track bleeding

A

AlienRage

New member
i transfer songs track by track from my Tascam 414mkII to my computer. i turn all the other tracks to 0 volume and just record a single track. i do that for each track. but, i can always sort of hear the loud parts of the other tracks in the background. when it's all together, you can't really tell. but when you isolate tracks, you can hear it. (it reminds me of when you play a record with the volume at 0.) and it's not like it's mic bleed because i recorded all the tracks seperately using headphones to monitor. is this just an unfortunate result of analog? and, if so, is there any way to fix it?
 
this is prolly occurring because of slight tape speed variations each time you
record the track from the cassette . the only way to do it PROPERLY is to get a multi input sound card and record the tracks to seperate tracks on the pc.
 
This is really caused by the tape itself. The tracks are very small and very close together. The adjacent heads are just picking up the other tracks.
If you have a commercial cassette that has more music on one side than the other and you listen to the blank tape at the end of the short side, you will hear the other side backwards very quietly.
You might need to get your heads aligned. It depends on how bad the bleed is, and a computer will not help you in the least.
 
Try this

Instead of transferring the files from tape to your pc, why don't you just use your Tascam 414mkII as a mic pre and record straight to your harddisk. This would solve your problem all together, and the quality would be far superior even with the worst stock soundcard considering the frequency limitations of cassette tape.

Flip
 
yeah, that would be nice, but then i couldn't put any effects on different tracks and such...i guess as long as i had levels right on the mixer, i could just go straight through to the comp. i rarely add effects to guitar/bass/drums in post-production anyways, i suppose. thanks for the idea.

which output would give me best results? line out, phones out, or monitor out? i am assuming line out...
 
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This is a tape-head alignment problem. You *may* not be able to fix it for tracks you have already recorded. It should also be noted that even with perfect tape head alignment, small tape machines are likely to have *very small* amounts of bleed. If you can post a single track as an mp3, it might be easier to determine how severe the problem is and whether it is worth getting an alignment to fix the problem.
 
AlienRage said:
i transfer songs track by track from my Tascam 414mkII to my computer. i turn all the other tracks to 0 volume and just record a single track. i do that for each track. but, i can always sort of hear the loud parts of the other tracks in the background. when it's all together, you can't really tell. but when you isolate tracks, you can hear it. (it reminds me of when you play a record with the volume at 0.) and it's not like it's mic bleed because i recorded all the tracks seperately using headphones to monitor. is this just an unfortunate result of analog? and, if so, is there any way to fix it?
Click to expand...


Just a thought but how hot is your signal?
If your recording in the red that could be where it's coming from.
 
tripoli said:
Just a thought but how hot is your signal?
If your recording in the red that could be where it's coming from.
Click to expand...

hmmm, i have it up just enough so that it is as loud as possible without clipping.
 
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