m-30 mixer and 488 mkII

[Vitor Drum]

Hello everybody
can you tell me about the diferencies
between the m-30 mixer and the 488mkII
in terms of preamps/EQ/overall sound?
Is it the same?
I know that the m-30 has a lot of routing,etc, but
what about the sound itself?

Thanks very much!!!!!!!

 

[The Green Hornet]

Yo Victor of Drums:

The MK 488, whatever model, is an 8 track tape recorder; I've had two of those. I think it is marvelous box of "its" time.

Mixers are "usually" not recorders. A mixer is built into the 488 so you can record, blend, a mix down into two track stereo and then dump that into CD or tape or DAT.

Although I record with the Yam 2816 unit, I have warm memories of the 488 and some of the things I got out of it.

Green Hornet

 

[The Ghost of FM]

If you're truly concerned with quality of sound, I might suggest you keep the M30 on your list but, scratch off the 488.

The 488 is a great 8 track cassette Portastudio but, it is a very narrow format tape recorder. You might want to consider an 8 track reel to reel like a TASCAM 38, 48 or 58 and get yourself some serious fidelity.

Yes, these are 1/2 inch open reel tape formats that cost considerably more for the hardware and blank tape but, you will end up with a recording format that can achieve completely professional results in terms of fidelity and you do seem to be concerned about that so, why fart around with cassette which is best used as a compositional/sketch pad recording tool when you could be tracking on a full frequency response, full fidelity format like open reel?

Cheers!