anybody with a r2r?

i want to send somebody a professionally mixed and mastered track of my old group in wav, so they write it on tape and back on and send me back so i can hear the tape colour..

im not going to use the track anywhere, just to find out if these reel to reels can get me closer enough to the sound i desire to create so much...i live in greece and there is no opportunity to see a reel to reel machine in a studio, so i must somehow try one before i buy one myself...

is out there anyone who could help me?? i would be much much grateful.

The magic word is this scenario is 'tape' not reel to reel.

You could use a regular tape deck or a 4 track portastudio to achieve noticeable tape saturation.

The type and quality of the tape (ie bias) will also play a significant role in the process.

What is this elusive 'sound' you desire to create so much?

The Waves MPX plugin is a nice little route to go down if you wanted to stay in the digital domain.

thank you for the answers.

its the sound i hear on 70s rock records, or early wu tang work and older groups from my country, that as far as i am concerned used tape.

i think its all about the sweeter highs, and the wow/flutter, the slight variations in pitch, these little 'mistakes' that are more pleasant to the ear and give a nostalgic mood.

digital mixes are too "metallic", while when transfered to tape, the sound becomes more "earthly"..i cannot describe it very well in english. in the end its all about experimentation and creativity, so i would like very much to give it a try.

i think the advantage of r2r's is more tracks, so when it comes to recording just the master signal, just a professional tape recorder would do, right?

i tried to write on tape my beats on a standerd boombox, but the result was completely trashy, so i guess i have to try a real tape deck or something.

i dont have neither the money neither the opportunity to try this down here, times are tough and budget is tight, and i ve already spent too much on cables, mics, interfaces and so on, i mean too much according to my income. music is rather an expensive hobby.

have you had a look at acustica's nebula vst?

they have tape emulations on there that sound pretty good.

I wouldnt really know if they sound like the real thing, never heard the machines they used, but i did have a consumer r2r and before it broke down it had the same general sound as nebula. i think its pc only though.

i think the key with nebula's stuff is to run every track through the vst so that the harmonics add up when played together.

brucker wrote:have you had a look at acustica's nebula vst?

they have tape emulations on there that sound pretty good.

I wouldnt really know if they sound like the real thing, never heard the machines they used, but i did have a consumer r2r and before it broke down it had the same general sound as nebula. i think its pc only though.

i think the key with nebula's stuff is to run every track through the vst so that the harmonics add up when played together.

I think Nebula is available on OS X but there's not an AU version, only VST. Nebula's great technology, but you need a lot of CPU for it to run it's processing.

Nomad Factory has a decent tape emulation - http://www.nomadfactory.com/products/ma ... index.html

At $129 it's more affordable than the Waves and UAD Studer emulation options.

oops, my bad, havent been followin up on acusticas stuff,.. but yeah the reverbs are heavy on the cpu but from what i recall the tape emulations that came with the free version werent too bad.

there's also bootsy's stuff from varietyofsound, a very nice tape saturator as well as some awesome vsts, and all free.

Metatron72 wrote:Nomad Factory has a decent tape emulation - http://www.nomadfactory.com/products/ma ... index.html

true! i totally love this plug-in.

you can hear it on the new EP Dot and i have put together. it was used on the drum buss and the master buss. check out a video here!

Plug-ins can be cool and all that, but dude wants to work with real analogue tape, so let's talk hardware here.

Decide how many tracks you need and look out for a cheap used Tascam portastudio or something similar.

Like I said earlier the type and quality of tape/ cassette used will affect certain frequencies in some way. There are some threads here about using tape if you go back a few pages.

I bought a used Tascam 80-8 reel to reel. Before you go down that road you should consider a few things.

When you buy it, it will most likely need to be serviced. I paid $350 for the machine, and $75 for the service. The only reason I got the service so cheap is because 1. I was lucky enough to buy a machine in decent shape, 2. I was lucky enough to get extra channels and some calibration tools with the purchase, and 3. He was a really cool older cat that did this stuff for a living for years. He liked the fact that I was going analog.

On top of that, tape is becoming hard to find, and can be ruined fairly easy. Hen you have to do regular maintenance like cleaning everywhere the tape touches, degause the heads, and other stuff. I am in no means a pro with tape, but it has cost me about $500 to get it in the house. What about cabling? 8 ins, 8 outs. 2 RCA -1/4" snakes, about $50. Then you will want a patch bay, and patch cables to route. Got a mixer? You will want to mix on the way in. Cmpressors? Reverbs? Other fx? Analog is expensive and takes upva ton of space.

Go for it if you can, but just know what you are getting into before you start.

Peace

before i go for it, i have to decide if this is really what i want..that's why i started the topic, to see if there is anyone out there who could help me as i dont have the opportunity where i am.

if anyone with a r2r or other tape recrder could help me, this would be great. in the end, the before/after results could be a very interesting comarison for the rest users of the community.