Connecting cassete or reel to reel machine into audio interface into computer

[Michael Kantor]

Hi,
I'm new here, it seems that there are many people who understand a lot about tape machines and I would love to learn.
My question is can I connect a tape machine as tascam 244 or a fostex a8 reel to reel to my focusrite usb audio interface and then to my DAW?
The gear I have now is:

Shure SM7B
Shure SM57
Marantz stereophonic receiver
Laptop
Focusrite 2i2
2 electric guitars
Acoustic guitar
Roland jazz chorus 120

Also I would love if you could suggest me any cassete or reel to reel machine that I should use that has good preamps. The most inputs i need for a recording is 3 mics for recording drums.

I hope anybody sees this and answers : )

 

[bouldersoundguy]

What are you intending to achieve with the tape machine?

A cassette based recorder probably won't give you any special quality that's worth the effort. Larger format tape might if you are already skilled at using it.

Do you plan on mixing in the analog realm and just using the interface to capture the 2-track mix or do you need to transfer a full eight tracks? Do you need to transfer in both directions (which would mean some sort of synchronization and the likely loss of an analog track)?

An analog setup will probably mean getting a good mixer and a rack of outboard gear in order to have preamps, route signals and do some processing to signals before they hit the tape.

Honestly, I'd say don't bother with tape.

 

[bachelorb]

Hi,
I'm new here, it seems that there are many people who understand a lot about tape machines and I would love to learn.
My question is can I connect a tape machine as tascam 244 or a fostex a8 reel to reel to my focusrite usb audio interface and then to my DAW?
The gear I have now is:

Shure SM7B
Shure SM57
Marantz stereophonic receiver
Laptop
Focusrite 2i2
2 electric guitars
Acoustic guitar
Roland jazz chorus 120

Also I would love if you could suggest me any cassete or reel to reel machine that I should use that has good preamps. The most inputs i need for a recording is 3 mics for recording drums.

I hope anybody sees this and answers : )

I can't speak to a reel to reel. I've always been a cassette guy, but the short answer is yes. Since your Focusrite is only a two channel audio interface though , you only have a two channels in which to work with. So you could either mix it in the 244 and send it out to your monitor outs, or you can record only on two channels at a time and try to correct all the wow and flutter problems in your DAW.....
Your Mics should plug right up to the 244 no problem.

I just like messing with stuff I had in my youth. It's really a hobby for me. If you are serious about this, you might want to take bouldersoundguy's advice. There is a lot of noise and repairs out there in 30-50 year old equipment.

I myself just do it for me and am fine with all the extra work.

Be careful though.... this stuff is like those DAW plugins..... once you get started, you just can't stop. And those plugins take up a lot less room......

 

[jpmorris]

Most tape machines are line level, either +4 or -10. They expect the signal to have already gone through a preamp. With the A8 note that it can only record 4 tracks at once. It can play back all 8, however - you just have to select whether you're recording to the upper or lower bank of tracks. This quirk went away pretty quick with the model 80, and there was also an A8LR model that can record all 8 tracks at once.

If you're doing this for the sound, the A8 probably isn't in the right league for that. If you want to experience the workflow of tape it makes a decent entry-level machine.

Note that the A8 is a 2-head machine which means you can't use it for echo or that thing some people like to do where you record through the deck into a DAW as a special effect.

However if none of that puts you off, have fun!

 

[Michael Kantor]

I can't speak to a reel to reel. I've always been a cassette guy, but the short answer is yes. Since your Focusrite is only a two channel audio interface though , you only have a two channels in which to work with. So you could either mix it in the 244 and send it out to your monitor outs, or you can record only on two channels at a time and try to correct all the wow and flutter problems in your DAW.....
Your Mics should plug right up to the 244 no problem.

I just like messing with stuff I had in my youth. It's really a hobby for me. If you are serious about this, you might want to take bouldersoundguy's advice. There is a lot of noise and repairs out there in 30-50 year old equipment.

I myself just do it for me and am fine with all the extra work.

Be careful though.... this stuff is like those DAW plugins..... once you get started, you just can't stop. And those plugins take up a lot less room......

My question now is the preamps on analog tape recorders or reel to reel are better than the ones on my focusrite 2i2?

 

[Michael Kantor]

Most tape machines are line level, either +4 or -10. They expect the signal to have already gone through a preamp. With the A8 note that it can only record 4 tracks at once. It can play back all 8, however - you just have to select whether you're recording to the upper or lower bank of tracks. This quirk went away pretty quick with the model 80, and there was also an A8LR model that can record all 8 tracks at once.

If you're doing this for the sound, the A8 probably isn't in the right league for that. If you want to experience the workflow of tape it makes a decent entry-level machine.

Note that the A8 is a 2-head machine which means you can't use it for echo or that thing some people like to do where you record through the deck into a DAW as a special effect.

However if none of that puts you off, have fun!

Can you please explain more about that echo effect that can be done only with 3 head machine, and if there is a recorder you may suggest me to use?

 

[bouldersoundguy]

My question now is the preamps on analog tape recorders or reel to reel are better than the ones on my focusrite 2i2?

Most RtR machines don't have preamps. You'll need a mixer to interface the RtR with other gear. The mixer is often called a console because it consolidates mic preamps, eq, summing and routing into one chassis.

 

[bouldersoundguy]

Can you please explain more about that echo effect that can be done only with 3 head machine, and if there is a recorder you may suggest me to use?

A 2-head deck has an erase head and uses one head to record and play. It can either record or play, but not both at once.

A 3-head deck has three sets of heads: erase, record and play, in that order as the tape moves over them. With separate record and play heads you can listen directly to the signal right off the tape after you record it. There's a slight delay from the space between the record head and the play head and the speed of the tape. The faster your tape speed the shorter the delay.

 

[rob aylestone]

The thing to remember is that when all these machines were new, their actual preamps did a decent enough job for the average equipment of the day, and we now try to apply sonic quality measurements to equipment that were simply functional. Back in the 70s, I sold hifi equioment. I had reel to reels galore - from British/european and Japense manufacturers, plus cassettes and the clever stuff like elcassettes. They all had unbalanced 1/4" mic inputs and plenty enough gain to hang a mic out of a window and record the dawn chorus. We had this mic level input and we had a line level input. We connected all manner of kit to these two inputs. We could plug in a guitar to the line level but not have quite enough level on the meters, or we couold plug the guitar into the mic input where it was too loud - so we'd turn the knob all the way down and then just creep it up to get a level that didn't distort. If we wanted more mic inputs we'd use a cassette desk and take the line out to the other recorder's line in and we'd have 4 channel mixing. In every way, the modern cheap intefaces are streets ahead in quality and technology. Using this old technology adds nothing magical, apart from the nostalgia factor and a certain kind of noise. Maybe 60's/70's noise is nicer? I suspect it was just different noise.What people forget is that back then, a nice mic, into a nice recorder pointing at a nice sound source could result in an excellent recording. That hasn't changed, but in the 70s it was also perfectly possible to make awful recordings - something I was expert in. The worst sounding reel to reel I brought home was a clever philips - full of knobs and gadgets. Apart from that 'quality' was just dependant on the skills of the recordist and their ears. The actual preamps were so simple. A handful of discreet components - none special at all! Nobody ever compared the sound of Revox preamps with Ferrograph. When the A3340 reel to reel appeared - it was the four tracks that sold it - NOBODY I sold one to ever queried the quality of the audio. I remember one customer saying it seemed a bit hissy compared to his old Tandberg stereo recorder. Of course it was, so all you did was record a little hotter, and turn the output down.

If you understand the equipment of the period in the 70s/80s, you'll see that we didn't care about preamp gain. We had THREE mic impedances back then. 25/50Ohm, 250-600Ohm and High Impedance. They were routinely misconnected. I still have one of the low impedance ones. It matches poorly to modern interfaces but back then, we just turned the volume up.


You cannot apply the modern rules to the equipment of the 60s/70s, they don't work, mean little, and are often rather snowflake in courage terms.

I wrapped a bit of wire around my radio speaker terminals, and stuffed it into the line input of my equipment. I needed to turn the knob down a long way and make sure the radio volume was low, but the quality was pretty decent. Nowadays, you will be told that this couples dangerous voltages into your gear from the transformer in the radio, and it will destroy delicate electronics. The number of times I jammed in jack plugs and pinned the meters against the end stop before I could reduce it would be in their hundreds.

The SM57 I bought in 1976 still works fine. Plugged into ANY of the current popular interfaces it produces better sound than I ever got in 1976. However - pointing it back then at my acoustic guitar worked fine - BUT - I'd not want that sound now, hence why despite having a cassette machine in full working order, with mic inputs, I'm never going to record with it - remember not ALL 70s recordings were wonderful - there were terrible ones too!

 

[jpmorris]

A 2-head deck has an erase head and uses one head to record and play. It can either record or play, but not both at once.
A 3-head deck has three sets of heads: erase, record and play, in that order as the tape moves over them. With separate record and play heads you can listen directly to the signal right off the tape after you record it. There's a slight delay from the space between the record head and the play head and the speed of the tape. The faster your tape speed the shorter the delay.

To complete the explanation, you can use this gap between the record and play heads to make an echo by combining the delayed sounds with the original input using some kind of mixer. (The Revox B77 has this mixing feature built-in). Usually you'll just get one echo (slapback) which can work quite nicely on vocals for a 1950s sound. If you feed the delayed signal back into the input, you get a repeating tape echo as you would with a Space Echo or Watkins echo unit. If you turn up the feedback too far it will start to self-oscillate, a classic sound used a lot in 1960s psychedelia.

Any stereo deck can be used for echo duties if it has the full three heads. As mentioned, the Revox B77 is good for this trick, and I've also done it with the TASCAM 32 (both are stereo machines).
If you need an 8-track recorder with 3 heads, you'd be looking at something like the TEAC 80, TASCAM 38, Otari 5050-8 or Revox C278 (rare). All of these use 1/2" tape which is more expensive than the 1/4" tape used by the A8, but a 3-head 1/4" 8-track machine simply doesn't exist as far as I know.

For what it's worth, my 8-track deck is a TSR-8 which only has the two heads, but that's not really been a problem so far.

 

[Michael Kantor]

To complete the explanation, you can use this gap between the record and play heads to make an echo by combining the delayed sounds with the original input using some kind of mixer. (The Revox B77 has this mixing feature built-in). Usually you'll just get one echo (slapback) which can work quite nicely on vocals for a 1950s sound. If you feed the delayed signal back into the input, you get a repeating tape echo as you would with a Space Echo or Watkins echo unit. If you turn up the feedback too far it will start to self-oscillate, a classic sound used a lot in 1960s psychedelia.

Any stereo deck can be used for echo duties if it has the full three heads. As mentioned, the Revox B77 is good for this trick, and I've also done it with the TASCAM 32 (both are stereo machines).
If you need an 8-track recorder with 3 heads, you'd be looking at something like the TEAC 80, TASCAM 38, Otari 5050-8 or Revox C278 (rare). All of these use 1/2" tape which is more expensive than the 1/4" tape used by the A8, but a 3-head 1/4" 8-track machine simply doesn't exist as far as I know.

For what it's worth, my 8-track deck is a TSR-8 which only has the two heads, but that's not really been a problem so far.

Is there a send and return i/o in the revox b77? That I can run through a roland space echo for example or any other outboard?

 

[jpmorris]

Is there a send and return i/o in the revox b77? That I can run through a roland space echo for example or any other outboard?

The B77 has some limited mixing abilities allowing it to perform trick recording like sound-on-sound or turning the machine into a primitive tape echo. All it can really do is combine the input with the playback and sum the left and right channels to mono. It doesn't have a send/receive loop and to be honest, there's nowhere for one to go.
You could of course record into it through any effects unit, and you could play back through an effects unit.

 

[jamesperrett]

Is there a send and return i/o in the revox b77? That I can run through a roland space echo for example or any other outboard?

You would either use the B77 OR the Space Echo for delay - not both. The B77 works best as a final master recorder in conjunction with a mixing desk. The mixing desk would have the connections you need for the Space Echo. I spent quite a few years using an MM 12 into 2 mixer with a B77 and produced some reasonably decent recordings with that setup.

 

[hautbois16]

A two-head machine (or sometimes a three-head machine) can be used for that "slapback echo effect" if you use a sufficiently high transport speed on the tape deck. (That third head is an erase head, so you wouldn't want to fool with it because it has that high-frequency bias signal on it). I have had that kind of fun with a Sony 377, and I used its 3.5IPS speed for more delay when I was doing a Halloween story of my own making. I told my friends that it was a "mystery story" because I didn't know how it was going to end. lol The idea was that when I noticed that my supply reel was getting rather low, I'd quickly contrive the way I would rescue the main character and have all the ghosts and goblins perish wiht a bunch of screams and weird sounds as the tape ran off the reel and the transport motor shut down. Ah, those old open-reel tape days were fun, though I would suggest that anyone seriously wanting to make even reasonably good recordings look into the digital realm or perhaps a mix of digital recording on a computer and an analog mixer. This stuff is available at moderate prices for entry-level equipment; and some music outlets have used equipment available at reasonable prices. Don't shun that used equipment if found at a good dealer. I used almost exclusively used equipment for years when I firt started in the recording hobby, and I got some decent pieces of equipment at prices I could afford.