question about 2-track

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nationalwheel

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Sorry if this question is answered elsewhere, didn't see... I'm new to home recording, I have a four track cassette recorder which needs to be mixed down to a 2 track, can I use my regular cassette deck for this mixdown. I'm not all familiar yet with the ins and outs, thanks for answering...
 
Yes, you can.

But mixing from 4 track cassette to 2 track cassette is a pretty noisy way to go. You would probably be a lot better off getting an inexpensive stereo sound card and software (like Audacity) for your computer and mixing that way. Then burn CD's of your material.

Or even a stand-alone CD recorder would give you a cleaner result.
 
Over the years I have owned and used quite a number of 4 track tape machines. Most of them have an output setting switch (mixer/monitor/stereo) if yours does, just set it to stereo and you will have auto stereo out, usualy track 1&3 on left and 2&4 on right. You will need to have a pretty good mix/balance before you send it to another recorder or pc. Another option is to bounce the tracks onto 2 tracks, use tracks 1&2 or it will play backwards on another machine. Other tips for 4 track tape are always record on your highest tape speed setting and use CrO2 tape, regular tape is noiser and so is the slower speed setting. Most of the guys (and gals) here think 4 track tape is obsolete, I find it still has many uses and it's kind of fun to play with. Pretty decent recordings can be made on them, maybe not pro studio quality but decent.
 
Dani Pace said:
Other tips for 4 track tape are always record on your highest tape speed setting and use CrO2 tape, regular tape is noiser and so is the slower speed setting. Most of the guys (and gals) here think 4 track tape is obsolete, I find it still has many uses and it's kind of fun to play with. Pretty decent recordings can be made on them, maybe not pro studio quality but decent.
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I agree with Dani that multitrack cassette tapes are highly underrated for home recording. I cut my teeth on the original Tascam portastudio back around '79 or '80 (as well as 4-track Teac open reels) and still had a 424 lying around that I used for impromptu apartment sessions as recently as ten years ago (Heck, if their good enough for Springsteen, they're good enough for me ;) ).

Perhaps their biggest drawback is that when bouncing to stack tracks the tape hiss can build quite fast; but keep the heads in proper shape and use high-quality tape, if one is just making a straight 4 or 8 track recording with no bounce or even one generation of bounce, the quality is really no worse than recording through a small econo-mixer and cheap USB soundcard, and often better because you don't have that cheap digital converter sound laid over it.

But, yeah, mixing down to stereo casette is a very good option for this situation...IF you have an above-average quality casette deck with well-maintained heads. I'll personally take that over a cheap mAudio digital converter for resulting sound. Record to Maxell chrome tape at high bias, stay away from the Dolby noise reduction on the recording, and (depending upon your casette deck) hit the levels slightly hot (+2 or +3 peaks).

The drawback is that if you want to make a CD out of the recording, then you'd probably be better off skipping the casette and going right to digital. Better to go thorugh cheap converters alone than to go through casette *and* cheap converters.

G.
 
i always had fun recording with a 4 track. they're simple and easy to use which seriously cuts down on the endless gadget tinkering time. if anyone has a 424 that they would like to donate, i will accept it. :D

oh yea, original post...........i never had good luck mixing down to cassette. in cassette's defense, i had no clue of what i was doing back then. to mix to a pc, all you'll initially need is an adapter cable to go between your 4track outs and your sound card ins.
 
Beautiful, thanks for the responses,, helps a lot... this Audacity program, I can use it to mixdown right into my computer??? And then make cd's?? Can someone give me the exact name of the program I would be looking for??? And does it include all I need to download the info from the 4-track?? I got the 4-track pretty cheap, it looked relatively, lol, easy to start with,, I was looking at some of the digital units, I see some with big hard-drives, a couple with a cd burner included... I thought the 4-track would be nice to get my feet wet with the whole recording deal,, thanks again for the help..
 
Alright, I found the Audacity program, it's a free download.. looks like there's quite a few options..
 
as long as you can put up with a little tape hiss, you can get alot of miles out of a 4track. if you don't need many tracks, i'd stick with the 4track for a while. you should check out reaper at cockos.com.
 
I think anyone interested in home recording should first learn on a cassette 4-track. You learn about basic multitracking, buses, mixing down, aux sends, yada yada yada.

I think it is much better than going out and spending $2K on a digital board and coming here and asking "how do I hook it up?" (not directed at anyone in particular :) )

I got started in 1990 on a Yamaha MT100, then upgraded to a Tascam 424MKII (which I still have). Fun times!
 
I know I'll probably get crap for saying this, but this thread reminds me of all the "old timers" who say stuff like:

"When I was young we didn't have shoes... in the winter we just wrapped barbed wire around our feet so we didn't slip on the ice when we walked to school fourteen miles away. And bottled water? We didn't even have regular water! When we were thirsty we had to take our own hydrogen and oxygen molecules and...SMASH!!!"

It's fine for you if you like to ride hores, but there's no need to start on a horse in order to learn to drive a car. The days of cassette tape are over, and they are never coming back. While one can make a good argument for still using multitrack reel to reel, there is no benefit to using cassettes of any format, other than someone gave you one for free. The death of the cassette as a useful format is hardly being mourned by anyone... except for maybe a few around here!

Look, there is nothing wrong with using a 4 track cassette to do whatever you want - I'm not belittling that. I just find this nostalgia for "the good old days of cassettes" a little mystifying!

Sorry - end rant now. ;)
 
Well, someone thought enough of my post to take the time and effort to ding me... forgot to sign their name though, brave lad! ;)
 
littledog said:
I know I'll probably get crap for saying this, but this thread reminds me of all the "old timers" who say stuff like:

"When I was young we didn't have shoes... in the winter we just wrapped barbed wire around our feet so we didn't slip on the ice when we walked to school fourteen miles away. And bottled water? We didn't even have regular water! When we were thirsty we had to take our own hydrogen and oxygen molecules and...SMASH!!!"

It's fine for you if you like to ride hores, but there's no need to start on a horse in order to learn to drive a car. The days of cassette tape are over, and they are never coming back. While one can make a good argument for still using multitrack reel to reel, there is no benefit to using cassettes of any format, other than someone gave you one for free. The death of the cassette as a useful format is hardly being mourned by anyone... except for maybe a few around here!

Look, there is nothing wrong with using a 4 track cassette to do whatever you want - I'm not belittling that. I just find this nostalgia for "the good old days of cassettes" a little mystifying!

Sorry - end rant now. ;)
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weird you say that - and you are entitled to your opinion so don't take this as crap - but don't use cassettes if you don't like em. they most certainly have a sound all their own and people use them as such.

in fact - the band i'm in records almost exclusively to cassette 8 track...i don't do the recording...i just mix it at my pad. driving into work right now while listening to mixes we finished last night i heard a mix that i want to bump over to cassette to get more of that that quality...

i dunno...more power to ya...but where i live bands use it and use it well and the band i'm in is just one example...
before doug gillard of gbv moved from town i used to help him record all the time. wanna hear what a 4 track cassette can do? pick up pollard and gillard's "volunteer fire department..." i can pretty much guarantee that record would have sounded different on another medium...and not better.

they have a sound you cannot get anywhere else. just like the modified 1176 compressors that cost me 2500+ bucks a pop i used on bass and vocal coming off the cassette 8 track... or the studer A80RC i'm mixing to for the next 5 days. i'm not showing off my gear list...i'm just saying i value cassette as much...

use the tools to your advantage to get the sound you want is the name of the game..and cassette is one of those tools for sure. :D

Mike
 
littledog said:
I know I'll probably get crap for saying this, but this thread reminds me of all the "old timers" who say stuff like:

"When I was young we didn't have shoes... in the winter we just wrapped barbed wire around our feet so we didn't slip on the ice when we walked to school fourteen miles away. And bottled water? We didn't even have regular water! When we were thirsty we had to take our own hydrogen and oxygen molecules and...SMASH!!!"

It's fine for you if you like to ride hores, but there's no need to start on a horse in order to learn to drive a car. The days of cassette tape are over, and they are never coming back. While one can make a good argument for still using multitrack reel to reel, there is no benefit to using cassettes of any format, other than someone gave you one for free. The death of the cassette as a useful format is hardly being mourned by anyone... except for maybe a few around here!

Look, there is nothing wrong with using a 4 track cassette to do whatever you want - I'm not belittling that. I just find this nostalgia for "the good old days of cassettes" a little mystifying!

Sorry - end rant now. ;)
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riding a horse will teach you nothing about driving a car. on the other hand, using a mixer and 4track will teach you all the basics of signal routing. do you know how many people there are around here that don't know anything about basic signal routing? one reason for that is software. the majority of software does'nt give any visual clues as to how signal routing works.
 
bigtoe said:
weird you say that - and you are entitled to your opinion so don't take this as crap - but don't use cassettes if you don't like em. they most certainly have a sound all their own and people use them as such.

in fact - the band i'm in records almost exclusively to cassette 8 track...i don't do the recording...i just mix it at my pad. driving into work right now while listening to mixes we finished last night i heard a mix that i want to bump over to cassette to get more of that that quality...

i dunno...more power to ya...but where i live bands use it and use it well and the band i'm in is just one example...
before doug gillard of gbv moved from town i used to help him record all the time. wanna hear what a 4 track cassette can do? pick up pollard and gillard's "volunteer fire department..." i can pretty much guarantee that record would have sounded different on another medium...and not better.

they have a sound you cannot get anywhere else. just like the modified 1176 compressors that cost me 2500+ bucks a pop i used on bass and vocal coming off the cassette 8 track... or the studer A80RC i'm mixing to for the next 5 days. i'm not showing off my gear list...i'm just saying i value cassette as much...

use the tools to your advantage to get the sound you want is the name of the game..and cassette is one of those tools for sure. :D

Mike
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well said. cassette does have it's own sound and like anything else, you like it or you don't. personally i like it. i don't think it's a better sound than using a computer but cassette certainly has more character.
 
Good catch on the Freudian slip typo, G.! :D

OK everyone, I'm convinced now that some of you think that recording to cassette has a "sound" that some might find desireable. I'll admit, that caught me by surprise, and personally I'm still not buying it. Who'd a thunk that noise, hiss, fragile media, and limited dynamic range were so desireable? What's next? The euphonic sound of the dictaphone? Bring back 78 rpm records played through Victrolas? Replace your monitor speakers with megaphones? But it doesn't matter what i think - do what you think sounds good. That's all that matters.

Hey, my first multitrack was a Tascam 234, just like a lot of you. And I too am proud of some of the recordings I made with it. And if I already had an 8 track cassette player and no money for anything else, I'm sure I'd find a good way to put it to use it too. But if someone is buying a recording device for the first time - a cassette recorder would not be my first (or second or third) recommendation, and I can only say that the positive opinions expressed here about them are NOT the majority opinion of the recording community...

Peace, y'all.
 
littledog said:
Good catch on the Freudian slip typo, G.! :D
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Huh? I missed something... EDIT} Never mind...wrong G. :p

littledog said:
OK everyone, I'm convinced now that some of you think that recording to cassette has a "sound" that some might find desireable. I'll admit, that caught me by surprise, and personally I'm still not buying it. Who'd a thunk that noise, hiss, fragile media, and limited dynamic range were so desireable? What's next? The euphonic sound of the dictaphone? Bring back 78 rpm records played through Victrolas? Replace your monitor speakers with megaphones? But it doesn't matter what i think - do what you think sounds good. That's all that matters.
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Well, I personally wouldn't say that I find the sound of a Tascam Protastudio "desireable". But I will say that when used properly it doesn't sound any "worse" than recording to computer via an entry-level converter. The problems are different between the two, the sound is different, but the overall quality, IMHO, is not all that different.

Would I rather have 70dB of dynamic range and no converter brittleness or would I rather have 96dB of range and no tape hiss? Well, for one thing, rarely am I recording anything where I need more than 70dB of range. Aniother thing is that tape hiss can be treated, bad converter sound cannot. So, yeah, as far as sound, yeah, I'll be real tempted to take the tape over the converter.

Digital is easier and more convenient, of course. When it comes to mixing and editing, doing all that ITB can't be beat. But if you're going to tell me that a $150 mAudio converter going into Adobe Audition or GT3 sounds "better" than a 424 with good heads and quality tape, I'd have to respectfully say that IMHO is truely debatable either way. Different? Yes. Better? Subjective.

G.
 
littledog said:
I can only say that the positive opinions expressed here about them are NOT the majority opinion of the recording community...
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so what? the majority of the recording community have their heads up their asses.

i also have no problem listening to robert johnson or fritz kreisler on 78s.

Mike
 
I'm still amazed at the clarity of old Beatle records and most of them were recorded and mixed on 3 track machines, granted, they had some fantastic engineers but the recording media wasn't that complex.
 
Littledog is right, I was (still am) an engineer who was around when cassettes came out. We all hated them and still do. (good) Vinyl is much superior as is reel to reel. The cassette four trackers are fun to play around with and a good way to learn basic recording skills. You can get them to sound ok (sort of ok) if you really know what you are doing. Cassettes do have a sound though and I keep a player and four tracker around the studio when I want to use them as an effect.
 
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