Recording from Logic onto AKAI GX 625

A

Arion Xenos

New member
Hi all, hope you're well.

I have an AKAI GX 625 Reel machine in the house and was wondering: if I run a mixed song recorded digitally through Logic into the recording reels, would it affect the sound of the song? I'd like to have some sort of effect from the reel machine but can only initially record everything digitally.
Ideally, I'd record everything through my interface, into Logic on my laptop, then once it's all mixed I'd run the laptop into the AKAI's input, record the input, rewind then record that back into Logic. Would this make it sound different or would it be the exact same? I'm not totally sure, as the source is digital but of course being run through the analog reels, I don't quite know how it works, but was hoping someone could shed some light on this?

Thanks!
 
The Akai 625 isn't a professional machine and is likely intended to run tape which hasn't been in production for decades. If you want to run it properly on modern high-output tape you'd probably need to recalibrate it and there's no guarantee that it can actually bias up to studio levels anyway.

On my Akai 210d I haven't calibrated it, and I feed it SM468 (which I have loads of 5" reels of). The stock bias is not enough for 468 so the treble becomes more pronounced and there's a fair bit of noise, partly because the bias is wrong but also because it's running at half the speed and half the tape width of a professional machine.

I did mix to the Akai once to try and get a 1960s feel and that did work to some degree, in that it sounded a bit like something Dad might have taped off the radio in the sixties. If that's what you're looking for, go for it!
Just don't expect that it will magically make your song sound like something from a top 1975 studio, because at the end of the day this is a home tape deck - albeit a very nice one - and not a studio-grade machine.

AFAIK the classic tape saturation effect is usually obtained by slamming the tape with higher levels than it was designed for, which causes it to saturate and give you a small amount of compression. For that you need a machine capable of high output levels without the circuits overloading, and a tape which is of a lower output type, e.g. Quantegy 406. Most of the tape available today is high-output, and this deck wasn't designed for that.

Anyway, that's what I'd expect to happen with the machine running stock on currently-available tape: a reduction in sound quality and a pronounced boost in the treble.
The best way to find out is to try it and see: 1. what happens and 2. whether you like it.

As for bouncing a recording through the deck, there are two ways. The first, as you say, is to play back the stereo mix into the deck while it's recording, rewind and play it back.
However, this deck is a 3-head machine so you could also do it by recording back into the DAW from the tape deck's output while the machine is recording, as if you were doing an overdub in the DAW. That saves you from having to rewind. The record and playback head are about an inch apart which means that your re-recorded one would be delayed about 1/7th second (or 1/3 depending on the speed) so it can't be done live unless you're using it as a tape echo, but it would be trivial to slip the rerecorded one back a little in the DAW afterwards.

Hope that helps!
 
I use to have one of those...many years ago.
For a consumer home stereo machine....it was a sweet sounding deck, and the glass and crystal ferrite heads were ahead of their time. I always wondered why those types of heads didn't find their way on other, pro machines....as they practically never wore out.
 
The Tascam ATR60-4HS, the 1/2" 4-track, was fitted with larger coil parabolic glass ferrite heads...a thing of beauty.
 
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