Synching Analog to Digital

[PHILANDDON]

I wrote in a thread about my idea of sending my Fostex A2 tracks to my Roland VS-2000 digital recorder. Everything would be recording at the same time. (I.E. The A2 would be recording the original signal while the Roland would be recording the signal coming from the A2's RCA outs). I liked the idea for two reasons.

(1) I thought I could punch in more precisely using the Roland's punch in/out capabilities
(2) I thought I could magically turn my two track analog recorder into a twenty track recorder.

The only downside I saw was that mixing and EQ would be digital instead of analog. Someone wrote back that it's not going to work because of synch problems. The Roland would be merely recording the non-tape sound coming out of the A2. To substitute the actual tape sound would create synch problems. I understand all this. But surely there's a way around the problem.
Anyone have any ideas.

Someone once mentioned a type of analog recorder to me where you could send out the actual tape recorded signal at the exact same time the tape recording is being made. Can anyone name the model(s)? I hope this thread is understandable to everyone. THANKS.

 

[FALKEN]

I wrote in a thread about my idea of sending my Fostex A2 tracks to my Roland VS-2000 digital recorder. Everything would be recording at the same time. (I.E. The A2 would be recording the original signal while the Roland would be recording the signal coming from the A2's RCA outs). I liked the idea for two reasons.

(1) I thought I could punch in more precisely using the Roland's punch in/out capabilities
(2) I thought I could magically turn my two track analog recorder into a twenty track recorder.

The only downside I saw was that mixing and EQ would be digital instead of analog. Someone wrote back that it's not going to work because of synch problems. The Roland would be merely recording the non-tape sound coming out of the A2. To substitute the actual tape sound would create synch problems. I understand all this. But surely there's a way around the problem.
Anyone have any ideas.

Someone once mentioned a type of analog recorder to me where you could send out the actual tape recorded signal at the exact same time the tape recording is being made. Can anyone name the model(s)? I hope this thread is understandable to everyone. THANKS.

Philandon,

this is impossible, as the tape must pass from the record head to the playback head; there will always be a lag. however, it might be possible to compsensate for this lag on your DAW by dragging the .wav file back into place. Some DAW's have built-in options for compensating for lag so if you can figure out how to time the lag on your machine you can just program the software to put it into place for you.

you might be better off just mixing to the A2.

 

[PHILANDDON]

Thanks a lot for the reply.

 

[themaddog]

Although you can "click and drag" the digital .wav file to compensate for the lag, it will still slip out of sync. The reason for this is that analog equipment does not play back at precisely the same speed as every single time. So, although two tracks, one digital and one analog, started at the same time will be in sync at first, within a minute or two they will start to fall out of sync.

-MD