professional 4-tracking - how did they do it?

[EDAN]

Come to think of it, it would be rather diffucult to work that way with, say, a single 8 track, or even 2 8-track machines. The noise build-up would just be too gawd-aweful to even think of making useable bounces, but, you know.

Anybody here do sessions like that? maybe, 2 Tascam 34's?

Using my Tascam TRS 8 I'll sometimes record the basic rhythm tracks, something like two - three tracks for drums, one for bass, two for guitars etc. I'll lay down a scratch vocal then add processing/mix and record (minus the vocal) straight to a CD burner then record the stereo mix back into two tracks on the TRS with almost no loss of quality and no added hiss. Next I use the other six tracks for the keeper vocal, backround vocals, leads/solo's and anything else I want to add. Of course sometimes the 8 original track are all I need, but when I need more I've found using this approach makes for a much less noisy product rather than bouncing internally.