1/4" or 1/2" quality?

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1/4" Studer vs. a 1/2" TASCAM IS debatable.
Debating it is undebatably waste of time, but it IS very debatable. Go for it ;) Fire you guns...
 

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Dr ZEE said:
what exactly do you mean by "professional"?

/respects

Well, maybe that wasn't the right word to use. What I mean is "professional quality sound" You'll have to excuse my lack of knowledge, I'm new to all this stuff, but from all the reading I've done when it comes to analog recording everyone says the more tracks/ less tape width, the lesser quality recording you will get. I've read a lot about bouncing reducing quality because you are taking several tracks down to one or two, thus reducing the width of track space for those instruments, read how the tascam MSR-16 would not produce as good a recording as the TSR-8 because you are using half the tape with per track. So, in my admitted ignorance I'm a little confused why people make a big fuss about it all when in the old days 24 tracks or more went all the way down to 1/8 cassette and sounded of high quality. Am I making sense? Becks explanation did help some, but still the thought of all those tracks on 2' tape being reduced to 1/8 tape and still sounding great leaves me confused. If say, you were in the studio back then and compared the 2' recording to the cassette consumer verison of the same recording would the 2' version sound a lot better? :confused:
 
eeieeio said:
Well, maybe that wasn't the right word to use. What I mean is "professional quality sound" You'll have to excuse my lack of knowledge, I'm new to all this stuff, but from all the reading I've done when it comes to analog recording everyone says the more tracks/ less tape width, the lesser quality recording you will get. I've read a lot about bouncing reducing quality because you are taking several tracks down to one or two, thus reducing the width of track space for those instruments, read how the tascam MSR-16 would not produce as good a recording as the TSR-8 because you are using half the tape with per track. So, in my admitted ignorance I'm a little confused why people make a big fuss about it all when in the old days 24 tracks or more went all the way down to 1/8 cassette and sounded of high quality. Am I making sense? Becks explanation did help some, but still the thought of all those tracks on 2' tape being reduced to 1/8 tape and still sounding great leaves me confused. If say, you were in the studio back then and compared the 2' recording to the cassette consumer verison of the same recording would the 2' version sound a lot better? :confused:

I don't know what to say, here really. I can only sort of share something from my miserable experience. I use to think that I was pretty 'knowledgable' from reading tons and tons of "informative material" written by "people who DO know". Then at some point I've started actually recording sounds and then happen to try few different options and experimenting with something that was not "so-recommended" by "people who DO know". And as time went by.... the whole lot of things I've read and still do read from time to time stop making any practical sense to me. So I've lost all my "knowledge" I suppose... To make things worse, I guess, I've stuck my nose inside the boxes and chassis... and then everything in my head went totally crazy... the things that I've discovered were depressingly liberating and sentensing to be free with no possibility of parole, sort of speak :) .... :( ... so I don't know spit anymore ... about anything, I must add.

You gotta get your hands dirty... I'd say. Try recording something on tape. Try couple of different units... what ever is (or can be) available to you... and you'll see what I mean.
 
eeieeio said:
If say, you were in the studio back then and compared the 2' recording to the cassette consumer verison of the same recording would the 2' version sound a lot better? :confused:
To answer your question: Yes, the 24 track mix would sound much different than the cassette. The vinyl version would sound different from both the 24 track and the cassette.

There was (and is) a process in between the mix and the final product...Mastering. The process was different for mastering to vinyl, cassette, and CD. All 3 final platforms would sound different from the 1/4 mix master. The sound would be optimised for each medium, taking into account the limitations of each. This would leave each version sounding different from each other and the mix.
 
eeieeio said:
still the thought of all those tracks on 2' tape being reduced to 1/8 tape and still sounding great leaves me confused. If say, you were in the studio back then and compared the 2' recording to the cassette consumer verison of the same recording would the 2' version sound a lot better? :confused:

It's a matter of perspective. If you have a better scene to take a picture of you get a better picture. The cassette tape has the potential to hold all the elements it's just a matter of if the elements are there to hold in the first place.

I never understood when those would say about digital "well, if it's all going to sixteen bit in the end why do you need 24 bit". Even salesmen would say that. It was like saying " well might as well record on a cassette rather than a studer because it's going to go to 16 bit anyway"
 
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