Please Explain Tracks to me

[Cedar Fever]

If someone be kind enough to explain the basics of tracks to me, I would appreiciate it. I have been reading some adds...on self-contained studios...such as Boss/Fostex?Korg/etc....what do they mean by virtual tracks? Just in one discription of one unit 8, 16, and 128 virtual tracks are mentioned. I just don't understand what is meant by all of this. Thanks, Ron

 

[The Green Hornet]

Yo Cedar with no Malaria:

I'll try to make it a very simple, easy to follow explanation.

If you buy an 8 track recorder, you have 8 basic tracks to record: such as, keys, drums, bass, horn, voice, etc.

Now, if your unit has "virtual" tracks, it means you have this option.

Say, you do the voice track and like it but it isn't "exactly" what you want, you can push a couple of buttons and record the vocal track again. Say you did the vocal on track #2 -- you can do the vocal over, without erasing the original vocal track, up to 8 times. Then, you can listen and choose which one you like the best and use it when you are ready to mix ALL your tracks down to two-track stereo before you burn a CD or put it on DAT or regular tape.

So, 8 X 8 on an 8 track recorder gives you so much room to do a track over and not erase the original -- you can do the bass track over, or the solo horn over and over until you exhaust your "virtual" tracks. But, then, you can only choose one, the best one of course, to mix down.

I hope this helps you as I tried to stay very simple and virtual tracks are just that once you know.

Green Hornet

 

[radiorickm]

hi ron

you have one good answer, but i will throw in my thought for you.

when you listen to stereo music, you hear 2 different "TRACKS", a right track and a left track.

when we record music,in a studio generally each individual insturment is put onto a "TRACK". Then, the tracks are mixed together to come up with the stereo sound.

A regular cassette, has 2 tracks. A deck like a Tascam 424 has "4" tracks. A Fostex MR-8 has 8 tracks.

That means that 8 individual things may be played back at one time.

In commercial studios, 16, 24, 32, and even 64 tracks are very common.

Now, lets say we have some one singing on track 1 of our recorder.

You're on the net, so we can assume you can use a computer. When we do cut/copy/paste on a computer, the information is stored on the clipboard, which is a virtual memory.

Once stored in the clipboard, we can type new stuff into the document, and see it and use. Now if we want, we can pull the old stuff off the clipboard and paste is back.

Digital recording is the same thing. We can take the vioce on track 1 and dump it into a virtual track. We may not be able to see the music, or manipulate it when it is in "VIRTUAL memeory", but it is there.

Then, we can record new stuff onto track 1.

When ever we want, we can pull the voice from virtual track 1 and place it where we want it, back in the real tracks.

hope this clears up a bit for you.

 

[wheelema]

And regardless of the number of tracks that you end up with, you have to mix it down to two to sell it.

 

[zipperhead]

I have a Boss BR1180CD which has 8 tracks to record onto, and each of them indeed has 10 'virtuous' tracks for extra takes.

The stupid limitation however, is that you may only use one to mix down with. With such a powerful tool for recording, they dropped the ball in this regard. I had imagined I would be able to switch between them in some recordable fashion, so you could actually cherrypick what you wanted out the virtual tracks. I bought it thinking you could. Everything stops for a moment if you change these tracks.

The manual is helpful: 'This is not a malfunction'.

But yes , virtual tracks are useful and ...not available in the 8track tape studio I used to have.

 

[holder]

A track is a channel.

IF you want to make a song w/a guitar and and a singer, you need two tracks, or two channels.

The first channel will be the singer, and the second will be the guitar.

In theory, you can spend more than one channel per instrument or whatever.

It has more to depend on the recording engineer than anything else; if you have any questions, ask him.

 

[Blue Bear Sound]

A track is a channel.

Not really.... a track is more related specifically to the recording aspect, while a channel relates more to the mixer and signal routing area.

 

[Son of Mixerman]

A track used to be the individual space taken up on tape, like one lane on a freeway. A 2 lane freeway is a 2 track. In the olden days (like Blue said) we used in reference to the tape media. Channels are used to manipulate tracks in a sense.
A channel, is a sub-section of a mixer, console or desk that serves many functions. It can be used for sending music from an input "channel" to a track on the tape machine, or take a track and send it to a send or bus. Usually a channel is identified as a physical strip where you have mic's and stuff plugged in, the channel is also where your EQ, EFX, panning and fader resides as well.
With HD recorders and standalones, tracks are really just files. With virtual tracks, your able to store different variations or takes like spares or safety tracks so you can go back and select which ones you actually want during mixdown. Since many standalones can hold way more data than you can physically build channels to mix with, you have to pick what you want to keep. With computer recording on PC's or Mac, your only limited by HD space and CPU power so you can have 32, 72, 128 tracks at mixdown (Have Mercy).

SoMm