tascam 414 to cdr ?

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koolkkeith

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Hey how's it going everyone! Hope everyone is having a great day and making some music! I am fairly new at this so any help would be really appreciated...I have a tascam 414 portastudio and I am ready to mixdown some of my songs. I know the manual says to mixdown to a standard cassette player but is it also possible to mixdown directly to a cd burner (such as an Iomega zip cdr)? I ask because when I went out to buy a cassette deck I happen to notice that both the cassette decks and some of the cdrs had similar types of inputs on the back. I'm thinking if they both have the same inputs on the back I should be able to hook up the 414 right up to the cdr....is this right? Can i mixdown from the 414 right to the cdr? thanks!
 
Well, I don't know how helpful this is going to be... but I'd say check the manual on the cdr. Does it say that you can record from audio tape? If that doesn't give a definative answer then your best bet would be to give it a shot. Connect using the "line out" jacks and try it. It seems that the worst thing that could happen is you waste a blank cd if it doesn't...:D
 
Check out the digital stuff on Dragons website homerecording.com, especially "going digital". I'm pretty sure from the description there that you can go from a tape unit like the 414 into the CDR on a computer by plugging into the computer's soundcard. I think you can even use the 414 as a (cheap) mixer and record directly to the computer's CDR instead of tape, or mix down a tape to CD as well. I have a 414 and just got a computer with a CDR - just learned how to make copies of commercial CD's last night. Now I'm going to plug the 414 into the computer and try to mix dwon from my old tapes. I don't know if this will work with a stand-alone CDR but, what the hey, give it a try.
 
Oh yeah, and while you're there, check out the mixing down to a vcr stuff. The poor man's DAT. I'm going to try that too.
 
What I used to do before going digital was similar to what Raj explained. I mixed down directly from my 414 into my(stereo)line in on my sound card. I have Wavlab lite that came with Cubasis VST(what a nightmare!) that converted my recordings into stereo wav files. It also gave me limited editing capabilities before burning to CD. My Cpu has a burner. The end result was a suprisingly good quality CD. The most difficult aspect was setting the levels evenly from song/track to track.
I now use my 414 as a poor man's submixer so I run, Axe-Pod2.0-Tascam414-soundcard-cakewalk-recycle bin:D
 
Hey, I should have mentioned in my previous post: if you're going from the 414 into a cpu soundcard to burn a cd, you're actually going to record what you are sending from the 414 to the cpu's hard drive, then burn a cd from that. I'd guess that if you're going from the 414 to a stand-alone cd burner, you'd have to record to tape first, so you can get all your tracks set to mix down the way you want it before you send it to the cd burner to record.

Snowdog: sounds like you're where I hope to be soon. Do you like Cakewalk? What version do you use? The way I understand it, if I got multitrack software like Cakewalk, I'd go Axe (or mic) to Pod or compressor or any other similar device if used, then 414 as a submixer, with the line outs to the cpu soundcard. Then I use Cakewalk (or other) to record this to the hard drive, and Cakewalk to mess around with it (effects, levels, pan, mix etc.) Then I'd go from the final "Cakewalk" version on HD to a fianl mixdown to CDR. Is that about the size of it? Thx.
 
Oh, yeah... Snowdog, did you get a particular souncard or are you using the one that came with your cpu? Mine came with Soundblaster Live (the cheapest one I think) but I'm thinking about getting one with more inputs, outputs, etc.
 
Raj,
I'm using a SB live also. Since I am a Lone Wolf operation the single input does not impede me recordings at all. If that is your case I might consider investing in more RAM at this time rather than a new soundcard.

The only step you left out in your process was to convert to a wav. file before burning to CD. Some of the more experianced members here may tell you how to skip that step but I believe it is crucial as that is how I mix down to 2 channels/stereo.

I am using Cakewalk's Guitar tracks2 simply because it looks and operates very similar to my Tascam. It limits me to 8 first generation tracks but that suites me fine for the time being, and was only $49.00. I dumped Cubasis VST in favor of CW GT2.


I am presently using my 414 as a sub mainly so I can run stereo out of my Pod but am looking for a better small submixer. Not the most advanced technological system but it serves me well at the moment:D
 
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