Question regarding multi-track recording?

Question

I am an active musician/songwriter/performer, and I love to use multi-track cassette recorders to create home demos for use with bands I work with, so they have a template to learn from.

I use a Tascam 4-track cassette recorder. It is my second in three years, and I have been very pleased with them so far. The only issue is white noise, but I am learning to clean that up.

However, as I progress, 4 tracks are simply not enough. I record all of the parts myself, but wish to expand into harmonies, layered guitars, and many other sonic experiments that I cannot create with a 4-track cassette recorder.

The thing is, I prefer the "warm", analog sound of cassettes, and tape in general. I have two friends who own multi-track recorders, completely digital, that can burn the work to a CD drive inside and all that. But they have unbelievably complicated controls and run into the $1000's.

I was wondering if I could buy another 4-track Tascam and use that to expand the tracks I have available. For example - could I buy another 4-track recorder, use all 4 tracks on my old one, and then "mix down" the 4 tracks on the old recorder onto track 1 of the new recorder? And then repeat the process, in essence giving me 16 tracks? The Tascam cassette recorders all have 1/4th inch inputs (for an audio line/instrument) and 1/4th inch outputs (for headphones/studio monitors).

I heard that a similar concept (albeit with actual reel-to-reel) is how George Martin started giving the Beatles a multi-track recording ability in the studio. If this works, I'd be so grateful!

Please let me know if you think this would work!

Answer 1

Yes, it can work just fine. One of the other answerers said that you would lose "quality", but I think that comment needs to be explained a little better. You said that you were getting some white noise, but that you had figured out how to minimize it or clean it up to some extent. The drawback to daisy-chaining multitracking units is that you have to deal with that much more noise, and because you're skooshing (technical term? grin) that much more sonic information into the same amount of tape you don't get any more of a signal, so... basically what that means is that your signal to noise ratio suffers.

If you are painstaking about your noise at each step of the trip you shouldn't have an issue. However, you should really step up your efforts to avoid as much noise as possible. If this means upgrading your mics or getting better mic pre's (if you use them) then you might want to consider it.

The disadvantage of mixing like this is that you have very little ability to go back and change things on the fly - you would have to pull up that tape and remix or rerecord from there, then dump those four tracks back onto your master.

Personally, I prefer digital. I don't use a 4-track at all, anymore, I do all of my recording based off of my laptop. I don't necessarily have that "tape warmth", but I do have 24-bit recording precision, and I do have a few tape saturation plugins that *approximate* the warmth of a tape. Nothing really ever does, of course, but for me the ability to edit on the fly or rerecord any track (or overdub, or layer) at the drop of a hat is worth it to me. Often my time is limited (new daddy ha ha ha) so I try to maximize it when I can. I'm using a Lexicon Alpha USB interface with a partially lobotomized Windows Vista that actually runs pretty well after I turned off all the "features" (Superfetch, ReadyDisk, ReadyBoot, Auto Defrag, blah blah blah).

Anyways, go for it! Your intuition was correct on this one, you'll do just fine as long as you watch that noise level!

Saul

Answer 2

You could do that but you will lose signal quality.  Check out the

Boss BR-1600CD Multitrack Digital Recorder at musiciansfriends.com for $1,195.00.  I've used a tascam 4 track for years and recently upgraded to this machine and love it.  You can record up to 8 tracks at the same time and it's very easy to use and sounds great.  I did a lot of research and spent hours in various stores listening and working with different unit and found this one the easiest and best quality.  I literally give the unit to other performers and have them record there own tracks!  It has an auto-punch in/out feature that lets a person record on there own and not have to worry about punching in, let the machine take care of it.  It's loaded with features and doesn't cost an arm and a leg!

Answer 3

Yeah you could do that.