Tricks and secrets of recording on a four-track

Hey...if he likes that sound, OK...and there's all kinds of distortion/clipping flavors...but I find that when you overload cheaper solid state components into clipping, the distortion is kinda ugly for my taste, and very unflattering, compared to say, tube distortion or tape saturation...which have more "organic" flavors...
...but again, if he likes it, then it's good for him. :)

Yes agree, but some people swear by the distortion/clipping characteristics of the built-in pres of a 90's Mackie mixer (I'm not joking :D ). Especially electronic music producers, they love that stuff. Daft Punk almost single-handedly made the "so bad it's good" Alesis 3630 desirable. Just look at lists of greatest compressors of all time... the 3630 is included in almost every single top 10.

Back to the OP:
another one is to play with the pitch control whilst recording or recording at half speed/double speed then changing it on playback.
Or using really old worn out tapes (wow and flutter for days).

In fact, I have an old cassette walkman that actually has stereo line in recording capabilities (this is quite rare). Man, the tape transport on that walkman can't maintain a stable speed to save it's life :laughings:.

I used to quickly print rough mixes to this machine on cassette after a recording session then plug it into my car to listen on the way home. Just the vibrations from driving in the car with the walkman on the seat makes the playback go all wow and fluttery with a fair bit of HF loss. Actually a pretty cool effect. I tried to replicate it in the final mixdown on some of the songs at the time with the two machine tape flanging effect but it wasn't the same and ultimately went for a 'clean' mix.
 
thank you man! i'm currently recording on a yamaha mt400, prior to that i had the mt1x, which sounded kinda better, even though it was older. i have a 3340s that i still havent started recording on yet. i don't think there's any DBX NOISE REDUCER ON THAT ONE so i wont be messing around with that.

Yeh it doesn’t, and IMO noise reduction doesn’t do anything good for sound anyway - part of why you probably do that thing. That thing is basically just high frequency boost, compression, and tape hiss.
 
7 - LEAVING CASSETTES ON THE CAR DASHBOARD FOR A WEEK IN THE SUN PREMATURELY AGES THEM AND THEY HAVE A VINTAGE SOUND

This works best when you purchase a brand new cassette with some modern music on it...and in a couple of days, the music takes on that retro vibe.

8 - NOT CLEANING YOUR TAPE DECK IN ORDER TO GET NATURAL DROP OUTS WHEN YOU WANT THAT REAL LO-FI EFFECT


The longer you don't clean the heads, the more dropouts, and when combined with #7 method above... you can get vintage lo-fi!!!
 
I, too, and into digital recording to such an extent that I'd hate to go back to those old days when, wol youbeleve, I recorded my on-ma ban by bouncing tacks i stero betwee a Sony 377 an a Sony 35, bth opn-reel steeo tre-had tae eck. Tpe his, fluter ad owere te emiwi ic dl drnthse as. Ath setiwlhantlimitsof t mei andstate o h AFFODBLE ART wherein I worked, I loved the music I made in those days and still listen to those old recordings from time to time.
 
I can see where you're coming from in double tracking your guitar, I can easily believe good results. Unfortunately 'mega double tracking' - was and still is used to make weedy voices sound richer. The guy who trained me said that the number of overlaid takes could get ridiculously large. In particular, today's Pop seems to have a positive vogue for - in particular with young women singers - very thin and reedy voices with no real substance or presence behind them. It doesn't take much of an ear to listen carefully and notice that they've just been 'layered up'
 
In particular, today's Pop seems to have a positive vogue for - in particular with young women singers - very thin and reedy voices with no real substance or presence behind them. It doesn't take much of an ear to listen carefully and notice that they've just been 'layered up'


Yes...I know what you mean.
Here's a young lady singer I came across recently who actually has quite a strong voice and range....though she still double-tracks her vocals and layers them up.
When I checked out a few other cuts from her (maybe it's the same album, not sure)...all her vocals were like that, doubled/layered, and as much as I like her voice very much...that layering became too obvious and almost annoying to listen to...track after track.
It's like they found a good thing...and then proceeded to over-use it during the production....but WTF do I know, her stuff still sound quite good, vocally! :D

I need to check out some more of her stuff...I would be surprised if ALL her songs are done that way...but I love her voice.
She really sings...none of that whisper, muffled-speak nonsense...which you can do when you have a voice that can cut it.

Listen all through...she keeps punching it up as the song progresses.

 
Double tracking at points where you want to emphasise the vocal to add excitement is a perfectly acceptable practice in pop music production.
 
Double tracking at points where you want to emphasise the vocal to add excitement is a perfectly acceptable practice in pop music production.

No one suggested it wasn't...I'm just saying that if you were to say, do an album of 10-12 songs, and you used the same double-tracking technique on the lead vocal for every song...it gets kinda played out.
Like using a wah-wah pedal on every lead guitar cut. ;)

I mean...even it wasn't an album, because I guess these days it's all about singles and playlists...but you used the same treatment for a particular artist every time...it gets boring, IMO.

It's like that vocal "chirp" thing that was (and still is) so overused in R&B/Hip-Hop.

I like to have some contrast between album cuts, and also from production to production.
Like how some people these days cut-n-paste their track processing from track to track...and from song to song...pretty boring, IMO.
 
Back when I used to work in an 8 track studio, we used DBX. We would align each tape machine before every session. When it came time to bounce, we would get our mix, turn off the DBX & bounce without it. That signal was always encoded. When it got back to the 8 track, we’d turn the DBX back on & continue with the recording. The secret is to have perfectly aligned machines. DBX is a 2:1 compression. If the machines weren’t perfectly aligned we would notice unpleasant artifacts in the recording.
 
Back when I used to work in an 8 track studio, we used DBX. We would align each tape machine before every session. When it came time to bounce, we would get our mix, turn off the DBX & bounce without it. That signal was always encoded. When it got back to the 8 track, we’d turn the DBX back on & continue with the recording. The secret is to have perfectly aligned machines. DBX is a 2:1 compression. If the machines weren’t perfectly aligned we would notice unpleasant artifacts in the recording.

Now that is interesting! Back in the day there were of course two competing noise reducing systems. DBX and Dolby A. Dolby was a level/frequency sensitive compander system and required tapes to be precisely aligned with test tones. One of the biggest advantages claimed for DBX was that it was a 2:1 compander using a power law and levels could 'sit' anywhere on the curve.

Dolbyphiles would hit back and say such simple companding produced 'pumping' effects that were especially annoying to the 'classical' music brigade.

Of course, SOME people eschewed noise reduction completely and ran at the terrifying 30ips!

Dave.
 
DBX 1 would only pump if alignment of the machine &/or alignment between the machine and the NR unit was incorrect. Some folks would set up the machine with the NR on which would really mess things up. You had to align the machine 1st and then check the machine with the dbx @ 1kHz. That's the only frequency the NR doesn't influence.
 
I just wanted to add that I have always thought the DBX on the Tascam 244 pretty incredible. After setting up a machine for type 1 tape and adjusting the bias I have been incredulous at the sound. Very difficult to discern any pumping sounds, zero hiss, terrific frequency response and no dropouts. I haven't been able to use the 244 due to being away from home in the lockdown but I really miss it!
 
Regarding the DNR circuit, if you have it on during both the record and playback process AND lose a lot of the high frequency sound, I have to think that the two "halves" of the DNR system are not "tracking" properly, or perhaps I should say that they might not be calibrated properly. I remember in the "ancient days" when you could buy an outboard Dolby Noise Reduction System, my unit came with two calibration tapes - one for cassette and one for open-reel systems. its front panel had twoscrewdriver adjustment controls which you used to calibrate the Dolby box to your system. As I remember the process, you were supposed to start the tape playing and adjust the playback output control(s) of your tape deck to read 0DB. You then turned the "playback" screwdriver adjustment so that the meter on the Dolby box also showed 0DB. Once that was set, the playback levels on your tapedeck were treated as if they were "service adjustments" to be left unchanged. You then held a button on the Dolby box with your tape deck on Record and adjusted the 400Hz tone with another screwdriver adjustment so that the record level on the tape deck was at 0Db.
Once this calibration was properly accomplished, the record and playback processes were (I think you would call them "mirror images") of each other so that, at least in theory, the record and playbackprocesses of a program with the Dolby system turned on would be transparent, giving you the same frequency response characteristics of the playback as you had on the recording - minus a good bit of tape hiss. [Note that I put"mirror image" in parenthesis because i, being totally blind from birth, have never experienced a real mirror image but rely on what I have heard.] The point here being that in the days when I used that outboard Dolby box, I left the Dolby engaged for recording and playback. Any loss of high frequencies probably happened because of normal quality degeneration as I bounced the recording back and forth between two recorders. In those days, that two-deck bouncing was the only way I had to do a multitrack recording. On one recording as an experiment, I recorded with Dolby on and played back with it off. That sound was characterized by a notable "pumping" of tape hiss.
Having talked about "in a perfect world," I move to the real world where we now live. For most of our tape-recordingsystems, we are dealing with built-in Dolby or other DNR-type circuits on which we do not have access to any calibration controls to tweak the levels for exact mirroring of the record and playback process. If these modern decks have calibration controls, they are "service adjustments" buried in the machines so that a service manual for the deck in question would be needed to adjust any such controls. Finally, after saying the above, I still maintain that there is a calibration misalignment between the record and playback portions of your DNR system if you lose a significant amount of high frequency sound when you playback with DNR on with a recording made with the DNR turned on.
Incidentally, I'm not even sure whether you can buy an outboard Dolby Noise Reduction System box anymore. I still have one, and I might someday bring it back into operation.
 
^ i must say, that is pretty awesome what you wrote. i can't imagine what it's like to be blind and write on these forums (which are great). this is pretty much a miracle; and you are. anywho, thanks so much for repyling.

i bought this machine and it seemed to be in a good condition (but what is a good condition really) no scuffs/marks anything, and the recordings were awesome ( no but really, this machine was like mint ). i am pretty goddamned lucky with these things when buying them i think.

considering that this four track was produced in the 90's (i think 98) not much work was done on them, for the one that i have atleast, i think.
why the hell
does it seem like the dbx was more of a disadvantage than anything else.
 
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