I just bought a teac a-3440 four-track recorder, having heard a lot of good things about it.
The songs I plan on recording on it have as many as 30-40 tracks, so it had been my plan to record four tracks at a time, get them sounding how I want them to sound in the final mix, and then record them to my hard drive through my MobilePre as a single stereo track. I would then just use the computer to stack these tracks on top of each other, and then perhaps record the final result back to stereo tape.
from what I've been reading here though, it seems like fluctuations in tape speed might be an issue- will the tracks not sync up once they're on the computer, or will the differences be too small to notice? would it be better just to bounce a rediculous number of times on the four-track? I did buy a dbx unit as well, so i don't think noise will be much of an issue when bouncing, but will the quality loss between generations start to become apparent after four or five bounces?
Thanks
-ben
The songs I plan on recording on it have as many as 30-40 tracks, so it had been my plan to record four tracks at a time, get them sounding how I want them to sound in the final mix, and then record them to my hard drive through my MobilePre as a single stereo track. I would then just use the computer to stack these tracks on top of each other, and then perhaps record the final result back to stereo tape.
from what I've been reading here though, it seems like fluctuations in tape speed might be an issue- will the tracks not sync up once they're on the computer, or will the differences be too small to notice? would it be better just to bounce a rediculous number of times on the four-track? I did buy a dbx unit as well, so i don't think noise will be much of an issue when bouncing, but will the quality loss between generations start to become apparent after four or five bounces?
Thanks
-ben