Old school recordist here - as in I was making music before that Tascam 414 was new - it's great to see people using them again and discovering ways of integrating them in a digital workflow. One issue you will always have is sync. One way to deal with that is to print a tone on all the tracks at the start. You may have seen this on old films when there are numbers that count down and there is a beep for every count. It's the same concept. You can use a synth tone or anything that creates an impulse, maybe a bell or click sound from your drum machine. Print that on every track simultaneously. When you fly it into your DAW you will have universal reference points to line everything up. Also just be careful when using the tape speed to change your tempo as you did. Slower tape speed will affect your frequency response (less highs). It's not a problem, it's just something to know. Usually running tape at a higher speed results in higher fidelity. The opposite is also true. You have so much to discover! Have fun!
Thanks for the info! I’ll definitely be experimenting with the syncing method and seeing how it goes. The slowing down of the tape was more a happy accident (as I wanted to play with that anyway), but I’ll keep that in mind moving forward too!
Tascam makes an accessory for this purpose. The MTS-30. It’s in the manual. It’s pretty cool, it converts midi clock to a tone. You record the tone to track 4, then it converts it back to midi clock on playback. You can route your sequenced “stuff” over your recorded tracks 1-3 and they stay locked together.
@@jeffreyIsham Absolutely! I didn't want to complicate matters with tape sync to MIDI Time Code since it uses up a tape track, requires an additional device, and wouldn't allow experimentation with tape speed. If the workflow is to fly the tracks into the DAW, printing a click or something similar at the head of the tracks is easy and will get the job done.
@@ezeriamoore it does allow for experimentation with tape speed! It’s great! Since it’s a tone on the tape, when you vary the playback speed it just gets converted back to a slower clock speed! Everything still stays locked up!
@@jeffreyIsham That's true regarding tempo. You have another step to transpose the pitch for MIDI instruments to match the audio pitch when the tape speed changes. From the video it seems the priority is to print audio on tape to get the analog color. Tape to MTC sync is great for when most of the audio is sequenced so you don't have to print that bit to tape and you can save your tape tracks for vocal and acoustic instruments. The tradeoff is you lose a tape track to sync tone. Zak will have to work out if he wants to preserve all his tape tracks to get the sound he wants, then move them to the DAW or if he wants to keep his electronic instruments off of the tape and in the DAW during tracking and synchronized via MTC.
I LOVE the sound that these old 4 tracks give to electronic drums. There's something so distinctive about it. I have an old demo that I did 20 years ago. Different genre, different samples, same exact snare sound. 😆
I love this, Zak!! My name's Zack too, btw--old school sound guy and musician here. Made my first recordings on my parents' Wollensak in the 60s (my mom was a pop songwriter in NYC), played in a band, ended up in LA and worked on many well known films as a dialogue editor, used Pro Tools every day for decades, but still love analog tape! Had the Tascam Porta One in '85. I recorded some of the bar backgrounds in the film "Barfly" (1987) on that thing with a Schoeps stereo mic and some of that stuff is in the film lol.. Used to use it as my audio mixer when I was a dialogue editor. Ahh, good times, man. Anyway, I have a bunch of tunes I have to record and I'm in the process of putting together a similar analog-digital hybrid workflow, so this is great to see. I appreciated the comments about sync from both the sound pros below. What I was thinking of doing (and you may want to consider this) is tracking in analog first (whether 4 or 8, cassette or r2r), filling up your first 4 tracks in your recorder, then transferring that to the DAW. Then in the DAW, send a mono mix of those first four right back out onto track 1 of your Tascam, while also erasing the other three original tracks. That's your mono guide track to then fill up three more tracks, which you'll record over the previous 2, 3 and 4, now blank again. Then transfer the new four to the DAW as four more tracks. In the DAW, you use the mono mix on track 1 (probably now your track 5 in the DAW) to sync to your first four in the DAW. It should "phase" at the head end and then you know the mono mix is in sync with its original elements. Then you can mute or kill that mono mix track as it's no longer needed. Rinse and repeat til you're good. It's similar to the idea of the tone proposed below---which is technically more accurate, but this way you don't need to do the tones. I think there will be slight variance the longer the track, because the Tascam would have to be running at exactly the same speed as it was on the last transfer, but I'm pretty sure if you don't change the tape speed, it'll be close enough to require only minor sliding in Logic. Anyway, my two cents. Enjoy...
Hey there, fellow Zak! Thanks for stopping by, it's great to hear about your past, sounds like a great time for sure man. That's a great idea for syncing too, there have been a bunch of options mentioned here in the comments, so I'm going to go through and test them out to see which ones work best (might be another video idea!). Good luck with your analogue/digital hybrid journey! It's a whole lot of fun going down the rabbit hole isn't it...
You can also use the preamps as a "fuzz pedal" for the guitar or any analog synth, just plug it in directly and crank the trim. The guitar input on the back is the best for this.
1986: Come into the studio and turn your cassette demos into pro-level recordings. 2024: Buy a cassette machine and turn your pro-level recordings into demos. 😂
It's a sound. Subverting the idea that more-expensive-is-better. It reminds me just a bit of the way now classic electric guitar sounds came about through the technical limitations of the gear.
@@SugarySerial True. IK Multimedia even has a couple of name-brand cassette 4-tracks as plugins, and a number of great reel-to-reel machines, such as Teac. Universal Audio has an excellent pro tape machine, the Studer A800, which goes on sale occasionally and which I will definitely buy (once I have some money).
Great video. There are two ways to sync the tape to the DAW. One simple way is to record a short tone on all tracks 5 seconds before any recording starts. This will help you align the recorded clips in your DAW. Method two, a better way, is to use MIDI sync on track 4, by first recording and later using it to sync. This will take care of some of the tape speed changes. But the problem is to find a MIDI to tape sync FSK module these days (TASCAM MTS-30 etc). They are very hard to find and expensive. Otherwise, a great fun and joyful way to create music.
Thanks for watching and for the info! Method 1 would definitely help to line up the beginning of the tracks, but what I am concerned about would be fluctuation over time, aka later in the tracks. I’ll try this out though and see how it works out!
another cool way is to use track four and send your click track to it, add more subdivisions to your click for higher quantizing resolution. then when you import the 4 tracks, keep the four from the tape quantize locked. next you quantize the imported click track to the grid on your computer. no synchronizer needed this way!
Very cool. Recording to tape and then transferring the recorded analog audio tracks into a DAW is a trick that has been used on a number of great sounding albums. Robert Plant's 2010 album Band of Joy was apparently done that way. I have an old Fostex 280 4 track cassette recorder I dragged out of retirement a few years back while searching through some old recordings. I was shocked at the huge, smooth sound of the bass tracks. Analog definitely wins for some things. I'm going to try integrating the 280.
Thank you! Analogue definitely does win in a lot of settings, the bass especially is something that stood out to me too. These old recorders are also good just to be used as preamps to run signal through too, good luck integrating the 280!
Yo I won one of these in a battle of the bands in like the early 2000s??? My band at the time were already early adopters of pro tools and recording to that but as a side project we had the 414 set up on the table with some random guitar pedals at all our after show parties and invited anyone to just record stuff together. It was super fun! Made some great tracks.
thanks for all the effort. On the hunt for a tapedeck. Just one thing it would be great to hear the example uploaded to bandcamp or similar. After watching the while thing I just was thinking crap I wanna hear the finished track or at least section you created for a good example of what you spent so much time creating.
I have a video coming out soon including a full version of a song recording using this! This video was more to explore the potential but I'm excited to record more full tracks with it now
Hi bro! We'll make a sound engineer out of you yet! One thing I miss about mixing live bands on an analogue desk is slightly over-modulating things like a kick drum etc, it can 'tighten up' skins without having to resort to outboard processing but the one thing that can be a headache when working analogue to digital and vice versa is the latency inherent in the A to D or D to A convertors. There is no way around it and latency is not our friend. As always, you never cease to impress me with your talent and enthusiasm!
Interesting! I didn't actually think about this as much in a live setting, it's another good example of how working within limitations can actually help you out in a lot of cases. Latency is the devil. Thanks for the support Geoff!!
I did a whole dungeon synth EP using my DAW as the source for my digital instruments onto a 414, they sound so much better with that saturation. Using it as a way to sum a digital mix is a great idea I must try that myself sometime.
I also run tracks, mixes, etc. out to my tascam. Not for every track... but pretty often. Dig what it adds... especially if you record into the red on the tascam to get the tape crunch.
If you're liking the sound from this, see if you can score a 424 Mk.III - it's a better-quality 4-track from around the same generation as the 488 Mk.II, and it's excellent.
First of all I really appreciate all the colored patch cables idea 😊 It looks like a ton of fun, but I’m a little concerned about the loss of the stereo image as long as you send a mono track to each channel. May I suggest to prepare some stereo stems for channel 1-2 and maybe a couple mono stems for channel 3-4 to sum on tape. If you organize them in an intelligent way you can get the advantage of the EQ divided per instrument band. FX sends work totally good on stereo channels ❤
Thanks for the comment! In this case it was more of a “demo” sort of setup to show the method, but it definitely make sense to keep that stereo image by prepping the tracks in the way you mentioned if doing this for a full song. One of the things that pushed me to bring the analogue tracks into the DAW in general was the lack of being able to do stereo doubles on things like guitar due to track limitations, they add so much more life to a mix!
@@zaktaylor have you ever considered a summing console? I’ll be more detailed: a passive DIY summing console that sums X tracks coming out from your PC into 4 tracks, send them to the tape mixer using the preamps and tape color. So you have a X channel conversion flexibility but maintain the analog summing from whatever number to the 4 stereo tracks of the mixer
@@Mr.MoonBunny I haven't actually, but this is a great idea to preserve more of an analogue workflow. I think for my purposes the digital summing method is good enough (as long as that out of time issue was in fact coming from my interface bugging out!)
You essentially run a cable from the line out on your Tascam into an input on your digital interface, and then monitor that input with Sonarworks running on the master output of your DAW. Maybe I could make a short explaining it?
I had that same tape recorder and a used Alesis SR-16 in 8th grade when I first started making music. I felt so spoiled when I started working in a DAW 😅
Cool vid! I have a 424 mk iii. I feel like the motor is a bit...shall we say...inconsistent, so the timing is off and it makes it hard to bring the tracks back into the daw and line them up properly. Apparently, this is a known quantity in these old cassette machines (Tetrakan talks about it, you should check out his channel if you haven't already). So my plan is to use it more like for mastering. Anyhow, fun stuff! BTW, nice music. I do funk and R&b myself.
Inconsistent sounds about right... @bunjumun in the comments below mentioned recording your click onto track 4 and then quantise locking it so all the tracks recorded into your DAW in theory should be able to line up correctly. I'm yet to try it but sounds like the fix!
I just bought an 8track 488, its a bit weird, it will only do 4 tracks at once but like Zak says with a DAW you're not really that limited. You won't be able to plug in anything that needs balanced inputs of course but again just use an interface to get around that, you'll probably need phantom power anyway. But its Also great comments on this, so many helpful tips thanks to all.
It can seem near impossible to sync tracks from four track to DAW if you do them one by one. I have used cassette four tracks since 1987. I have owned four of them and still have three. Three ideas - - look into saving one of the four tracks for midi time code. Many four tracks include a special noise reduction mode that leaves it off of one track for midi or smpte. I learned this at a studio in 1990 but never really used it myself. - transfer the tracks in stereo pairs. So for instance, I have sent drums from cassette to DAW paired with each of the other three instruments. This way you can see the drums and line them up. Then of course mute or delete two of those drum tracks. This worked well when I only had a two input interface. - Now I have a four input interface and I have a Tascam similar to the one in this video. Mine is gray, from 1995 and I believe is the 424 Mk I. My unit has discrete outputs for each track, bypassing the 4-track mixer entirely. This is what I do with my old tapes now. Four track in Live and then I remix/mix in the DAW. Two other idea for people - - learn the lost art of (mono) track bouncing - so record onto Trk 1-3 and then bounce (submix) it to track 4. On all of my four track machines, I had the option to add another part while this was bouncing, so I would typically do a supporting percussion thing like tambourine or shaker. Then record new parts onto 1-2 and bounce to 3, again adding a new part as it bounces. I was able to get something like 12 tracks using that method and mixing is easy because most of it is already mixed. I also had a stereo workflow where I’d record in stereo (maybe a drum machine plus bass) and then bounce those to the other two tracks and add something, etc. The trick to this is being good an arranging (minimal) and mixing. I also had a workflow where I’d send to a stereo tape and then back. - somewhat related - noise reduction is your friend. Learn how to really use it. All too often I see people A/B without it and think it sounds better without. Learn how to record with it. Tascam uses dbx and Fostex used Dolby C. I liked dbx better myself but both introduce some nice compression, which I always include in my definition of “the tape sound” (some people say warm, but I am not so sure that is the right term). Look into how the Beatles did Sgt Pepper by bouncing between four tracks.
Thanks for the detailed info! I'll definitely be trying these ideas out. Someone else also mentioned quantise locking one of the tracks in your DAW, so in theory every new track recorded in can then be "locked" in time with that original track. I am also yet to properly play around with dbx, but I'll be doing that soon and seeing what I think. Thanks for watching!
@@zaktaylor One idea that just occurred to me would be something similar to the second bullet point - hard stereo panned pairs with one common track (percussion but it could be click). So given that percussion is Trk1, I would copy over 1/2 into a DAW track, then 1/3 and then 1/4. In theory, those could be quantized and then muted or split accordingly. That Beatles method - I think I saw a comment from someone else on that.
I didn’t do this part live in the video, I did it just before filming and then explained it after. But yes, 4 tracks at once, and it looked similar to what the diagram shows, 4 cables coming out of the interface outputs (these had audio playing routed to them in Logic X) and then going into the inputs on the cassette recorder to record onto the tracks
I have one of these and “print to tape” from my iPad via a Moto M4. I do the bussing via AUM. I also got the MTS-30 to sync midi clock to track 4. It’s pretty great, because you can add sequenced elements via the sub in or the stereo inputs on the 414 after you’ve recorded on the other tape tracks.
hey friends! try this for keeping your unlimited tracks aligned on the daw side. use track four to record your daws click track, or a quantized midi instrument if you have trouble routing your click out. add more subdivisions to your click for higher quantizing resolution later on. then when you import the 4 tracks, keep the four from the tape grouped and quantize locked. next you quantize the imported click track to the grid on your computer.
@@zaktaylor i wish i remembered where exactly give credit. it's on youtube. should be pretty easy to find hahaha. spread the word is all we can do now!
Hey man, cool video, but i just wanted to point out that you are coming out of logic with your effects in mono, but connecting to a stereo return on the tascam, and because of this, your delay is out of phase left from right, hence why the delay literally dissappears if your playback is set to mono, i just thought you'd like to know
Thanks for the info! You're right, I should have brought the effects into both of the stereo inputs of the Tascam. I totally missed this trying to get through all the topics in the video. Will keep this in mind moving forward!
unlimited tracks with nice and analog tape sound....that's a joke! 1 or 2 inch multitrack tape has THAT sound we hear on countless records, stereo consumer cassette is something like...rape the sound, it wasn't intended for professional use so nobody used it in serious productions. It would be better and faster recording in logic using a very good audiocard like rme motu apollo metric halo and passing before into an high end avalon or millennia or chandler channel strip, there also are tons of tape emulation plug in from different companies giving that character without messing around with a poor consumer portastudio. however only to do an example...motu digital performer with a motu 828 and its internal plug ins like preamp1, masterworks eq, dynamics etc....sounds ten times better than every tascam or teac or yamaha poor cassette multitrack recorders, I don"t really get the point of wasting precious time with this stuff (considering high end technology today we have at disposal for a fraction of a cost, imagine in 1989 a motu system with 256 digital tracks and digital mixing it would be cost a milion of dollars, today we can get it for less than 4000 dollars including computer and audiocard....and we search for obsolete analogue consumer equipment?! )
@@NewHopeAudio yes the meaning is a better integration of an old analog technology with a modern computer based digital audio workstation, the older taking advantage by the newer and vice versa. my only question is...can pro tools really taking advantage of an old consumer analog portastudio? if this video was made with a 16 tracks 2" ampex mm1000 it would have pratical sense, for me recording passing thru an analog philips cassette doesn't make recordings sound better.
@@kyma1999xthe point is subjective warmth. Nowhere did he suggest this was the same effect as a 2” tape machine. It’s an effect. The prices of these units have only gone up in recent years. If it’s not your bag, that’s cool but it’s not wrong or less than useful than an ampex 2” machine.
The only precious time wasted was you spouting your opinion and tsunami of word salad on a video you completely missed the whole of. Internet virtuosos are the best when they come wading in telling the creator where they are going wrong.
Sounds like this person has never had fun. That's where you do something because it makes you feel good. it usually has nothing to do with logic...the reasoning part or the DAW. Let the man do what he wants to do.
