Zoom R24 Multitrack Playback and Recording problem

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okulo

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This is my first post. I used to belong to the Zoom forum but they moved everything to Facebook and having closed my account there, I refuse to sign up - so I have only just found this forum.

I've had my Zoom R24 for about nine years and I am pretty sure that I have been successfully done what I want to do many times before so I think I must have either inadvertently changed something or my memory is failing.

I have a multitrack recording and I want to practice playing a different take of one of the tracks I have already recorded. I have all the other tracks set to green (i.e. play) and the track I want to practice set to red and I hit play.

I expect that all the tracks which are green play and the track which is red will be monitoring the input - which is what would happen on a new track. However, instead of hearing what I am playing on the red track, I am hearing the previously recorded take.

I feel certain (but am prepared to acknowledge that I am wrong) that I have done this many times before but maybe the tracks have been empty and I am misremembering.

Could anybody confirm this behaviour or suggest what I might be doing wrong, please?
 
Have you perhaps set the input to a different bank? Remember that you have 3 banks of 8, so if you really have the track set to .. say track 9 or 17 instead of 1, then you will hear anything on track 1. Make sure you run the fader down and up to make sure that it isn't set on the last level setting. The R24 "remembers" the last level of any track.

You should be able to monitor a track as long as the red LED is set and you have the trim pot and gain levels set. I just tried it with plugging my guitar into track one, setting to HiZ, arming the track and raising the fader.
 
Thanks for the reply.

No, all the tracks are on bank 1, i.e. 1-8 but I did look at the other banks to try to understand what is going on.

To be clear, this is only a problem when something has already been recorded on a track and I want to play the project and practice a new take on the track which already has a take recorded on it - if I create a new project and set the track to red, it behaves as you describe.

Project is as follows:

1-2 stereo guitar track (one take recorded)
3-4 stereo guitar track (one take recorded)
5 mono guitar track (one take recorded)
7-8 stereo drum pattern track

I want to play the project but instead of hearing all tracks, I want to hear only 3-4, 5 and 7-8 which I set to green and I want to practice on tracks 1-2 which I set to red. When I hit play, all tracks play, including tracks 1-2 and I cannot hear what I am currently playing.

If the project is empty, i.e. no takes recorded and I have the track(s) LED set to red, I can hear what I am playing. I have read through the manual and I don't see anything which offers any information what should be expected when recording/practicing a second take the way I am trying to do.
 
I get your issue now.... Arming the record track but hitting play does not mute the track in question. This is by design, as you can do punch in/outs and for this you have to set the punch in spots to arm the track, listen to the track up to the rerecording area. If you just want to rehearse, then you can set the punch in/out spots at the beginning and end of the song, and the track will be muted between those points. The easiest way to to just set a marker at the end, and then you can toggle between the in and out spots. As long as you don't hit the record button, you won't affect the existing track.

This is by design, as you want to be able to hear the track playing up until the time you punch in. Then the track is muted until the punch out, at which point the old audio comes back.

It's described on page 29 of the manual.
 
BTW, once you decide on how you want to play the track, you can have multiple takes on the same track, and then choose between the best one. That way you don't lose any potential good work already recorded.
 
Thanks for the reply. I am a bit relieved that I hadn't messed something up along the way, I have had the R24 in bits a few times (to clean out the battery bay when batteries leaked, replace the battery contacts and clean the LCD screen) and I had crossed my mind that I might have inadvertently caused some damage. There are a lot of screws, by the way - to get to the LCD screen means removing about 50!

Anyway, I must be mistaken about having done this before. I had another thought that I might be able to go into the track settings and select New Take but I'll have to try that tomorrow.

I have by habit always had the Project Record settings to Always New so all the takes have been kept. It's definitely the best way if you have enough SD card space but can be confusing when trying to import into a DAW.

Thanks again.
 
I find that the best thing to do with SD cards is to buy at least a half dozen 16 or 32GB cards at a time and use them just like someone would use a reel of 2" tape. You can often snag them in groups of 10 for about $6 a pop. That's as cheap as I paid for 1/4" Maxell reels back in the 80s!

Once you finish a group of songs, put it in an envelope with the name of the tracks and file it. I always dump the audio to my computer so it's also on a backup hard drive. Then you never have to worry about losing a take or worse... losing the original song (yeah, I've done that!).

Good Luck!
 
I've always copied everything (literally) as projects to a hard drive which gets automatically duplicated once a week. Anything worth keeping usually finds its way into Logic and saved and backed up twice - once on the weekly duplication and once via Time Machine. I haven't seen any bargains like that in the UK - I just had a quick look on eBay - but if I come across any cheap ones, I'll probably get some just because they are going out of fashion.
 
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