Tascam M-3xxB questions

[toorglick]

Greetings! I am the proud new owner of a Tascam M-308b. I got mine for a very good deal and it's in near mint condition. It's funny, and fortunate, that a lot of folks aren't familiar with these old boards, because for the price you can get a 300 series board these days it's a far superior option than any thing else being offered in the "project studio mixer market."

Anyway, I saw the big M-312b thread and while I did run through it, I didn't have my board at the time to identify the things I now have questions about. I will re-read that thread before I ask about routings and what-knot.

BTW, no, unfortunately my mixer did not come with a manual. For the most part it is self-explanatory, but there are some things, mainly regarding the subs that seem confusing.

My questions are this:

Can I do 8-tracks out at once via the subs (I know can always use the direct outs)? As in, can I assign channels 1 and 2 to sub 1, and then hard pan left and right to separate them into individual signals? Last night I was only able to get the "odd and even" pan settings, and not a true left and right to the subs.

What caliber of mic pre is in these boards? The mic pres sound much nicer to me than any Mackies or other project studio equivalent I've used. I knew the pres would be good and that was one of the main reasons I bought the thing (that, the routing options, the overall quality, the 100mm faders, etc.), but I'm just curious if anyone knows more about the mic pres.

How do you open it up? I started taking the screws out of the top panel but then realized that probably wasn't the way to go. FWIW, I restore synths and other older analog gear, so I'm not a slouch with the soldering iron. I wanted to open it to see if it needed cleaning and also to check if a missing knob had perhaps gotten inside.

Yes, it's mint, and the Ebay description was "knobs all accounted for and fully functional." When I received it, one of the green-capped aux knobs was missing. I haven't heard back from the seller yet, but my gut says I'm going to have to dig one up. Nothing bugs me more than a missing or incorrect knob! Anyway, it has these extra-tall sides which allow it to be set on a table in a near-vertical position (which I plan to cut down for table top use). These sides were removed for shipping. The knob is not among the packaging so the only other options are: the seller has it or the knob slipped inside through the exposed side during transit.

This is a lot, sorry, but I really dig this board and, of course, it's new to me so I want as much info as possible!

Thanks!

 

[The Ghost of FM]

Welcome to the 300 Club!

About routing 8 outs simultaneously;

The 300 series is a 4 buss system so you'll have to get creative to gain the additional 4 busses.

You can always use just 4 of the direct channel outs to get those or, you can use the stereo out buss as two more separate tracks for recording but this will complicate mixing and monitoring! And also the effects and aux sends can be used as a separate feed to a tape recorder or cue system but, here too, it will complicate monitoring properly.

About the Mic pre's;

In a word, they're fantastic! Very clean, very musical and lots of headroom before clipping. They're professional grade pre's and no expense was spared in the design and manufacture of them.

About opening it up;

The easiest way is through the bottom. There are separate covers for the linear faders and for the rest of the board.

Once the bottom cover is off, you should have easy access to everything inside including missing knobs!!

It's a really good idea to invest the 30 bucks in the manual and TASCAM does still sell it through their parts department out in California.

Buy it!

Cheers!

 

[toorglick]

Yes, I intend on buying a copy of the manual as soon as I have the spare change. We're getting our house painted now and doing some other work so I'm considering myself lucky I was able to spring for 308b!

I probably will keep the fx sends and auxes available for other uses than sending a signal to the computer. I thought the sub busses weren't stereo when I bought it, so I was prepared to use those 4 for the first 4 channels of my Delta 1010 and use direct outs for the other four channels.

However, seeing as those subs are stereo, or at least seem to be stereo based on the controls and the output (the PGM out RCAs are in pairs) I thought perhaps I could do the old pan to the extreme left and right on each sub to get 8 channels out of them.

The large 312b thread is a little confusing and breaks down into baseball talk too early for me to comprehend what's being said.

Can someone explain the duality of the PAN pots? Left and Right, odd and even? I suspect that odd and even means the odd and even numbered subs. However, when monitoring the signal going to the computer through the subs RCA PGM outs, when turned to "even" the signal disappears no matter which buss I have up.

Do those 8 channels above the subs act only as submixer for the tape (or computer) returns? Where does that signal get summed and mixed with the main outs?

If I can get a handle on these things the rest would be elementary!

 

[The Ghost of FM]

The 8x2 sub-mix section above the buss master faders is primarily designed to be a dedicated tape return with basic left/right panning and level controls to free up the mixer's main mixer channels for tracking usage while over-dubbing. They feed straight to the main stereo buss and corresponding faders so, in effect your 8 channel board can quickly become an 18 channel board if you count the two effects return inputs and corresponding controls which all feed to the stereo buss.

They are not recording busses and have nothing to do with feeding sound to the 1 - 4 busses.

About the panning;

While tracking, they determine odd/even panning assignments as long as the desired 1,2,3 &4 buttons are pressed as well.

Example; Panning hard right and assigning buss one, results in no sound feeding the buss. Panning hard left will.

During mixdown, the pan works in the traditional way; panning the channels sound left or right or anywhere in-between.

Cheers!

 

[toorglick]

Example; Panning hard right and assigning buss one, results in no sound feeding the buss. Panning hard left will.

Why is it that way? To be honest I don't see the usefulness of this "feature" at this moment.

None the less, I've had some quality time with this mixer and have come a long way in getting to know and understand it. I love its warm sound! What a vast improvement over the small "home recording" mixers pushed on us these days.

Anyway, the only part of the mixer I don't get yet is the pairs of RCA outs on each buss. Are they supposed to be stereo? It seems to me that only one side works, but then again I was under a little pressure to get the rehearsal recording going so I don't recall precisely what was happening. If the feed is mono, then why is there a pair of outs for each buss?

 

[Strryder]

The reason that there are two of the same outputs for each bus is called "double bussing", it allows you to have output 1 hooked up to inputs 1 and 5 of an 8 track recorder, and output 2 hooked up to inputs 2 and 6, and so on, this allows you to use the 4 output busses to get into all 8 tracks of a recorder (4 at a time) without needing to re-patch cables, allowing for a smoother workflow.

If you are using a patchbay between the mixer's output busses and the recorder's inputs, this feature becomes redundant.

 

[The Ghost of FM]

regarding pan pots;

Why is it that way? To be honest I don't see the usefulness of this "feature" at this moment.

There use in live, one take, off the floor recording will become clear when you need to take the outputs of several microphones and assign them to just 2 channels when your recording,

As an example;

When your mic'ing up a drum kit with several mics but are sending all of those signals to just two tracks on a tape recorder. The snare, you might want panned right of center, the first tom, similar to the snare, the second tom just left of center, the floor tom a bit further left of center, the kick, center, the overheads at 9 and 3 o'clock but, all of them going to only two tracks.

That's where the pans come into play while tracking.

Cheers!

 

[toorglick]

Thank you both. The double bussing makes perfect sense now. The odd/even assignments, at least on paper, is still not clear. The reason it's not clear is because what you wrote reads like typical L/R panning as opposed to what the odd/even function does on this board. However I'll keep in mind what you said, GoFM, and just play around with it. I'm sure I'll figure it out in the end. Thanks again!