Newbie.... hi

[HomesickAlien]

haha.. yeah well i'm addicted to finding new stuff to add to the stockpile...
i'm just interested in getting a good 4 track to learn the analog way of doing things.
i figure it's going to take me a while and in that time i can save some cash for a bigger unit.
at the moment - i won't be needing more than 4 tracks so the tascam 34b is perfect.. plus it comes with tapes..

But seriously, if you are on a tight budget and you already have a good digital setup I would be tracking to tape then mixing digitally. .

now this is the area in which i was going to be heading with some questions and some searches...
i have a digi 002 rack and i also have a presonus firepod.
can i just straight up connect the 1/4" outputs from the tascam into my 002 inputs and dump them that way?
does that mean i can only have 4 tracks from the tascam and the rest digital because of the tape delay?
i'm more confused as to how i would be able to record 4 tracks, dump them, then record another 4 and dump then and so on and keeping them in sync.

 

[Chilljam]

You can connect the outputs of the Tascam to the 002 and get your first 4 tracks. Then after that, if you want to add more you can but it is a little bit more tricky due to sync issues (the tape generally won't playback recorded material in perfect sync so if you can imagine the 4 first tracks you recorded might be out of sync with anything you add afterwards through the tape machine).

This is how I do it though... (I use a Tascam 32 instead of your proposed Tascam 34b but it's the same procedure).
I record my first two tracks (it's a two track machine) onto the Tascam 32 (or use my 8 track recorder if I need more tracks for the drums). Then I play back the tape and record the outputs digitally through an interface. Chuck it into Cubase and then say I want to add a bass guitar, I simply record the bass guitar onto the Tascam 32 (whilst playing a long to the track on Cubase) and have the Tascam 32 monitor from the record head and feed the output of the tape machine through the interface into Cubase so it's recording on tape and then on the computer all whilst playing the bass guitar. When you do it this way you get no sync issues because you are playing a long to the track on Cubase and you are monitoring directly off the record head. The only thing that happens though because there is a gap between the record head and the playback head, my bass guitar track will be a few milliseconds delayed than the original tracks that are on Cubase. You can calculate the exact delay (by measuring the distance between the two heads and knowing the tape speed) and simply drag the bass guitar track back so it is in sync with the other tracks.

Using this method, I don't need to bounce anything on the tape deck, If I only ever need to record two tracks at a time... I only need a 2 track deck (which are easy to find, cheap, sound excellent and have lots of parts available). Of course if you need 4 tracks at a time, you can just get a 4 track tape deck.