Tape.

Anyone on here mess with tape at all?

Cassettes, reel to reel, multitracks?

i have a dual tape cassette player, sanyo i think, i have it set up so i can basically mute my entire mixer and send the mix out to the cassette........tracking beats like this is ok, wouldnt do it to every stem (as the noise would amplify) but its nice for drums or other things. really like what it does to percussion and snares

peeping tom wrote:i have a dual tape cassette player, sanyo i think, i have it set up so i can basically mute my entire mixer and send the mix out to the cassette........tracking beats like this is ok, wouldnt do it to every stem (as the noise would amplify) but its nice for drums or other things. really like what it does to percussion and snares

Something that will greatly reduce the hiss is the type of tape you use, and how you track to the tape. Don't be afraid to push the tape into the red zone. That's when it sounds best. Plus, if it's too loud in the end, just turn it down, and any hiss that was there will go down with the rest of the audio. What kind of tapes do you use?

bearhead wrote:

peeping tom wrote:i have a dual tape cassette player, sanyo i think, i have it set up so i can basically mute my entire mixer and send the mix out to the cassette........tracking beats like this is ok, wouldnt do it to every stem (as the noise would amplify) but its nice for drums or other things. really like what it does to percussion and snares

Something that will greatly reduce the hiss is the type of tape you use, and how you track to the tape. Don't be afraid to push the tape into the red zone. That's when it sounds best. Plus, if it's too loud in the end, just turn it down, and any hiss that was there will go down with the rest of the audio. What kind of tapes do you use?

this is very true. i have been pushing snares and perc's thru it to test it, often they sound good hot. bass tends to distort from what i can gather so far, i can imagine it probably sounds good with a synth bass rather than a filtered sample though

still experimenting with it , only just getting around to running mixes thru it now and AB'ing with the mixer to see what sounds different.

in regards to noise, i meant when tracking individual stems (rather than summing), 16 tracks of white noise can add up nah mean?!


tapes i use were cheap and nasty, TDK t-90's i think

i have a philips 3541 reel-to-reel, and a Harman Kardon hk1000 (which i got for about $15 whoohoo!). I use them both regularly. The philips is mono, and noisier, but adds such great saturation and distortion and dirt to samples. I most often layer a few drum one-shot samples together and record it onto tape then resample. This blends them together and dirties up things wonderfully. The hk1000 is is fairly high end cassette machine, so I sometimes record the beats and the bassline together onto tape, to smoosh them together a bit. It'll add a mild level of saturation but pushing it any harder makes it all break up and sound wack. I sample the results and clean it up to taste. I think maybe the old tape is starting to have some issues, cos I get way different results on some reels compared to others.

As far as bang-for-your-buck goes, getting some cassette deck can't be beat. Even if it sounds terrible, you'll still get a whole weekend out of messing around with one, and that's worth the few bucks you pay for the hardware.

As mentioned above, bass tends to saturate first, and changes sound dramatically. So when recording I often have a hi pass or low shelf to get rid of most of the bass. The dirt on snares and hats is fantastic though, and I layer low end hits in again afterwards. Bit more control of the bass that way

I have a reel to reel. It is fun to make tape loops with it and to sample from it. Pioneer RT 707 and then I have another cheap older one that my inlaws gave to me.
Dabmeister has the great old school multitrack tape mixer and he knows how to make it sound great. I listened to one of his records and the singer sounded very pleasing to the ear.
I am a fan of the tape sound, but not so much a fan of the process and the inevitable tape tear/rip. lol. I collect reel to reel albums and other peoples recordings. On weekends I just let the reel to reel play for hours. I don't watch much television in my free time.

Cheers,
Ian

I use a Revox B77 2-track reel to reel with RMG tape (i should buy new tape soon, i'm runnig out). I use it for all my beats as a master recorder... I once used it to track out all the individual tracks of a beat, which sounds great... but i'm to lazy, so i always record just a stereo track from the whole beat.

I love tape...

peeping tom wrote:this is very true. i have been pushing snares and perc's thru it to test it, often they sound good hot. bass tends to distort from what i can gather so far, i can imagine it probably sounds good with a synth bass rather than a filtered sample though

still experimenting with it , only just getting around to running mixes thru it now and AB'ing with the mixer to see what sounds different.

in regards to noise, i meant when tracking individual stems (rather than summing), 16 tracks of white noise can add up nah mean?!


tapes i use were cheap and nasty, TDK t-90's i think

I think a lot of it depends on the deck you use, too. I use a Marantz PMD 201 recorder, but it's a portable and tracks in mono. It's a great quality recorder, but I can't really put stereo tracks in there like drums or something.

If your deck has an adjustable bias, do some testing with that. That way you get the most out of the tape you're using. Personally, I'd recommend a BASF chrome tape. Look for a 70s/80s tape. Around the mid to late 80s, BASF started substituting other formulas for their chrome tapes, so they're not pure chromium oxide. Type I's are fine, but type IIs have a much lower noise floor, and you can push them a lot harder than you can with type I's without as much distorting in the upper range.

Ian Canefire wrote:I have a reel to reel. It is fun to make tape loops with it and to sample from it. Pioneer RT 707 and then I have another cheap older one that my inlaws gave to me.
Dabmeister has the great old school multitrack tape mixer and he knows how to make it sound great. I listened to one of his records and the singer sounded very pleasing to the ear.
I am a fan of the tape sound, but not so much a fan of the process and the inevitable tape tear/rip. lol. I collect reel to reel albums and other peoples recordings. On weekends I just let the reel to reel play for hours. I don't watch much television in my free time.

Cheers,
Ian

I've only been experimenting with tapes for a few years now, and I've yet to enter the realm of reel to reel recording. I've wanted a machine for so long, but I've never had the money. Well, whenever I have money, I blow it on vinyl... But I've never had any cassettes of mine tear. Do cassettes tear?

jibber wrote:I use a Revox B77 2-track reel to reel with RMG tape (i should buy new tape soon, i'm runnig out). I use it for all my beats as a master recorder... I once used it to track out all the individual tracks of a beat, which sounds great... but i'm to lazy, so i always record just a stereo track from the whole beat.

I love tape...

I've stemmed my tracks to tape only a couple of times, and it's totally worth the work! But like you said, I'm just too lazy and end up recording them to tape as a stereo mix...

@ bearhead...I have only had the reel to reel tape tear / rip and it usually happens when fast forwarding or reversing. With cassettes the fear is the tape getting eaten. lol

cheers
Ian

dbx noise reduction is awesome

Not tape. Although CUBASE was built around this concept.

Ian Canefire wrote:@ bearhead...I have only had the reel to reel tape tear / rip and it usually happens when fast forwarding or reversing. With cassettes the fear is the tape getting eaten. lol

cheers
Ian

God, that'd be a nightmare if you were using expensive tape.

have you ever ran a mixed down beat on your computer through your R2R, and then run it back into your computer? what would be the positive and negative doing this? or do you simply use it to resample drums? Ive been tossing around the idea of getting a R2R because I want to gully up my beats and I just wanted to know what the deal is with everything