question about track bouncing on tape

[Scott Baxendale]

Just to give you a bit of "real world" reference, lets assume that you have a 6 minute song.

I recorded two hand claps on my cassette deck, one at the beginning, one at the end. I dumped that to DAW, then I copied that from the DAW to the cassette and then I dumped it back into my DAW, lined up the first clap and then looked at the differential between tracks at the end.

Here are snaps of the initial alignment, and the final alignment.

View attachment 143273 View attachment 143277

The differential is approximately 0.7 seconds over a 6 minute recording. This is what it sounded like at the end.

View attachment 143275

When you're playing a song, .7 seconds over 6 minutes is approximately 0.2% error. That's not going to affect someone's perception of the song. However, 0.7 seconds between your kick drum and the guitarist hitting a chord is going to be VERY noticeable.

How much variation you will get from your deck can only be determined by doing the test. If you plan on not submixing to the DAW and back, then just do a recording like this, and play it back to your DAW twice. A simple hand clap is sufficient. Just make sure you use enough time to really determine the amount of error.

Tape speed drift. I’ve had to go through tracks like this and re align things once they begin to drift. Just follow the wav until it begins to get out of synch then split the file and nudge back in synch.

I think this is another reason to just track with the 4trk and fly those tracks into the daw, and skip the bouncing back and forth every two tracks. Once all the tracks are lined up in the DAW then mix down to the cassette. Then every track is first generation prior to the mix.

 

[groucho]

You just need to monitor the bounced to DAW tracks while tracking on the 4trk thus eliminating having to bounce things back to the 4trk. You just need to capture the Slate hit on each track.

Ah, I get you. That makes sense. Thanks, Scott - you've been super helpful.

 

[TalismanRich]

Bouncing pre mixed tracks back to the 4trk is unnecessary and just makes the fidelity get worse. Once you have your “slate” captured then everything synchs of that. You just need to monitor the bounced to DAW tracks while tracking on the 4trk thus eliminating having to bounce things back to the 4trk. You just need to capture the Slate hit on each track.

The "4th track" wouldn't be transferred back to the DAW. It would be used as a reference musically, a scratch track if you will, not final mixing purposes. You could do bounces of 4 + 3 + 3. 10 tracks and all 1st generation from tape.

Tape speed drift. I’ve had to go through tracks like this and re align things once they begin to drift. Just follow the wav until it begins to get out of synch then split the file and nudge back in synch.

I think this is another reason to just track with the 4trk and fly those tracks into the daw, and skip the bouncing back and forth every two tracks. Once all the tracks are lined up in the DAW then mix down to the cassette. Then every track is first generation prior to the mix.

Bingo! Tape drift will be there with every transfer. Yeah it can be dealt with by stretching tracks or doing little slices where you can, but I think the OP was hoping to avoid all nudging/spliting, adjusting of individual tracks, thinking instead that everything would be in sync when it clearly won't be.

Cassette decks aren't chronographs, good to 1 second a year. 1 second in 10 minutes might be more the norm. A good reel deck with a synchronous motor might be better, but cassette portastudios were built to a price point and weren't designed with that type of stability in mind.

 

[Scott Baxendale]

The "4th track" wouldn't be transferred back to the DAW. It would be used as a reference musically, a scratch track if you will, not final mixing purposes. You could do bounces of 4 + 3 + 3. 10 tracks and all 1st generation from tape.

If you just monitor the playback through headphones you do not need to waste a track with a reference track and you can just record on all 4 each time, avoiding the bounces.

This is sort of how they did the Beatles 50th year remixes where they went back to the original source tapes and undid all the bounces and flew them into Protools and remixed them which opened the sound on tunes where they did a lot of bouncing between two 4 track machines. The big production tunes sound a lot better because of this unbouncing trick.

 

[Scott Baxendale]

Tape drift will be there with every transfer. Yeah it can be dealt with by stretching tracks or doing little slices where you can,

Protools has a tool that will lock it all back to a grid which should eliminate the tape drift issue.

 

[TalismanRich]

.. if you use Protools. ?

 

[Scott Baxendale]

.. if you use Protools. ?

I would imagine other DAWs have this feature too, I am just not familiar with them as much.

 

[Farview]

Wouldn’t it sound better if you just kept adding 4 tracks into the DAW and keep adding them there rather than bouncing back to the cassette deck before mixing? I’d record 4 tracks then bounce those to the DAW, then record 4 more to add to the DAW, etc. then once all your tracks are in the DAW you can mix those back to a stereo cassette tape mix. Then you eliminate the bouncing a premix back to the cassette just to add two more tracks. Now, all your cassette tracks are first generation in the DAW, so when mixing you are not dealing with second or third generation tape hiss build up and you still have full control over each track in the mix.

You wouldn't be able to play along to the tracks in the daw when recording to cassette. So you need to bounce a premix to play to.

But it would make more sense to just track to the daw and mix to cassette to get the sound of the cassette. Doing it the other way is time consuming and full of ways to get sync issues.

 

[Farview]

Thanks for the further responses, Scott and Farview! It's much appreciated.

Ok, if my tiny brain is grokking this correctly, what it seems like is that there are two ways to go as far as this "bouncing to the DAW" thing:

1) You record tracks on the 4 track, bounce them all to the DAW, mix them there and bounce the whole mix back to the 4 track to add more tracks to it, then bounce the whole thing back, mix, bounce back, repeat, etc.

The obvious advantage of this is that there will be no trouble getting things to line up. The obvious disadvantage is that each bounce is going to entail a pretty discernable quality hit - I've verified that in the tests I've done. One bounce is perhaps doable but more than one starts getting iffy.

Then there's the process I detail in the first post, which is basically:
2) Record stuff on 4 track, bounce tracks to DAW, *leave* tracks on DAW (but bounce mono mix as reference back to 4 track), record more tracks, bounce to DAW and leave the new tracks with the other ones, repeat, etc... and then eventually mix all tracks together on the DAW.

This seems a great way to get limitless tracks without sound quality loss but is imperfect in several ways, notably that there will be some degree of variation between the various tracks (not to mention none of this fulfills my ultimate goal of getting off the DAW entirely but that's a separate issue I'm still working on).

So, does that sound right re: the bouncing? Or am I getting something wrong there?

You understand perfectly.

Unfortunately, if you are trying to get off the DAW, you are going to need to use more than a cassette portastudio.

But once you get into bigger analog setups, the complexity goes up, which might have the same affect on you creativity that the DAW poses.

Without buying anything new, you can get the sound of cassette you are after by recording everything in the DAW and mixing down to the cassette.

 

[Farview]

Bouncing pre mixed tracks back to the 4trk is unnecessary and just makes the fidelity get worse. Once you have your “slate” captured then everything synchs of that. You just need to monitor the bounced to DAW tracks while tracking on the 4trk thus eliminating having to bounce things back to the 4trk. You just need to capture the Slate hit on each track.

How do you synch the DAW to the portastudio, so the slate is in the same place on both machines?

 

[groucho]

This has all been super helpful, y'all - thanks again. It was more of a puzzle I was trying to get my head around than a long-term solution, really. But it has also verified what I was coming to anyway: namely, that getting off the DAW entirely is going to require a machine with more tracks. I thought I might be able to make do with 4 for what I'm doing, but am finding that too difficult, so have recently located a refurbished Tascam 488mkii, which (hopefully!) should allow me to entirely disconnect from the DAW except for the final stereo mixdown.

The goal, for anyone interested, btw is not the *sound* of cassette necessarily, it's more about workflow and removing any interaction with the computer or screens or (especially) mousing from the tracking/mixing process. But there's definitely also some "old guy having nostalgic fun" going on with the use of tape - otherwise I'd probably just go back to a digital multitrack of some kind.

As several of y'all have observed, my "workaround" with bouncing tracks over to the DAW and back is so much more work than just recording into the DAW that it doesn't really make sense. I agree,.
.

 

[Farview]

I think the next obvious step to get more tracks without the computer would be a stand alone digital recorder if some sort.

They have a similar work flow to the cassette 4 track, but with 16 or 24 tracks. You can hook it up to a computer, if you want to, but you don't have to.

I've had some experience with a Roland VS2480, and it had enough tools to make a good product, without the infinite choices and the screens.

I don't know what is out there now, but I'm assuming there is a similar thing out there.

 

[TalismanRich]

What kind of money are they asking for the refurb 488MkII? Most of the ones I've seen are in the $500+ range.

If I was in your position, I would be grabbing something like a Tascam Model 16 or Model 12, if you don't want a DP24 or DP32. You have enough tracks to work with, but you don't have a DAW monitor to deal with. You've got your nice analog mixer with a volume fader and EQ knobs, reverb and compression. Those are the basics for any recording. Heck, you could even try to snag an old Tascam 2488, or Yamaha AW1600 for similar money to an old cassette deck;

I've had enough with 40 yr old tape decks. I don't want to deal with replacing belts and rollers. I don't want to fool with the quality issues. I have a friend with a Tascam 488 in his music room. When we jam, he uses the mixer and dumps the audio to his Zoom H6.

I understand the "old guy having nostalgic fun" idea, but in my experience, it often ends up as a short lived adventure, sometimes a bit of a money pit, and often just turns out to be a disappointment. It usually doesn't take me too long to realize that there's a reason that the old stuff has been replaced.

 

[groucho]

I understand the "old guy having nostalgic fun" idea, but in my experience, it often ends up as a short lived adventure,

Even short-lived adventures are worth having. Often it's the short-lived ones that are the most clarifying in fact. But it's impossible to know where the journey leads until you take the journey. You gotta follow what compells you... not necessarily what "makes sense" to others. This much I've learned.

When I impulsively bought a mint condition 414 a few months ago I wasn't sure where this was all gonna lead. As I was unwrapping a cassette for the first time in like 25 years, I found myself giggling uncontrollably. There continues to be something weirdly FUN about recording to tape - even cassette tape with all its drawbacks - that just makes me happy and stimulates my creative energies for whatever reason. I like even looking at the silly thing.

I have some larger metaphysical theories around this I'll spare everyone but the bottom line is: when it comes to music and recording, for me it's just about fun now. I'm no longer doing any work for hire, it ain't any longer about impressing anyone else or being the most efficient or even making the best-sounding recordings possible.... now it's just about getting my kicks.

 

[groucho]

What kind of money are they asking for the refurb 488MkII? Most of the ones I've seen are in the $500+ range.

Yeah, I got it for $500, which was actually kind of a steal, especially considering how thoroughly this guy refurbished the thing... I really got lucky. It feels brand new. Many of the ones online that *claim* to be refurbished are close to 1k, and almost all sellers I found were in Japan and frankly seemed a little sketchy judging by their feedback and their other listings.

 

[Scott Baxendale]

How do you synch the DAW to the portastudio, so the slate is in the same place on both machines?

The original 4tracks that are now on the DAW would have the slate I would have the speakers on so that this sound is recorded to the new track, then just prior to the track actually starting mute the speakers. This would require a little gap between the slate and when the song starts. There is probably an easier way, but I’ve done synching similar to this before.

 

[bouldersoundguy]

I missed something. Why are we doing all this? It's clearly not for simplicity or to avoid using a DAW. Is it for the sound of cassette? Then skip the 4-tracker and get a 3-head deck. Record to a DAW and pass tracks, subgroups or the whole mix through the deck set to monitor from the play head. The slight offset it creates will be consistent and easily nudged back into place.

 

[Old Music Guy]

(As an aside, I find it kinda funny that after decades of hassling with "sync" issues in digital multitrack land, everything seems to be so easy in that department so far with cassette tape.

Buy a Power Ball ticket

 

[rob aylestone]

Boulder - he said its not the sound, it is wanting to get away from computers. I sort of get that, but he wants to use cassette, the worst variety of non computer system. At one point he mentioned using four cassette machines, if a read it correctly? It does seem to me that he is right in that the effort required is crazily high this way. The old record three, bounce to one. Record two, bounce all three to one and repeat is now so ‘ hand tied behind the back’ that I would get fed up very quickly. Probably because I am not disciplined enough to make it work.

 

[bouldersoundguy]

Boulder - he said its not the sound, it is wanting to get away from computers.

Except he plans on bouncing to a DAW.