recording setup question...

[CDT-sHaG]

hi all..i'm new to these forums..awesome resources here...nice discussions..(WARNING: Newbie Alert lol)

i am in the process of setting up my little song-writing setup again (been about 5 years...). here's what i have:

Non-PC:
tascam 424 (original..bought in 93...)
dbx 163x compressor/limiter (1.2 rack size)
foot pedal EQ, flange and chorus
Ibanez GR bass guitar
Fender Acoustic (ancient and going to be replaced soon...)
sm58 mic

PC:
P3 933
256mb ram
win 98se
geforce2 GTS
SB Ensoniq PCI Sound Card (mic-in, line-in and line-out only)
40GB 7200 RPM maxtor HD

PC Software:

Fruity loops 3
Cool Edit 2000

what im wanting to do is record onto the 424 and then mix down to my pc...(i used to mix to a dual cassete deck).

to do this, i will just run from the 424 into the line-in of my SCard...
then edit the mix in cool edit.ard

I want drum tracks also, (and possibly piano parts later)..these would be generated in fruity loops 3..

what i was thinking is that i could just record the drum tracks from the pc to the tascam, then play/record the other parts, and then record the entire mix back to the pc (cool edit)..

will this work ok? if you guys had this setup how would you do it?

i haven't tried it yet but I'm wanting to this weekend...im just wondering how going from the pc to the 424 and back to the pc will sound....

thanks in advance...

chris...

[CDT-sHaG]

ok..i tried recording the drum tracks from FL3 onto my 424...i have a 1/8" mini to 1/4" cable that i ran from the line-out of my sound card to the input of track 1....it worked but the thing is it was very noisy..my volumn levels in winblows98se were mid-way...but what i hear is like interference almost...i dunno if it is my cable or my crappy sound card or my headphones or what...

[CDT-sHaG]

did i post this in the wrong section? lol

[TimOBrien]

Ya got a lot more PC than I do so you'll do fine.

Replace the soundcard with a good one (you can get a 24bit/96khz card for less than $200)

You can test the noise problems by burning a CD and then playing it on your stereo.... if it's not noisy then you have a bad cable or soundcard.

Get a second hard drive and dedicate it to your audio (that's the #1 tip for all DAW construction.)

You can send your drumtracks out to the TASCAM but when you send all your other tracks back to the computer, don't send the drums back into the PC again.... use the original wav file on your computer (sending it out and back will degrade the sound due to the multiple A/D-D/A conversions.) But it'll work fine as a "working placeholder" on the TASCAM (I do the same with a Porta02).

[CDT-sHaG]

hey..thanks for the input Tim...i appreciate it..my pc is home built and it's been a gaming, 3d modeling, web design and graphics machine...now im stretching it again..

ive been looking into better soundcards...dedicated to recording...will i need to keep my SB for gaming (for EAX, Directx support)?

also...whats an easy way to sync up the tracks once all 4 tracks are back on the pc?

do an audible click or something?

thanks again...

[TimOBrien]

Syncing up the tracks is going to be difficult. I'm hearing that people who try to do long stretches of sound run into problems with tape stretch, slight inconsistencys in speed, etc.

I only use my Porta02 to tape single instrumental takes and those are ususally short phrases, so I don't have those problems.

I think you'll end up chopping up the tracks to manually tweak them a bit but that shouldn't be too bad unless you're doing 30-minute songs!

You shouldn't have any problem keeping your SB card if you move up to a good audio card.... I kept my SBLive for SoundFonts and MIDI when I put in my Echo Mia and both cards work well together (I get great audio sound and all the SBLive goodies, too.)

[billycatfish]

oh, here's a cool story about how i combined my tascam 424 with software...

i ran a line out from my computer to the 4track. i used rebirth, got all kinds of crazy loops going with full delay, and gave myself a set time limit (that would be the song).

i did four tracks of that, each track had different patterns and set up, but the tempo stayed the same. play all four tracks together and you get a wash of noise and stuff. but while mixing to my CD-R, i pretended i was a dj and got it real loud and faded individual channels in and out -- one channel would be fine by itself, but to emphasize certain parts i'd pull up several at a time. mixing in stereo was especially effective.
plus, you can have a million different mixes for each song.

i've done a lot of other things in the realm of running digital music through cassette recorders, adding instruments and noise, back again, and polish it up in a final digital mode.

the electriznique album was done in this manner:
www.homestead.com/electriznique

[CDT-sHaG]

uh.....where is are the mp3's on there..lol...