4 Track Recorders – Simply the Best!



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28 thoughts on “4 Track Recorders – Simply the Best!”

  1. I made a full length rock/punk album on my Tascam 424 mklll and when we got it mastered the guys asked what studio we recorded at and told him my garage,hehe…he was kinda freaking out but there was a lot of bouncing and planning ahead….miss my Tascam 388 also

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  2. My first home recording setup was using two cassette recorders, the standard type used on home stereos. Then I added a Radio Shack mixer and a third cassette deck to mixdown to. The problem with this was that every cassette deck varies slightly in the exact speed so mixdown became an adventure although it did the trick. Then I bought my first multi track cassette deck and it seemed like such an upgrade it was unbelievable. Then I bought the original Rockman and although I would still mic and amp for guitar the Rockman became as important as the multi track recorder. My first unit was a Yamaha although I owned Fostex and Tascam gear eventually buying the 8 channel/track recorder and a mixing board. Although it was a good way of learning the reason I did this originally was I took audio engineering in Community College and used a Neve Console along with the other students and got hooked on recording. But the whole experience was a great lesson on learning to improvise with whatever worked. I wish I would have kept one tape based recorder since with digital gear available and computers I want to remix the original recordings which can be done but I don't want to transfer every track to computer since I would have to record each tape and reverse two tracks to match up to the original recordings. Strange but memorable adventures

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  3. I recently bought a couple cassette 4tracks and a Yamaha 8track to go back to my roots for a personal project. I got spoiled with DAWs and planning to record on them is surprisingly harder than you may think. Especially when you’re used to layering your sounds 😅

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  4. Yamaha MT 100 was my first. Produced demos for my band with it that got us lots of gigs.I had 4 more multitrackers before I got into PC and DAW recording for about 10 ten years. Last year I bought a digital multitracker. A Tascam DP32 and it's so much more fun recording on it compared to the PC. No latency, real faders, ready in seconds, concentration and focus on performing music instead of wasting hours searching for the right plug ins.
    Sometimes I still use the PC/DAW for mxing, but recording is exclusively on the multitracker.

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  5. Alesis should reissue an upgraded hd24 with better converters and basic routing/inserts with additional editing features and it would be a hit ! So many of us work with computers all day, getting eyes off the screen would be incredible.

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  6. Question, I have many mt4x master cassettes. I am going to transfer them to a daw by playing them back on a regular cassette deck. Is there a plug-in that decodes the dbx noise reduction encoded on these tapes?

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  7. “WE WERE BROKE!” Man, that’s truth. I was music stand doubling as a mic stand for a Radio Shack mic connected to an XLR to TRS cable I borrowed, reverb from a $40 Gorilla amp, mic’d up with a portable cassette player’s 1/8” jack microphone plugged into a headphone jack adapter, drums provided by my roommate’s little sister’s Casio keyboard, praying the battery in my Ovation doesn’t die because I blew all my spending money on CrO2 cassettes and production would stop until my next payday because I already pilfered all the 9v’s from the smoke detectors in the house, broke!! It was quite a struggle for the mediocrity I managed to create. It was fun, though!😁

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  8. Took out a loan for 1100.00.Got a Yamaha MT-1X 4-track w/DBX,Roland TR-505 drum machine & a rackmount Digitech RDS 1900 digital delay.That was Hi-Tech at the time,for us.37 years ago.Still have a lot of Denon cassette tapes,the Best,which still sound good.Later got a MT-4x.Old deck wouldn't work anymore.Me and a High-school friend did Everything with those.Started my Looping Journey with the 1.9 sec.Digitech Delay.LOL

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  9. I enjoyed this video. I still have my old Fostex XR-5 4-track cassette recorder I bought back around September of 1997 when I just started my senior year in high school. Yes, by that time, digital recorders already existed, such as the Roland VS880, which even had a CD burner option. However, those digital multitrack machines were very expensive at the time, and I couldn't afford one. In fact, a lot of music gear, even the things we take for granted today that can now be had at an affordable price (such as mixing boards with a decent number of channels, like you've mentioned), were still pretty darn expensive even in the late 90's.

    So as a result, I embraced that Fostex XR-5 and made several recordings with it. It was a big step up for me because it allowed me to have the ability to mutitrack record and mix a song at home. I mean, WOW!!! Now that I'm thinking about it, I need to digitalize those old recordings while the machine still works (well I think it still works. It did the last time I tried it about 6 years ago or so). Yeah, it's been a minute. However, the one thing I always hated about cassettes was the hiss. Nowadays with the digital tools we have available in software, I should be able to clean that up with ease.

    BTW, I also still have my first drum machine too, the Boss DR660 Dr. Rhythm. Thanks for bringing back my old memories.

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  10. Mine was Tascam 234 Syncaset 4-Track Cassette Recorder rack mount then I also had the 8 track rack mount. and there was a time i did my masters to SVHS… lol and ya gotta love the old DR Rythem.. Good vid Barry… be safe.

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  11. I recorded this song below–my old band, on a Tascam 644 in the mid 90s. It has stereo drums on tracks one and two, bass and all rhythm guitars on track 3, and all vocals on track 4 with some guitar solos on some of the songs (because there was no singing during the solos).
    https://drive.google.com/file/d/129TbCsRZjhJQcGgnfxMvYuFuB_e7TWmY/view?usp=sharing
    We recorded this in a carport and mixed all the drums live to tracks one and two with a separate analog mixer. If I remember correctly, track 3, bass and guitars, was tracked live with the drums. Vocals and harmonies were sung together (track 4) and guitar solos overdubbed (punched in very carefully) on track 4 as well.

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  12. I went through about 5 4track cassettes, starting in 1985 and ending with 8 track cassettes in 1997. Along the way Ialso had an A8 reel to reel 8 track and finally ended up on Cubase then Cakewalk, and an 8 tracks Fostex digital multitracker. The good old days. equipment was limited but inspiration, imagination and talent wasn't – I knew people who produced great albums on 4 track portastudios… and I've heard a shedload of utter garbage produced by people using DAWS. I use a mixture of both these days, but sadly just don't have the patience and health to put in the time that it takes to create, arrange and record to any standard. So everything is now lo-fi… 🙂

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  13. I had two TEAC 3340S reel to reel machines. I did bouncing at home like The Beatles did, and I still have those mixes from the 1970s and 1980s. I also still have the cassette copies.

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  14. I miss my old 2 input 4 track recorder😢 It's about 400$ to get the same one that cost a little over 100$ in the early 90s. Bought me a digital 6track last year. It's like a robot compared to audio tapes livelyness. Behringer,please bring back a multi track tape recorder.🙏

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  15. The thing is, we were creative! And inovative! Out of necessity we made things work and did music that was interesting and fun! Half the fun was creating something that sounded good using bare bones setups. When I try to explain to this new generation what we did to make music.They look at me in disbelief. Remember how excited and grateful we were when we worked hard and finally saved enough money to get another piece of equipment?

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