Analog/Digital Hybrid

[drum bum]

I've heard lots of talk about analog/digital hybrid recording setups such as tracking drums, bass, etc. on analog tape and acoustic guitar, vocals, etc. in digital, then mixing in digital. Could someone please explain or provide a link explaining how this is generally accomplished. Including issues on syncing the two formats.

[jake-owa]

What you are hearing about is using tape to do the majority of the tracking and dumping it to digital for the editing and final touches. At least that's how it is usually done in the big studios. I personally will be using digital only as a mastering deck. All my mixing (will) be done in analog and with real effects.

I'm sure many studios will use analog/digital synching but for the average home studio it is well out of reach. Besides being generally glitchy it is very pricey to get it working smoothly. Usually it will be synched by SYMPTE or MMC, those would be good terms to do a Google search on.

The TASCAM analog forum is a good one to troubleshoot these issues.
http://www.tascam.com/forums/forumdi...php?forumid=13

Analog rules.

[toby.I.]

to put that simply analogue is great if you can be bothered cos its a real ballache. so if given the choice many engineers opt to record to analogue tape for the 'analogue' sound, then bounce this to pro tools, or whatever, for the flexability of digital audio.

[muttley]

Drum bum this is doable;

For example in my studio I use the fostex E-16/w 4050 auto-locator, then either the DA-38 or an alesis recorder.

Simply explained: the 4050 stripes a time code on trk 16 on the E-16 open reel.
the 4050 then reads the time code and converts it to a signal and sends it out on another cable to the MMC or whatever you choose to use to the DA-38.
The DA chases to the time code on the open reel thus you can have to different formats working together.
Always have the weaker format be the one thats chased.
digital always does a better job chasing than analogue.

This is not easy to do, but its not impossible either.

one must follow the instructions to the letter on the 4050, then instructions for the digi-whatever you are using.

No way is this a complete answer for you, because you must research the equipment that YOU have and see if its possible, In my case this was accidental by chance.


All I did was prime the pump for ya.....


da MUTT