Tascam 424 MKII and Mixing on a computer

H

Hiccup Master

New member
I posted this in the Tascam forum and the Mixing and mastering and thought I would get some better feedback here.

I was reading through a few threads about problems people have had with recording, mostly mixing problems.

My question is could I record each instrument on it's own tape, take it home and hook my portastudio up to my computer and turn all the analog tapes to digital tracks and mix them on my computer with like cakewalk or a simalar program?

I.E. Drums on tape 1
Bass on tape 2
Guitar on tape 3
lead vocals on tape 4
back up vocals on tape 5

Upload them onto my computer with the Line-Out RCA jacks with a Y spliter to a 1/8th jack to the Line In on my computer, turn them in to .wavs, and import them into a mixing program, mix each wav into 1 wav for a cd, and then into an mp3 to send to people over the internet?

And any suggestions on mixing programs on the computer to use?

Thanks in advance for the Feed back guys.
 
What you want to do is possible. Your main problem will be that any variation in motor speed of the portastudio will result in each track being relatively longer or shorter than the others when you record them on your computer.

Just out of interest, why would you use 5 seperate tapes? Couldn't you get 4 tracks on 1 tape, and 1 on another?

As far as software goes, Cakewalk have a number of programs of varying levels of capability that are easy to use
 
When I first started using a computer for recording, I thought great, I can finally upload all my old 424mkII tracks into the computer, for digital mixing, mastering, and burning. My visions of having all 4 tracks be recorded (using just a 2 channel card), quickly faded as I realized just how hard it was to try to sync up tracks within the computer, that were recorded seperately (bare in mind that the 424mkII is using fairly ancient sync technology, if you can manage to find an interface for it).

Well needless to say only did a lot of stereo recordings for awhile. But this prompted me to get a Delta 44. And it changed my life. No turning back now. I would definitely get a 4-channel card.

Remember too, that backing vocals etc. can be recorded directly to computer at a later time, eliminating the tape process entirely, giving better audio quality.
 
You may be able to borrow a friends 4-track that has 4 direct outs - It may work - then you can record all 4 seperate tracks at once.

lD
 
What i do is record my first 4 tracks , like maybe 2 drum tracks, base, and rhythm guitar or keyboards, mix them on to the pc , bounce them back to the first channel of the tascam then do the lead guitar keyboards and vocals fore example.

the first 4 tracks are more or less a rhythm section, this gives you you 7 tracks, but i suppose you could keep doing this.

i use a sound blaster live card, and a program called audiotools v 4.5 (its free, and works well). DON,T USE THE MIKE INPUT!!
you will get mono recordings and it sounds bad, on SBL usr the secomd to the last input , also you can convert you sound files to mp3 files later if you want to post them on a web site later.
 
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