Converting tape to Digital 688 tascam

Hey I am going to make an album this summer and I have the tascam 688. How do you convert the tape to digital?. I am having mental issues and technological issues on my pc, I purchased a focusrite 4i4 and with my mental disability and old buggy computer, I figure I spent the money on the 688, time to make an album on it.

I just need some tips , cheap methods on how to convert them to digital when I am ready to release them to the world on youtube and bandcamp or whatever. I tried it once a certain way with one chord and it came out real crappy.
thanks in advance, thank you thank you, love you. peace.
 
I won't be much help, but I will ask if you're wanting to make a final mix in your 688, then convert the final mix to digital, or convert each track to digital by sending them to your PC's DAW .. then mixing those tracks down to a final mix?
 
I won't be much help, but I will ask if you're wanting to make a final mix in your 688, then convert the final mix to digital, or convert each track to digital by sending them to your PC's DAW .. then mixing those tracks down to a final mix?
lol well im having buggy issues with this pc , I know there some good threads out there but I plan on buying tapes because of my pc issues.
 
Quality and sonic stuff aren't really the thing then? Seriously - producing an album on a 688 (I had one in the late 90's) is not the simplest thing in the world, the routing system and flexibility drove me mad. If you plan on recording in the summer, you should be experimenting NOW, not when you make the album.

You say you have mental issues, so surely you want the most stress free solution, and that is probably a computer once you sort the bugginess out. To get it into digital takes a computer anyway for most people, so what not use the nice interface and the computer and wipe out the analogue learning curve. They're nice for nostalgia, but soooooo limiting. 8 tracks, so you need to work out bouncing regimes and how the tracks fill up so you can mix the end product. That's a long-term project to learn that if you are a novice. Direct to digital cuts out a huge workload, and for most people, lowers stress. You hit record, and if you made mistakes, it just keeps recording. Press stop when you have a perfect take, or enough duff ones to edit together!
 
I HAD A TASCAM 688...

a great little machine back in the day, for a 8 track on cassette format.
there IS some crosstalk, but the mixer section itself had a nice sound.

but as far as modern recordings go,
i'd not bother with this machine.
way more trouble than it is worth.

you have a couple of options with going digital from this machine:

output each rca out per channel and record each mono track into a DAW;
or just take the stereo out via analog, into the stereo input of a interface to daw.


other than that,
you'll just be painting yourself into an artistic corner.

based on my own personal knowledge from working with a 688 for 3 years.
 
I HAD A TASCAM 688...

a great little machine back in the day, for a 8 track on cassette format.
there IS some crosstalk, but the mixer section itself had a nice sound.

but as far as modern recordings go,
i'd not bother with this machine.
way more trouble than it is worth.

you have a couple of options with going digital from this machine:

output each rca out per channel and record each mono track into a DAW;
or just take the stereo out via analog, into the stereo input of a interface to daw.


other than that,
you'll just be painting yourself into an artistic corner.

based on my own personal knowledge from working with a 688 for 3 years.
Agree with all of this, skip the 688.

I had a 688 in the late 90's until 2008. Absolutely my least favorite portable recording studio. My first was a 244 l bought in 1983. In fact l bought the exact same rig George Harrison bought at the time. I bought a 388 in early 1988 and l thought the mixers sounded identical. Then l started getting into PC DAW recording in 1996. The idea behind the 688 was to integrate it into all the new midi technology that was coming out, but nobody really understood any of it. I then got a Roland VS-880 in '96 and that just didn't work out for me. Had early versions of Cakewalk and the brand new Windows 95 os. That wasn't working so l got the 688. Trying to make that whole system work was a form of torture, and l didn't like the way the mixer of the 688 sounded. The 244 and 388 sounded much better. The 246 came out not long after l bought the 244 but l saw the extra channels as useless. I already had a Kelsey 16 channel board all the drums went into before going into the 244 or 388.

Next l got the Yamaha MTX-8 and l really liked the sound on that much better than the 688, although it was darker than the 244. But service wise the MTX was much easier, l thought. And you could swap capacitors and guys were doing mods that made them sound much better, but l don't know about those.

I worked in studios that had modified Yamaha consoles that were up there with Neves. In fact they called then JapaNeves. The guys that were modding Yamaha boards said they could upgrade almost any Yamaha mixer at the time. Now the MTX-8 ll is a different creature, while the upgrades sound great, for overall sound you want the first one.

The 244 crapped out first and l saw no reason to fix it and practically gave it away. I had pretty much every cassette machine made, because l had a cassette duplication business from 1986 to 1998.

At the end of the day l still have the MTX-4, the MTX-8, and the 388. The 388 is currently in retirement and will most likely stay there. If l start recording again it's going to be on the MTX-8. But if l get some money one day, which is doubtful, l would buy the new Tascam Model 24 SD recorder and a Tascam SD20 mastering deck.
 
Fix the computer! Buy a 1 or 2 Tbyte external hard drive and dump all the data you might need on it. Then, assuming you have a Windows disc (what OS?) format the C drive and re install Windows. Then look up "Optimizing a PC for music recording" on the web* and do it. You don't need much of a PC to build tracks. i3 W7 4G ram will do but it is likely your machine is better specc'ed than that.

That all assumes you do not have a hardware problem but if so, take it to a tech'.

*If possible keep the 'music' ,machine off the internet although that really does not matter much these days.

Dave.
 
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