Recording in 90's

[leddy]

I have an old sequencer from that period. It was one of the most popular sequencers available at the time. It has a little flip-up panel with the operating instructions printed on the inside. Can you guess which one it is?

Alesis MMT8.


This thread is funny.


Funny and a little sad.

 

[moresound]

Sad but true.

 

[diggy_dude]

Alesis MMT8.

That's the one.

Funny and a little sad.

Why sad?

 

[moresound]

SAD? Cause he is living in the now. We have to do something about that.

 

[StevenJacksonMu]

In the late 80's to early 90's I had a FOSTEX 4 Track cassette Recorder.
This was excellent for arrangement, vocals, instruments etc.
That little 4 Track was wonderful I absolutely loved it, it's limitations meant you had to be very inventive, bouncing tracks etc.
In the band we managed to make some decent sounding recordings with it.
Sometimes the hardest part was finding the best sounding tapes for it, those old Chrome Dioxide top-of-the-line Sonys were the ones I liked best.

YouTube - Upon The Sea

 

[shoggoth80]

"CD players first hit the stores around 1982 and took only a couple of years to become "mainstream""
Really? Man, I didn't get a CD player until the early 1990s... dammit!

The ST, I am pretty sure was sold up into the early 90s... pretty sure the ST magazine ran until '92...for year of manufacture on my 1040 ST, not sure. Lol. I know there are games for the platform with copyright dates in the 1990s Pretty sure Dungeon Master was like 1992 or something.

"While those seem small and slow compared to today's machines, they were already being used as DAW and DVW platforms not so different in look and feel as today's systems"
-People have done video cassette editing on C64 computers too... I think there was a pretty good program for inserting subtitles.
You can also turn your C64 into a synth module, as well as the Atari 2600, and the Nintendo Gameboy, and there are Drum Synth carts for the Colecovision also. Yeah... I am a bit of a nerd.

 

[leddy]

Why sad?

Sad because technology has grown so fast that something that seems like last year to some folks seems like 100 years ago to the younger ones. It takes something away form all the energy and achievement that went into making great analog gear, especially when someone has no concept of it only a decade later. It's sadder still if you are among those that prefer the sound of tape over digital.

 

[Villain S Deeds]

Having a clear memory of the 1980s, the 90s still seem like yesterday to me, and not "the old days". I just got my first cassette 4-track in 2000 (waaaay back when I was 19), a TASCAM Porta 07. In 2004 I bought an ancient Portastudio 244, just becasue it's a lot fancier than the more portable and lightweight 07. Since then the tape drive in the 244 has broken down, and somebody modified the 07 (without my consent!) so that it records at around 1 7/8 ips instead of 3 3/4. This is both good and bad: good because I can play standard tapes in it, and bad for the loss in fidelity. Anyway, I still use the 07 sometimes, but my heart belongs to my DAW.

 

[buzzard bass]

I got my first CD player in 1988, and was the second person I knew that had one. Mainstream after 1982? Don't think so.

 

[Greg_L]

Yeah CD's didn't really take off till the late 80's, and even then, most people had to transfer them to casette to listen to them in the car.

 

[stevieb]

SAD? Cause he is living in the now. We have to do something about that.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

I got my first CD player in 1988, and was the second person I knew that had one. Mainstream after 1982? Don't think so.

As someone who sold them retail in the early 80s I can tell you that by 1986 CD players were third in popularity of sales only to VHS machines and loudspeakers in our store. Which meant they were more popular in sales than TVs, receivers, turntables, cassette decks, open reels or Betamax machines.

Now maybe we might have catered to a larger percentage of upgraders and early adopters than some, IDK, but even so that still sounds pretty "mainstream" to me.

G.

 

[John Willett]

I got my first CD player in 1988, and was the second person I knew that had one. Mainstream after 1982? Don't think so.

The CD was launched in 1983 - it was still in development in 1982.

It was the Sony PCM-F1 recording system that came out in 1982 - recorded 16-bit / 44.1kHz sampling onto a Betamax video tape (as you needed the fast helical tracking speed to get all the data on).

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

The CD was launched in 1983 - it was still in development in 1982.

OK, I was off by a year. Which is exactly what I said I might be in my OP:

Within a year or two here's some actual dates:

But CD started catching on pretty quickly, at least among my customers. It certainly did not take until the late 80s or early 90s for it to become a pretty common purchase for people either getting new audio systems or looking to upgrade their current ones. Like I say, by Christmas of '86 we we're selling more CD players than we were cassette decks.

Caveat: That's among audio components, i.e. individual units. Compact all-in-one stereos or the lesser-expensive packaged "racks" may often still not have included CD players yet (heck, there were still many compacts that included 8-tracks ). But for people coming in wanting to buy half-way decent quality components, CD players were the hot items for us to sell.

G.

 

[John Willett]

hello, how they were recording in the old days?
i mean there were no powerful PCs and software.

what gear they used?

The 90's are not "the old days" that's pretty modern.

I started recording in the 1970's with a Tandberg 3300X half-track open reel machine.

and a pair of Beyer M67N microphones.

For portable work, I later purchased a Nakamichi 550 cassette (the best cassette portable around).

Later I upgraded the open-reel to a Teac A7300-2T which could take 10.5" NAB reels

I wend digital in 1983 when I bought my Sony PCM-F1 system

This was CD quality recording at 16/44.1. Editing was a problem though until HHB bought out the CLUE editing system.

In the 1990's I went over to DAT and bought a pair of Fostex-10 machines

with the D-10 you could edit with two machines using the instant-start mode.

I also obtained a Tascam DA-45HR 24-bit DAT which ran the tape at double speed:

The first 24/96 capable portable was the Fostex FR-2 which I bought as soon as it came out (after writing a review for a broadcast magazine)

More recently I sold the Fostex FR-2 and upgraded to the Nagra VI which is my current recorder. The Nagra VI can record 8-tracks at 24/96 and has about the best mic. pres and ADC found in a portable machine.

I also now run AES42 digital mics.

I don't trust a computer for a live recording session and have always recorded on a dedicated recorder.

Editing

In the early days it was razor-blade editing with analogue tape. Then It was PCM-F1 edited with CLUE, though I was the first person (that I know of, it was written up on "Music Week" at the time) to produce an album by digital overdubbing in stereo using a PCM-F1 and two transports to build up the tracks - then DAT, butt-edited with two machines.

In the 1990's (getting modern now) I bought a PC and started editing with "Fast Eddie". I moved over to "Red Roaster" to burn CDs when that came out (Red Roaster was the first program that enabled you to put the track ID where you wanted within a track). That later morphed into Samplitude (which I then used) and now I edit on Samplitude's big brother - Sequoia.

With the exception of the FR-2, I still have all those old recorders.

So, it's been a long journey; but my aim all the time has been to record high quality and not to compromise. SO my money always went into buying the best mics possible rather than lots of "toys". Many of my mics now have a second-hand value far in excess of what I paid for them at the time, so it was a good investment.

 

[Massive Master]

I also obtained a Tascam DA-45HR 24-bit DAT

Oh -- YOU'RE the guy who bought the other one.

 

[diggy_dude]

I got my first CD player in 1988, and was the second person I knew that had one. Mainstream after 1982? Don't think so.

I got mine in 1987 or thereabouts. The little bastard cost $250, which was a lot of dough back then. I wouldn't say that was mainstream either. I get the impression Glen's shop was rather high-end and didn't cater to the average Joe.

 

[diggy_dude]

The Nagra VI can record 8-tracks at 24/96 and has about the best mic. pres and ADC found in a portable machine.

That's a beautiful machine.

I'm considering a used Portastudio 246. Is it worth having?

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

I get the impression Glen's shop was rather high-end and didn't cater to the average Joe.

Not at all. Granted it was no Montgomery Wards or other department store, it was a specialty A/V store, but we had Joe Punchclock and Sally Housecoat coming in there all the time also, right with the self-proclaimed audiophiles and audio hobbyists. But yeah, it was probably more the hobbyists and audiophiles that were buying them back then.

I was not a rich person or an expert back then - hell I was a punk 23-yr old sales geek in 1983 who was still working with his and a friend's bought-used Teac A-3340, Pioneer RT1020L, ARP 2600 and Sequential Circuits model 800 sequencer (the only piece bought new) in a home-built basement "studio" of dubious quality, but I also had bought my first CD player in 1985 - a Sony CDP-302 - and I was one of the last folks that worked there to buy one. It was a great machine, I wish it still worked. I honestly liked it better than any CD player I've had since.

IDK, maybe we were unusual. But alls I know is that by 1990, the idea of CD players was already pretty old news to us. I knew more than a few folks who were on their second CD player by then.

G.

 

[StevenJacksonMu]

I got my first CD player in 1988, and was the second person I knew that had one. Mainstream after 1982? Don't think so.

Agreed.

If I recall Cassette Decks were all the rage in 1982.
Peter Gabriel's album 'Security' was one of the first all-digital recordings and I bought that on a record back in 1982 also.
The Beatles catalogue was first released on CD in 1987.
So I would agree that CD players weren't really mainstream until the late 80's.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=td0JjeEZvfo