Can You Record A Full Band on 4-Track Tape in 2020?
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- Опубліковано 24 лип 2020
- AUDIO: "Apple Juice" by Trailer Parc. From the album "Apple Juice EP" available on BIG EGO Records.
Bandcamp Link: trailerparc.bandcamp.com/album...
Released in 1986, the Tascam 246 is a six channel, four buss, four-track cassette tape recorder. Known as the “King of the Four-Tracks” the 246 features two aux sends and records at speeds up to 3.75 inches per second. The Tascam 246 was designed to be used with Type II cassette tapes, preferably 90 minute tapes and under.
More information about BIG EGO: musicfrombigego.com
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this is what people don’t realize about cassette recorders : they can sound perfectly “hi fi” if you have good outboard preamps / a mixer that you like. it’s a science and takes some time to figure out how hard to hit the tape, but once you find the sweet spot, the magic and feeling are palpable
That is nice work, very nice analog sound. Sounds nothing like a computer, engineering skills are on point! And good band too.
Thanks so much. I’m really happy (and a little surprised) at how this EP turned out.
Great vibe, sounds like people
Yes! Exactly! Thanks for watching and listening.
Great stuff!! This kind of recording is so genuine compared to modern DAW productions where everything is on grid, auto-tuned and messed up with countless plugins.
Wow this is awesome stuff. I love that warm analogue sound. Great work.
Thanks! It was a fun day in the studio!
@@BIGEGO just fantastic Chris. I use my trusty Tascam 488mk1 8 track cassette recorder. Tascam really made some great analogue home recorders. Keep up the great work dear friend. Kind regards. Paul.
Very good ... Nice song and thank for the example of your mixing/recording style.
Love this! A couple years ago my parents got me a 246 for my birthday, they paid 35 bucks for it! Had to dump 300 bucks into getting it repaired but now she is a lovely machine. It’s very hard to find videos likes this, especially this in depth. The Tascam 246 is probably keeping me sane through the pandemic lol.
HA! The 246 is the gift that keeps on giving!
Where on earth did you find it for 35 bucks!! Deal of the century :)
Where did you go for repairs?
lovely!
thanks for sharing
greetings from Chile
That sounds great! Limitations are our friend.
Sounds amazing!
This is awesome. Well done!
Thank you!
very good! great vibe.
Sounds really good..
I love my Tascam, doing my ep on it as we speak..wanted to see if anyone else was doing this ..
U-beaut; I got one o’ them & had it worked over. Works a treat. I’ve had a Yamaha 4-trk & a Tascam 244 but I reckon the 246 is the best cassette Portastudio. I like that it’s a full-featured 6 ch mixer & recorder combined.
Beautiful
Sounds great 👍
Direct-to-tape always sounds the best. What the analog tape medium lacks in overall "fidelity", can be counterbalanced with fewer boxes, mixers, and preamps in the chain. I also think the compression/limiting (if at all) should all be done *before* it enters the tape recorder, not *after*
Sounds 🔥🔥🔥
i have found so much comfort in a four track in since 2020.
this sounds fantastic btw
Thank you! We just did another couple of projects on the 246. I gotta get a new vid up soon.
Sounds like a good ole country small town back dirt road hit l love it 😍
Of course you can. People forget the BEATLES AND BEACH BOYS..Recroded SGT PEPPER AND PET SOUNDS on 4 track. It makes you think and work harder. But the results are often better.
Very very good
Most people associate 4 tracks and cassette in general with terrible sound. That's because they're usually thinking of 4 tracks paired with cheap Radio Shack mics and cassette in general with crappy boombox rips of radio stations. This video is just one example of how utterly amazing cassette could sound when using the format to its fullest with great mics, outboard gear, and a good deck in general. Nice!
Yes, I agree. And let’s not forget great engineering and musicianship.
@@marcusmagellan The MOST important ingredients!
@@GeekTherapyRadio yep!!!
Obviously there's a lot of ingredients but one thing that was really surprising to me was pairing the 246 up with some high quality preamps. I guess I consider the amps on the 246 to be closer to line amps than preamps. They sound awesome but are pretty limited. Using high quality external preamps allowed us to use some ribbon and condenser mics (+48v) and we compressed a bit on the way in. Once you add it all up with great songs and musicianship there's something pretty special there.
Nice! Would love to see how you recorded and how much „giving each instrument its own frequency space“ happened due to mic selection and placement
It was definitely a minimalist set up but with great musicians and microphones. One advantage of using external preamps is that we could use both phantom power for a pair of Sony C38B mics (on bass and violin) and a Coles 4038 ribbon as the single drum mic. Drums were recorded live but in an iso booth with the door slightly ajar. Hope that helps!
Great work. I’ve actually been thinking a lot about pairing my 246 with a Neve 500 rack, this proves the kind of results you could get from that. Awesome.
Definitely. Surprisingly hi-fi sounding. As long as you’ve got good preamps and mics (and musicians) the 246 will acquit itself quite well.
Ah, Miss mine so much. Someone stole it. Great sound and pretty hi-fi for cassette.
Sorry to hear that!
That sounded really good! I record music, myself, but more low-tech. Just a Morantz cassette recorder with the dual mics and separate gain controls. No mixers. But the sound quality is pretty good, considering it being an old audio cassette deck.
Marantz made great equipment for decades. Their tape recorders were among the best around.
@@BIGEGO I got a 1986 unit, I believe. You can get them on Ebay for a good price. Around $70.00. I don't think it was used, maybe a display model.
Heavy!!
Sounds great, I'm planning on doing something similar. Did you use any external preamps?
Yep. We used the Apollo X8P preamps with the direct outs straight into Tascam 246.
I wonder how it would sound with a rock band. Sounded really good.
It sounds great. I’ll get another video up showcasing a rock band on the 246.
Hell yes this is the content I want to see. How do you think it compares to the later portastudios? I have a 388 I've been messing it
The 424 was my first multi-track device and I still have a bunch of those tapes! I have to say, the 246 feels like the king of the portastudios and I know the built quality (and transport) is part of the reason some techs still work on them and not the newer units.
Great sounding record! And great to see skill and creativity being placed before equipment. Did you use the preamps and eq on the Tascam exclusively or did you supplement the front end on any channels? Would love to see a video where you do an overview of the session. Thanks for putting this out there!
Sorry, just seen you’ve already answered that question 🥸
@@flypieTV I wanted to ask, if you're using external preamps, is there any reason you ran into the front inputs instead of the rear "inserts" to bypass the onboard pre amps?
Nice!!!’
epic
Nice. Check out Flying Vipers - everything is tracked and mixed fully on a Tascam 488.
Sounds so warm!! Can one still purchase these tape multitrack machines nowadays? My old tape Tascam 4 track stopped working years ago!
Thank you! Yes, Tascam 246 (and 244) are still available on the used market. They are robust machines so I would recommend buying one that has already been serviced.
@@BIGEGO Nice one! Yes I'd love to get one of these machines to experience again that magnetic tape warmth... and re listen to my first demos I recorded on a Tascam 07 back in the early 90s :)
How did you manage to get multiple tracks on one channel while recording everything at once? If all 4 inputs are being used is it possible to use input 5 and 6 and assign them to a track that’s also being used? For example input 1-4 is being used but then assigning input 5 to track 1 and input 6 to track 2 essentially using 6 mics to record at once? Would love to know you you manage to get everything done at once. Cheers!
Hey Adam! Yes! You can use all six inputs simultaneously. However, you can only record on to four tracks. So, you've got to submix live, while you're recording. In this case, I threw the drums, bass, fiddle, and second guitar onto channels 3-6 and submitted them to bus 3/4. So you can still keep your stereo panning information and, in a pinch you could tweak your left/right balance but, for the most part, what you mix and what you get. I hope that helps. Keep in mind, the workflow here has a full live band recording at the same time. If you were recording one thing at a time, you have less options and would have to do a lot more bouncing, etc.
Crazy prices buying a used one of these! Over a grand!
Yes, and the repair/maintenance is a fortune.
@@marcusmagellan nah just learn to do it yourself
@@robertcrystals how?
@@freddiesmith-wright7531 this site. ua-cam.com/video/m47xepcKIB8/v-deo.html
Tetrakan Supermonobloc is a great start, there's tonnes on here. I've fixed samplers, 4 tracks, reel to reel 8 tracks, MPC 3000, SP12 and more just by watching tutorials on here
I’m a UAD Apollo lover, especially the X8P, but that kinda killed the excitement for me of thinking this was JUST a Tascam unit. LOL! ... Ok, so, from here, how do YOU take it into the digital domain? What’s YOUR next step? Out of the Tascam into what, then what, then what?
In all fairness, the Tascam doesn't have microphones or songs or musicianship so there will always be a few external factors. That said, we really did the whole project on the 246 from recording to mixing so I think it's an honest representation. We sent a mult directly out of X8P into the line ins of the 246 (folding 6 channels down to 4). Then we just sent a stereo out from the 246 on mixdown back into the Apollo on two channels. Hopefully that helps make sense of it. A deeply rewarding experiment!
BIG EGO ... But you also had the outstanding benefit of the Apollo going in, right, Unison technology, and the ability to flavor your pre’s sound however you wanted via the amazing software emulation of the some of the world’s greatest mic pre’s going in, right?
@@SteveHacker , hello. Thank you for seeing that side of it. The feel and boundaries can create magic. Ya feel me?
“I love it when a plan comes together.”
Cheers
Can you track individually i.e., use what's on the tape as playback, while laying over the current performance?
Definitely! But the way we recorded this project allowed us to use all six inputs simultaneously and submix four tracks into a single stereo group.
Wow ! That sounds great ! What kind of mics were used ? The plate reverb is on point
Coles 4038 on the drums, Sony C38B on double bass and violin/mandolin, RE20 on vocals, Beyer M160 on guitar amp, and Gefell UMT70S on acoustic guitar.
And thank you! There’s a link to the full album in the description.
BIG EGO Outboard preamps?
@@keithh5106 Yeah, I think we used the Apollo X8P unison preamps with the Helios or Neve 1073's. Honestly, the preamps make all the difference with getting strong signal to tape on these Tascam units. Their built in preamps are not so great, especially for ribbons or mics that require phantom.
How boss is his name though, Trailer Parc? 😎
I like the mix in this video better than the final published mix, because I feel like the album has way too much reverb on the vocal and it seems to make it seem like the vocal is in a different place than the instruments.
love it! how did you get the faders to work as your level for each track?? i usually use the green monitor pots for this..
The routing on the 246 can take a little getting used to but I tracked this session with channels 1 & 2 panned hard left / right which allows for independent mono separation. Then channels 3 & 4 were summed to from 3, 4, 5, & 6 in a stereo submix. Then when I'm playing back the four tracks, I've got mono on 1/2 and stereo on 3/4. If you switch your assign buttons and "phones" buttons you can use EITHER the faders or the monitor knobs. Kinda confusing only because there are a few different options. I hope that helps a little!
@@BIGEGO exactly what i'm thinking every time i'm using the phones/monitor buttons. so confusing! I will try this out for sure. Thanks for your tips!
Was this recorded with compression on the way in?
Yes.
Any more 246 sessions lately?
sound very much like lou reed solo records
How did you fit like 8 mics onto 4 tracks?
Submixing! And I think it was six mics into four channels.
Wow, I don’t like using over used nouns like “WARMTH” but can you get this sound on a DAW (?)
I don’t think so.
I suppose you can but it would take a bit of work to approximate what happens instantly with the tape. It's all a trade off and really depends on what your goal is before you start recording. In this case, we went into it knowing we'd cut the whole EP live in the room in a single day and cut 2 or 3 takes before moving on to the next tune.
compression wasnt used, all tape audio recording has to be compressed, thats why Silvia Massey likes to use sears casette tape recorders, taping drums with internal mics, because they have compression built in and I suspect a .68nf cap for hpf. Digital has allowed no talent, no money hacks into and destroyed a art form. Glad to see a resurgent , but need more high school dropouts to complete the cycle.