L
little z
New member
What's your favorite cassette-based 4-track??? Which is the most popular and why??? You know what to do.......... Steve 

Thanks posting the very reasons I went cassette in the first place. I also deffinately like the simplicity of having all the controls right at my fingertips too.A Reel Person said:It's a big price cut on the new 424mkIII, which definitely is unprecedented price/performance, and a great value indeed. I'd guess it was as a marketing reaction by Teac, to all those all-digital 4-track newcomers, which just hit the market, that are all priced at about $399,... the former price-point of the 424mkIII.
To each their own, but IMO, besides price, the 424mkIII still beats the current crop of all-digital 4-trackers, in overall value & features, for the following reasons:
1) The 424mkIII is an 8 input/6 channel full function mixer, and the mixing features on the BR-532, Korg PXR4, and the yet to be released Tascam Pocketstudio 5, are minimal. Hands down, the full function analog mixer of the 424mkIII gives you much more flexibility in mixing, than those other units, [BR-532, PXR4, Pocketstudio 5].
2) Modern cassette tapes, like the TDK CD-Power cassette, hold slightly more magnetism & a slightly hotter signal than previous cassette tape formulations. This gives a slight boost in "hifi" for the lowly cassette 4-tracker, when using the most modern hi-energy tape formulations, enough for cassette to remain a viable and competitive medium.
3) The 424mkIII's dbx NR almost eliminates the remaining inherent tape hiss, with little or no side effects, bringing S/N ratio up to a point that rivals the all-digital 4-trackers, [BR-532, PXR4].
4) The all-digital 4-track units, [BR-532, PXR4], recording time/capacity is short; roughly ~4 minutes, for a 4-track production, on a 32MB Smartmedia memory card, which is standard. For another ~$100, you may upgrade to a 128MB Smartmedia card, which boosts your total onboard recording time to about ~16 minutes, in 4-track. When the memory card is full, you need to dump the song-data into your 'puter, before you can [erase &] move on.
5) On the other hand, the removable medium of cassette, holds 15 minutes for a C60, and 22.5 minutes of 4 track recording time per C90 cassette, [double speed] and cost about $2/ea, sometimes less. When the tape's full, you switch to a new tape and move on, which is a lot easier than having to dump data to the 'puter, relatively speaking.
6) The BR-532 and PXR4, to the best of my knowledge, will only record on one track at a time. The 424mkIII can record up to 4 tracks simultaneously.
The all-digital units have 'virtual tracks' and lots of fancy editing, and even onboard drum patterns, so those are the features that can't be matched by any cassette/analog Portastudio or system.
The nearly released Pocketstudio 5 appears to be an audio-to-mp3 device only, and doesn't record standard format WAV files at all, [the best I can determine at this time].
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- On the BR-532 & PXR4, the main drawbacks are memory size, or lack thereof, which limits recording time, and the very limited onboard input mixing capabilities, which begs the issue of needing an outboard mixer to use with these units. Also, the limit of recording only 1 track at a time, max, is a major drawback, as compared to the 424mkIII, or any other cassette-based Tascam Portastudio.
I've demo'd the BR-532 and the PXR4, and even though they are impressive little gadgets, if I were buying a new 4-track recorder today, I'd still buy the 424mkIII.
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That's my 2c worth of opinion, for now.
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