio
line outs directly to the VCR inputs...Created a vcr-vhs master tape. I then used the vhs master and recorded to my 2-track cassette tape deck. Very little loss, if at all. The final mixed down cassette equals the Portastudio master tape, and with added reverb and some eq'ing it might exceed it. Verry impressed.

[The Ghost of FM]

That's odd that your receiver could color/degrade the sound to such an extreme and audible degree?

Were you using a pre-amped output which was affected by the tone controls and/or hi-Low filters?

Weird!

Cheers!

[k1enneth]

I don't think so...I used the portastudio line outs to the tape input for the Yamaha stereo receiver. I monitered my headphones out from the Yamaha receiver...I walked back to the portastudio headphone jack and noticed a substantial difference in a lack of "sparkle" or you might say that the portastudio output was a "10" compared with the receiver output "7.25" on a scale of "10".
All was resolved today when I bypassed said receiver and went direct to an older NEC stereo vcr. I mean it was just as clear as the Portastudio output, except I could then add reverb and properly eq the mix. I had a neutral device in the signal chain that I could create a master from...and duplicate from that VCR-vhs master tape. Probably rated a "9.5" clarity from the vhs tape. Wow am
I psyched now. It's the little things in life that make a difference...you can sit on a mountain...but you can't sit on a pin. Later.

[k1enneth]

Last night one of the band members had an 8 track mixer hooked up to a 2 track cassette recorder. We hooked up 3 mics on the drum kit, one mic one each guitar amp (two amps), ran the bass guitar direct, and ran the PA direct into the mixer. Maybe one mic placed in the room for ambient sound. We had a much better mix for the drums and a wider dispersal of sound. I'm thinking of using the 8 channel mixer as a submixer for my ps414 mkii next time I take it over.