Losing volume at mixdown: Tascam 414

[Zaia]

I'm new at 4 track recording. My band and I recorded a song and, originally it sounded great when we listened to it over the headphones, but when we tried to dump it onto my Sony cassette deck, it came out like garbage. We lost a ton of volume. When we dumped it, we had the Tascam levels set at 8 and the cassette deck volume at 7. After the dump, we played it over the stereo and we had to crank the volume to about 4 to even achieve a decent listening volume. Any suggestions? The cassette deck does not have an EQ. Should I buy one that has an EQ? Please advise. Thank you.

 

[Dondello]

Well, tell us a bit about your setup.. What 'out' ports are you using on the back of the Tascam? The RCA line-outs? I had a similar problem when I first tried to mix-down on mine, and I realized later that the signal I was getting was just bleed, and not the true signal at all. When using the lineouts, the 'Input' switch for each track (with selections LINE/MIC, OFF, TAPE) must be set to tape! The tape selection is for output, but for some reason they put it on the input switch. Anyway, set all 4 switches to tape, hit play on the Tascam, and record on the Sony, and see what happens. If you already knew this (i.e. you've got the manual, whereas I didn't) then it's a different problem entirely, and I wasn't a help at all.