Hello, I am new to recording on cassette (and recording in general). I recently bought a Tascam 414 mkii and have my first song recorded. I am looking at purchasing a Tascam 133 Two Speed mixdown deck and was wondering if it is compatible and if it is the best choice for mixing down. If not, then I would appreciate some other recommendations for a cassette deck (preferably one that isn't too expensive). Sorry if this is a dumb question, I just don't want to purchase something and it not be compatible with my machine. Thank you
Question About Cassette Deck
- Thread starter pain.
- Start date
bouldersoundguy
Well-known member
I don't think you'll be able to play the tapes you make on the 133 on other cassette machines. Perhaps you'd be better off mixing down to a computer. You could master them digitally and share them easily that way. You'd get the fun of cassette 4-tracking and the convenience of digital when it counts.
If you are bent on mixing to cassette, any good quality stereo deck should do.
If you are bent on mixing to cassette, any good quality stereo deck should do.
+1. Even if you could find a compatible machine, the ravages of time will mean wear, especially head wear will degrade the performance as tapes made on the 133 will not be optimally aligned on another deck. You COULD have both machines services and brought to top, matched specification but, expensive and are parts still available?
The 133 only delivers a 2 track mix AFAICT* and so at the most basic level you could feed that to the stereo line input found on most computers and even running at 16 bits the sound quality will be well above tape in terms of noise and distortion. You can 'dump' tracks to PC and then feed them back to the cassette and make two more. Mix that down to PC almost ad.inf. with virtually no noise build up.
My son worked this way over 20 yrs ago except he was using a 15ips Teac OR but he eventually "saw the light" and used tape less and less and digital more and more!
Better and more convenient is a USB Audio Interface such as the Focusrite 2i2 or I can strongly recommend the Behringer UMC204HD.
*I have to say...WHAT a revelation was the user manual for the 133! That work must have been a significant cost in the production of the deck. SO different from the scabby two, often only ONE bits of paper we get now even with kit costing $200 and over.
Dave.