Recording Onto My TASCAM 414mkII from an SP-404SX (Or ANY Stereo Source) 

Nice! I’m happy I could provide some sort of help with your new vintage equipment 😎 Congrats on becoming the owner of one of these super cool little machines! They’re a lot of fun and provide a unique sound, not to mention (for me personally anyways) they give me inspiration and strengthen my desire to make music. Simply just seeing it there on the desk makes me want to use it! 😂

Steve Baker What’s up Steve! Thanks for watching brother. No such thing as a stupid question! So in reply to your question, if you are recording in stereo from a stereo source then yes, it will require the use of 2 tracks (one for left and one for right ...remember to hard pan them accordingly). In order to accomplish what you’re talking about there are a couple of different options that come to mind. The first 2 would require at least one available track. If you already recorded onto all 4 tracks AND you want to add an additional stereo sound then what I would do if I were you is to simply run your Tascam into some other recording device (computer, stereo tape deck, ADAT, VCR, etc.) and do a stereo bounce down. Then record that stereo mix back into the Tascam onto 2 tracks of a fresh cassette tape. That would then leave you with 2 open tracks. If you have 1 open track on the Tascam though, you could bounce the other 3 down to that 1 and thus free up 3 more tracks. Last thing I can think of is also if you have 1 track open, I believe you can send whatever you have input into 5/6 to just one track as a mono recording. You would just keep the track you’re recording onto panned in the center. This I’m not 100% certain about, but I am pretty damn sure it’s correct. I’d say like 90% certain this is the case lol. Personally, my first choice would be to bounce all tracks down to 1 track if you have the free track. If not, stereo mixdown! 🤘🙂 Hope that helps!

@@LordShongo Thanks so much for this dude!! You effectively confirmed what I thought was true. I've been bouncing stuff out to Logic or Ableton and then working on additional layers in the box, but I like the work flow of committing to ideas and parts quickly so will have a try bouncing back to two tracks on the four track and layering stuff on there. Nice one.

Lord Shongo do you need all these extra stuff to connect it to the computer

Joy Division you just need some kind of interface to act as a sound card that you can plug your audio cables into, that way you can get sound into your computer.

Hey there! What I would probably do is, after getting the drums fully mixed how I l want them, I would run out of the Focusrite - Ch. 3 as Left & Ch. 4 as Right (I’m completely guessing here as it might be Ch.1 & Ch. 2 -or- Ch. 5 & Ch. 6 on your interface. There’s no way for me to know without actually seeing what you have). You could also potentially use your interface’s headphone jack as a stereo output if you don’t have any extra outputs available on your interface. Like if you only have two outputs and they’re already being used by your monitors then you could go with the headphone jack. It’s so hard without knowing which focusrite and which DAW. Also, which part of the process are you really stuck on? Is it the routing within the daw? Or like which cables to use and where to plug into the Tascam and the interface? Sorry for all the questions but it’s a tough one to answer because it has many moving parts to it and several ways to accomplish it.

@@LordShongo thanks for your reply. I was wondering about plugin the cables, but I think I have an extra pair of free outputs on my focusrite 4i4 so I should go from the output of Focusrite -> channel 5-6 of the tascam -> record on ch 1 & 2 of the tascam ( Pan hard Left & right) Seems correct ? As soon as I get back home I ll try and let you know. For the DAW I use studio one 5 but I don’t think it matters here.

@@ordreancien yes that sounds right. Ch. 5 and Ch. 7 inputs on the Tascam will send audio to the left bus of any fader (you can use either 1 or 3. It’s up to you) while Ch. 6 and Ch.8 inputs send audio to the right (you can use either track 2 or track 4). Just remember to use the switch on whichever track you decide and switch to left or right. So if you use a Y cable and run out of two separate inputs into 1 stereo input to ch. 5/6 stereo in, you would switch ch.1 track to “left” and ch. 2 to “right”. Hope that makes sense.

I do! I imagine you have an audio interface right? As long as you have an interface, you would go out of the interface output into the Tascam then out of the Tascam and back into the input of the interface. This means you’ll need to set up the outputs in the daw. Maybe bus all the tracks to one audio track and then set that audio track to output to specific outputs on your interface. Then you can bring those out into the Tascam. Same with the inputs. Bring them out of the Tascam and into the interface and set up a stereo audio track to use in the DAW. Bring the audio into that track from the specific inputs on the interface. I hope this makes sense and helps somewhat!

Blossom Shit I guess I took it too far in assuming you wanted to record back into your DAW from the Tascam. If you just wanna go out of the daw and into the Tascam, you would just send the audio out to a specific output on the interface and then attach the cables from that output into the Tascam.

@@LordShongo no worries that is exactly what i am trying to do! lol I appreciate you taking your time. Right now i have an Apollo x8 i am running my 7/8 output stereo channel to my Tascam into the 5-6 input but it does not seem to pick up any sound coming from the daw. I recorded some piano on an Audio track and have the Ext. Out. going to 7/8. I am not sure if the cable i am using is the issue or do i need to put them in through the line in inputs separately? sorry i just picked this thing up 😂

Blossom how about out of the Tascam and back into the apollo? How do you have that set up? And when you plug headphones into the headphone jack on the Tascam you can’t hear anything coming from the daw?

@@LordShongo Yeah so i can run my Sp404 through my tascam and into the apollo and record it all in that works fine. I just cant seem to get the routing out of the apollo to tape. What type of cable do you usually use for routing the output?

Hey there! To answer your question, whatever you have plugged into input 5/6 will be recorded on the left and right channels as will whatever you have plugged into 7/8. Essentially 5 and 7 source material will both record simultaneously on the left and 6 and 8 source material will record simultaneously on the right. This is because the 5/6 and 7/8 stereo inputs are routed directly to the left and right bus only. Unfortunately, they are not routed to any specific tracks. If you wish to record two stereo sources simultaneously and have them separated onto their respective tracks, you would need two of those ‘Y’ splitter cables that split the stereo end of the cable into two mono ends. Plug the stereo end into your source and plug one mono end into ‘mic/line in’ track 1 on the bottom of the Tascam and plug the other mono cable into the input for track 2 right next to it. Then pan track 1 hard left and track 2 hard right. Set the record function switch to ‘1’ on track 1 and set track 2 switch to ‘2’. Do the same thing with the other stereo source but plug it into tracks 3 (hard panned left) and 4 (hard right). Hope all of this makes sense!

@@LordShongo THX! I did that exactly! But in greedy mode, I wanted more independent ins! I got back my tascam 414 (not mk2, but except for the XLRs is very similar) since 2012! And still works perfect!! Thanks for your response and for the video!

The Roland SP-404. I forgot to turn the Vinyl Sim effect off. You don’t like it? It’s ASMR bro 😂