Akai ds4000 recording 4 tracks

[kip4]

I dont know if i'm getting a bit daft in my old age but is this how to record 4 seperate tracks on the akai ds4000


Put switch to 1-4, mic in left socket, record track 1
put swith to 3-2, mic in left socket, record track 2
put switch to 1-4, mic in right socket , record track 3
put switch to 3-2, mic in right socket, record track 4

and when do i put it into sos mode on ? Only between takes 1 and 2 or everyone after?

because ideally i'd like to hear back all the tracks i've laid down as i go along. If this is possible

Im a bit confused
help me out im a total analogue newbie
thanks
Rich

 

[Steenamaroo]

Hey pal.
The heads have two paths and each occupy 1/4 of the tape width.

It's a four track deck in that you can record to 1+3, then flip the tape and record to 2+4, but you can't do four track recording in one direction on it, if that makes sense.

Setting the selector switch to 1-4 will record to either 1 or 4, depending which way round the tape is.
Setting the selector switch to 2-3 will record to either 2 or 3, depending which way round the tape is.


The sound on sound effort is a means of dumping two tracks down to one as far as I know,
so technically you could record as many tracks as you want, but that quality will suffer the more you accumulate.

 

[jpmorris]

Simply put, it's a like a cassette deck. You can turn the tape over, and play back something else recorded on the other side. This it works because there's two tracks on each side (four in total). But it can only ever record or play back two tracks at once. It's simply not designed to be a multitrack machine, unfortunately.

What I think the sound-on-sound switch does is disable the erase head so you can record on top of a previous recording without wiping it, but as mentioned, this will introduce more noise with every pass.

 

[kip4]

Thanks guys now i know why i can only record two tracks.
As miro once said i'll be dumping them into the pc anyway so i guess its not that big of a deal.

These machine can take a whole lot more punishment before the sound starts to break up and it sounds differant to digital to my ears.
I'll have to do a side by side recording
1 into reel to reel
1 into interface

import the reel to reel recording and A/B them

i have a matched pair of mic so it should be fairly accurate

thanks for the help guys