Creative ways to use a 4 Track recorder with a DAW?

Get that song on tape! Errr... disk?
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Creative ways to use a 4 Track recorder with a DAW?

Post by Soggasaurus » Tue Sep 29, 2015 11:39 am

I picked up a Tascam 414 Mark II at a yard sale for a stupid cheap price this past weekend and I'm super psyched about it. I've never used a tape recorder and I know that I could easily use it for Sebadoh/GBV/Pavement kind of messy lo-fi stuff, but I generally use my computer for recording because I like having a lot of controls to mess around with. I'm curious if any anyone has found interesting ways to incorporate a tape recorder into a digital recording setup. One thing I want to try is running vocals through it and then into my computer for a rough texture, but that's all I've been able to come up with so far. Anything else I should give a shot?

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Re: Creative ways to use a 4 Track recorder with a DAW?

Post by Telliot » Tue Sep 29, 2015 11:47 am

One of the biggest drawbacks to DAWs is the lack of pitch control, which tape allows for, either speeding up or slowing down the playback for effect or recording at a faster or slower speed and returning back to pitch at playback.
The cool thing about fretless is you can hit a note...and then renegotiate.

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Re: Creative ways to use a 4 Track recorder with a DAW?

Post by fuzzking » Tue Sep 29, 2015 12:27 pm

Yeah... pitching, tape saturation, reverse fun, overdriving the inputs, recording with Dbx and playing back without Dbx for adding sparkle ... running a drum loop through the 4 track and re-recording into the DAW... 'mastering' to tape... stuff like that. :)
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Re: Creative ways to use a 4 Track recorder with a DAW?

Post by audiopablo » Tue Sep 29, 2015 3:48 pm

If that thing has direct outs (or channel inserts), try tracking to tape and transferring to your DAW to get that tape saturation. Or track to your DAW, assemble 4 stems (like vocals, guitars, drums, bass) and pipe those into 1 thu 4 of your 4 track, just using the little mixer to pan and level, then pipe the l/R back to your DAW for recording. Hopefully you'll pick up a little analog cross talk and you'll have used your 4 track as a very cheap summing mixer.

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Re: Creative ways to use a 4 Track recorder with a DAW?

Post by Telliot » Tue Sep 29, 2015 5:20 pm

I've actually been wanting to buy an old 4-track for some time, just to do this sort of stuff. 8)
The cool thing about fretless is you can hit a note...and then renegotiate.

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Re: Creative ways to use a 4 Track recorder with a DAW?

Post by fuzzking » Tue Sep 29, 2015 6:32 pm

You know, I actually bought a 4in, 4out interface and a Tascam 234(!) solely for that purpose a few years ago... never put them to use... sigh. :ph34r:
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Re: Creative ways to use a 4 Track recorder with a DAW?

Post by Telliot » Tue Sep 29, 2015 7:08 pm

GETONIT!!!!! :o
The cool thing about fretless is you can hit a note...and then renegotiate.

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Re: Creative ways to use a 4 Track recorder with a DAW?

Post by fuzzking » Wed Sep 30, 2015 6:08 am

Telliot wrote:GETONIT!!!!!
Might do so in the near future... ;D

øøøøøøø wrote: (...) If your songs are good enough, if your performances are real enough, then whatever limitations YOU are inherently working with will become similarly beguiling and charming.
I can totally see your point... but y'know, some of us homerecording guys are not very good at (just an example) recording vocals at 48/24 and then adjusting compressor parameters - this is where a 4-track comes in super handy. Everything a bit in the upper ranges of the preamp's capabilities, a bit of smoothed out tape sound... enjoy. Friend of mine spent his last money to have his band recorded in a neato studio in the UK, but did his guitar and vocal overdubs with his old 4-track: Bounced the digital tracks to one mono on the 4track, did his dubs, re-corded that stuff back into the DAW, some editing for aligning the tracks, ta-dah. Sounds ace. He didn't have the money to go into yet another studio for overdubs, nor did he feel comfortable doing the more 'intimate' stuff in a studio. He knows his way around on his old Yamaha, but not so much in the DAW world. I think it's a matter of what you're used to, and what you feel most comfy at doing. In his case, it wouldn't have made any sense to try and record the stuff directly into the DAW. At best, he would have messed with plugin settings for days to get the sound he's used to, and not have concentrated on doing his dubs. Using anything for hipness reasons alone is another thing, of course. But the guy and I grew up with 4-tracks, and while I know my way around in Protools et al., I sometimes feel total relief when I sit down with my old friend to erase a tape and push a big red record button. In the olden days, we used 4 tracks out of neccessity, and these days, we sometimes resort to them because we don't feel like starting up a computer, being greeted by an update screen, looking for free space on an HD, make backups, the session being interrupted by a cryptic DAW error message and so forth. Best drum recording we ever did was in a terrible sounding room with two 4-tracks. Or have a fast pitch up during the first half second of a song because the tape takes a while to come up to speed (charming!). Sometimes it's just fun. ;)
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Re: Creative ways to use a 4 Track recorder with a DAW?

Post by Soggasaurus » Wed Sep 30, 2015 7:42 am

Wow, this is all great advice, thanks guys! I'm still not well versed in the ins and outs of the thing (the manual made me more confused than anything else) but going mic->Tascam->DAW is precisely what I had in mind to try first. Stemming and mixing is a great suggestion too, when I get comfortable with the basics that'll be a fun exercise.


This is especially helpful and important for me (as an effects and gear junkie) to take note of. I've been running into an issue with tracking vocals where I'm really happy with the instrumental portion of a track, relatively confident in what I'm singing, and not terribly out of key, but the vocal track still sticks out if I don't go overboard with post-tracking reverb and delay. A lot of this is my inexperience with vocal processing, and I'm doing work to get better there, but I feel like using tape as a kind of filter might help it fit in with everything a little better. I tend to go for a ton of atmospherics with what I do but I still want intelligible vocals and I feel like tape saturation might be just the ticket. If not, I spent a small amount of money on a cool looking paperweight, no harm done!

I've still got to find a 12 volt adapter and some tapes for it, but I'll be sure to report my early results back once I do. That's if I don't get too lost in the machine's possibilities, which I wouldn't count out either.

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Re: Creative ways to use a 4 Track recorder with a DAW?

Post by audiopablo » Thu Oct 01, 2015 6:04 pm

I don't know. Sometime I can play the same chords the same way, but into different amps or hear the track back on something and it just has something inspiring. I come from synths, so I'm all about letting the sound make a mood and let the mood make the song. But everyone is different, so forums are a great way to hear different opinions on what worked for other people. Good news is you get to hear about all these stories and find out who you are in the process. :)

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Re: Creative ways to use a 4 Track recorder with a DAW?

Post by triviani » Mon Oct 26, 2015 5:54 am

You may want to watch this video:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MMXEvNUjgCg
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Re: Creative ways to use a 4 Track recorder with a DAW?

Post by Larry Mal » Mon Oct 26, 2015 6:30 am

Tape does have a sound to it... compression is a part of it. A lot of people chase that sound, and record things to tape in order to get it, and that's certainly cool. If you didn't want to give up all the editing that's possible with digital, you can record digitally, run the digital out to tape and record it to that medium, and then send the tape out back into the digital realm.

But I'm mainly discussing reel to reel type tape. That's a professional medium and a good sounding one, and it has the wonderful "tape" sound that people like.

The Tascam you have has cassette tape in it. And that's the worst tape possible. So, to make a long story short, there is a ratio of tape to information equalling quality. The more physical space on the tape that is used to write the information to the better the results. So, 2" tape offers a lot more space to write the recorded information to than does 1" tape or 1/2" tape. Also, the speed of the tape also matters, the faster you run the tape the better the results. So you are basically wanting to use as much tape to run as little information to as possible, in an ideal world. Here is a little article showing the difference between audio tape running at 30 IPS ("inches per second"), 15 IPS and 7.5 IPS. You'll notice that the frequency range not only broadens but changes.

http://www.tangible-technology.com/media/media_2.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Tape is expensive, though, and a lot of great recordings have been made with less than ideal circumstances.

And when I say "quality", I'm talking about signal to noise ratio, and I'm talking about fidelity in general, dynamic range and all that.

So you can imagine the quality difference between 2" audio tape and the stuff that is in your cassette. The cassette tape was a popular medium for a long time, and they did a lot over the years to make it sound as good as possible. Frankly, they did a good job. But the stuff that is romanticized as the "tape" sound really isn't that stuff. Cassettes are pretty bad. Well, cassettes are bad.

The dynamic range of cassettes- the difference possible between the highest and lowest points- is about 50dB. For comparison, 16-bit audio offers a precise 96dB and 24-bit audio offers 144dB. I had to look that up and would have to look up the difference between professional audio tape and cassette tape also, but it's a good amount.

Also, cassette tape doesn't offer much of a full frequency range. Here's a few charts:

http://www.ant-audio.co.uk/Tape_Recordi" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... index.html

Now, there is a good bit of difference between various cassettes made over the years, "normal bias" tape is made for dictation, offers a very poor range, "high bias" offers a good amount more and "metal" tapes have a pretty good amount. And there is a good amount of difference between machines. But you can expect that there will be poor frequency range with cassette tape compared to digital.

All the examples I've shown above show a roll off around 10kHz, and as I've been looking into it I keep seeing 14kHz as being the more or less upper limit with cassette (there are many variables). Compare that to 22kHz with even 16-bit/44.1k compact disc.

Boring, right? My only point here is that while there may be some magic to the idea of tape, it's probably not cassette tape that you are thinking about. And there is probably a better way to get "tape sound" if you want it without committing an entire project to cassette tape.
Last edited by Larry Mal on Mon Oct 26, 2015 7:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Creative ways to use a 4 Track recorder with a DAW?

Post by Larry Mal » Mon Oct 26, 2015 6:48 am

And I should mention that I'm more or less just talking about tape up there, I know you aren't talking about ditching computer audio and going to cassette tape or anything. But really, for almost any kind of effect, there's probably a better way to do it than cassette tape. The cassette tape "sound" was just a compromise and nothing to exult, in my opinion.

Although I do love tape.
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Re: Creative ways to use a 4 Track recorder with a DAW?

Post by Soggasaurus » Wed Oct 28, 2015 12:36 pm

That's a great explanation of how tape works, thanks for that!

I think the knowledge that analog recordings are so difficult to do well adds to how people perceive them. Like, if someone told you GBV recorded Bee Thousand with Pro Tools their first reaction would probably be "...and that's all they were able to do with it? This is garbage!" Whereas with tape that reaction becomes "Wow, these are great songs given all those limitations! Those guys are geniuses!" I think the lowered expectation factor is a big part of the charm lo-fi recordings, and 4-tracks in general, have.

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Re: Creative ways to use a 4 Track recorder with a DAW?

Post by LBx » Wed Oct 04, 2017 7:20 am

triviani wrote:You may want to watch this video:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MMXEvNUjgCg
I'm not a fan by any stretch but that's a really great, fun idea.


Gave my 4-track years away ago but could be fun to chance upon another on the cheap...

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