4 track questions

S

scott2go

New member
Hey all,
This is prob one of those *&^%^$$# questions but here it goes.
I want to do some just me recording,and i am thinking about purchasing a 4 trk recorder,Im assuming that after you lay down trk 1 you can hear it playing while you are laying down trk 2 and so on

right???

Now Ive seen some inexpensive digital 4 tracks ,should I go w/ that or just get a cassette 4 track for less money?

If I go digital is the boss br 532 any good??



Thanks in advance


Just old dudes live in the garage
http://www.brthesect.com
 
Skip the 4-trk cassette format and go digital as sound degradation and annoying "hiss" will be prevalent in analog-cassette based recording.
The Boss 532 is an economical 4-track dig recorder with an onboard 2-trk drum machine. Another plus is that each of the 4 basic tracks has 8 "virtual tracks"; meaning u can do 8 diff versions of recorded track (though only 1 can be re-called at a time) allowing U to bounce or mixdown the best recording.
Editing capabilities, channel inserts for effect looping and comes with it's own 32mb S.M. card which can be expanded to 128 mb.
It's a cool,lil ,multi-trk recorder for the price (around $375) and yes, U can play back a prev recorded trk while jamming and recd'ing on anutha' track!
 
Digital is the way to go. I just switched over from a 4 track Portastudio and there's no comparison. If you can afford a lower end digital solution it'll beat the heck out of a 4 track tape. :)
 
Check ebay

I bought a Boss BR-8 on ebay a few months back for $450.
It is basically an 8 track digital recorder (with 8 virtual tracks for each track)
The same drum thing as the 532, it does have a ton of amp patches that you can edit.

Best of all it runs on a 100 meg zip drive. If you use all the space on all 8 tracks you can still get a 5 minute tune on the disc. A 32 meg smart card woll be used up by the first chorus. Also with the 8 tracks your need for bouncing becomes easier to handle.

Very user friendly unit.
 
I own a Zoom mrs4 digital 4 track..it's only $249 pretty much the same features as the br532 ,but it doesn't have the built in drum machine......which was fine for me,since I own about 4 of them anyways and I only use them to sketch on


.....................one............
 
i also got an MRS-4 but only for $229. it's pretty good for a starting recorder. only problem i found is that the card that they give u is not enough. and u can only upload it directly from the device if u have the smart card reader. and it eats batteries pretty fast. but overall, it's the best in it's price range. and i love the fact that i can carry it around w/ my acoustic and pickup to record anywhere i want.

EZ! PEACE!
 
UTM,
yep,I agree.......I took mine campin' every weekend this summer with one of my zoom drum machines(323,battery operated) and made some funny ass songs around the campfire with all my boys!!!Nice little sketychpad!


.............................one.............
 
scott2go, did you consider using your computer (that might be the cheapest route for you, at the moment). :cool:
 
Computer

Yeah I thought about it I have A decent box but the sound card is part of the mb.I bought that xp studio 5.0 from sound forge to try but I havent figured out how to record and layer tracks yet,I'm a little slow when it comes to computers,It has a1.3 40 gig hd,a good 40 x burner,256 ram blah blah,I think I can record tracks and layer or bus them but i dont know,of course the only input is the 1/8 .I'm sure there is a way to do this w/out spending a fortune but haven't found it yet,thanks again yall Scott

http://www.brthesect.com Old Dudes live in the garage
 
If you're working with Sound Forge 5.0, you don't have a good way to layer sounds... it's only a 2-track (stereo) program.

You want something that has multitrack capability... even with only stereo 1/8 input, you can still layer like a mad bastard and mix later - with SoundForge, you'd have to put in 2 wav files, mix them to 1, add another, mix them to 1, add another etc... like doing an old-school reel-to-reel bounce.

Check out www.audiomelody.com - has some freeware multitrack programs.
also a basic but pretty good one is Audity - http://audity.sourceforge.net/ -- versions for Windows, Mac & Linux, it's FREE and will do multitrack.

good luck. have FUN.

- housepig
 
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