The Hello-Thread: Please Allow Me To Introduce Myself 👋

I had a customer ask me just the other day if we carry any Tascam cassette recorders. He wants a completely non-computer "affordable" recording AND mixing setup. I explained that to my knowledge, his only alternative was cassette as CDs are no longer considered a reliable medium (ruling out burn-to-CD mixers). I don't think he can afford ADAT but I totally forgot to suggest it.

ell him to buy a vintage MCI deck LOL totally affordable.... I eman, its not a 24 track studer, right? affordable LOL

have you told himabout iZ Radar? If he doesn't need 192k the old radar systems arefinally affordable and they're 24 tracks of digital recording that has no visual itnerface but meters unless you want it for an edit (and then you better make it like a tape edit.... then there's the alesis HD24 and similar mackie, those are very cheap and give you the option of pulling the SATA HDD caddy (quaint, I know!) and plugging it into a USB adapter thingie that will let you mixin the computer if you don't have a giant studio to mix in and alls ya gots is a computer and DAW... plus you can tell him that like he probably prefers vinyl to high res digital formats those moving parts HDDs sound warmer than SDDs

he does realize that for any multitrack non-computer solution save a portastudio4 or or 8 track eh will need a descent mixer or at elast a pile of descent mic pres? On tape he may want noise reduction (I like dolby, but dbx has its charm, the companding has a real sound) as well as some snappy compression on each channel to get his signal hot without his random peaks clipping the input (tape saturation cool, clipping input electronics AAAD). -15dbV will not do for tape, hissssssss-city

Even with a tascam casstte 8 track like my old 90s unit in the closet you really need a board and compression. Its a semi pro home studio piece like a budget 8x8 type interface, they assumed you had a mixer and some outboard and just didn't want to mess with reels and biasing... or they wanted you to have to buy whatever the tascam budget mixer was back then. On that note, the japanese were making some really vibey mixers pre mackie, overshadowed by soundcraft and soundtracs in that price class for some reason. I've had a 70s teac (way enormous, bad preamps but great summing busses) and am currently enjoying a little early 80s RAMSA.... might buy the big brother that Endino had at Reciprocal or wherever the early stuff was done for sub pop. You can really get some good stuff going with these guys, prefer them to the teac/tascam and yamaha stuff and in some ways to the 200B I used to have.... that soundcraft never worked all the way anyway and I never diagnosed the issue and sold it for parts with great regret....

Digital mixers for church FOH and mackie's first series with the 8bus murdered a lot of these product lines but i don't know why. yes there's less headroom in theory, but when you exceed the ehadroom on the busses the thing doesn't crap out right away, you have to get excessive clipping in the low frequencies before you get the farting sounds... if your red line is driven by mids or high frequencies you're golden.... just sayin'.... not sure why anyone preferred an early mackie, which were better than the new VLZs and the onyx (have one of those, channels sound quite soundcrafty, summing amps are clean but papery thin) anyway...

I return to point.... what is this lunatic's budget for a non-computer recorded? I mean these days we have hi-res multichannel direct to disc recorders you can treat like a tape machine sans razorblade editing of course.... There's the zoom ones but they probably have garbage converters, its zoom! The cymatic u-track looks nice.... everything else is getting into cheap tape machine territory...

I think we're way over-thinking this customer's needs. He needs something super basic, that will take him from start to finish. As in, he can record multiple tracks and bounce them down to a stereo output (like many smartphone apps these days). Who knows why he is averse to computers. Maybe he doesn't own one. I don't judge. But talking about Dolby vs dBx, all that is way over his head. He's a total novice.

Behringer x32 (?) with the high demand of church and theatre FOH is what murdered those products, IMHO. Can't tell you how many times I've seen that board in the past five years.

Similarly, for reasons unknown to me, a lot of my drummer friends seem to love their handheld Zoom. Lots of bands I've played with over the years have had a drummer who records the show from his throne and then listens to it in the bus/van all night on the way to next gig. Apparently the sound from their throne is better than we thought … or they just love hearing themselves ;)

I think we're way over-thinking this customer's needs. He needs something super basic, that will take him from start to finish. As in, he can record multiple tracks and bounce them down to a stereo output (like many smartphone apps these days). Who knows why he is averse to computers. Maybe he doesn't own one. I don't judge. But talking about Dolby vs dBx, all that is way over his head. He's a total novice.

Maybe look at entry-level stuff that holds your hand like Behringer Flow 8 ?

Also curious to know what the story on Zoom converters is all about...

It's not about the converters for me, it's about the choice. I'd rather give my money to a good FOH engineer and get a usable live recording. Hell, often you can plug into their board for free. No matter where you place a Zoom in a room, it's not going to equal the quality of a multitrack stage feed.

Now if you're just wanting a reference then yeah that's fine, but there are MUCH cheaper options. Like besides a smartphone? I've got a Sony minidisc walkman that works great for this.

Well, the Flow 8 uses a smartphone as the UI.

If you don't need a mixer, apart from Zoom, maybe a simple dedicated recorder like Sony PCM D100 ?

Great ideas. That Sony looks very similar to the Zoom design, cool. He really wants an all-in-one option. I think the appeal of the Tascam cassette is that it's analog tape, and he can bounce tracks down in order to get a rough demo mix. He's not gonna get a true mixer but let's face it the "usability" will be limited, anyway.

I think we're way over-thinking this customer's needs. He needs something super basic, that will take him from start to finish. As in, he can record multiple tracks and bounce them down to a stereo output (like many smartphone apps these days).

just send him to fleabay for a portastudio with the mixer built in, we all learned on those in our day....

Remembering back to when buying an Alesis Andromeda was the only new analog poly on the market... what a glorious time for analog synths we currently live in! I'm sure I'll love the PolyBrute once I get a chance to actually play one. :)

Sorry, I had to share this too: https://youtu.be/vqXysMoM5fg

what bothers me about all this stuff is its not really teaching you.... inevitably like a garage band user who bumbles into Logic, a phone/Bias app guy will want to grow up, there are tablet based multitrack system or maybe he'll get a mac/PC or more frightening he'll thow cuation to the wind and buy a mackie and a used 8 track deck...but the phone app? it'll suck him into engineering/producing land, leave him wanting more, and better sound.... but until now it handled the real work for him so he'll be another guy with PT or Ableton bugging me to walk him through his gain staging errors and routing faux pas for free because his mix 'doesn't sound professional' or 'phat' but heaven forbid he hire me to mix the shit, no no, free advice will get him there, he has the ability, its the software holding him back. Its not years of specialized knowledge and the patience of a saint sweating tiny details in music you often don't even like...

at least the cassette4 track teaches basic recording theory and has no presets

“so he'll be another guy with PT or Ableton bugging me to walk him through his gain staging errors and routing faux pas for free because his mix 'doesn't sound professional' or 'phat' but heaven forbid he hire me to mix the shit, no no, free advice will get him there, he has the ability, its the software holding him back. Its not years of specialized knowledge and the patience of a saint sweating tiny details in music you often don't even like...

at least the cassette4 track teaches basic recording theory and has no presets”

Preach

Hello @punkrocker11,

Welcome to the board. Green Day is fantastic. I'm just another American Idiot.

What amp did you pair with Cort CR100??

Egészségedre! ~m

welcome, post your user gear photos and check out everyone else's! Its the coolest new feature of EB (in my book)

what bothers me about all this stuff is its not really teaching you....

Personally Im happy learning about mixing. But does anyone have recommended resources to do so ? Books, classes, courses, whatever ? Ive found it hard to find stuff about mixing that allows me to learn at home at my own pace (don't want to be gathering with other students during lockdown - I would be classed as slightly vulnerable).

read about electrical engineering and acoustics, this is applied science.... everything that's not dictated by the science is personal taste. The best way to learn is to assist someone you respect for a year or two because the application of all this science and math is really situational.... and tastewise its good to see when a seasoned engineer throws it all out the window.... and then there are guys who barely even rspect the meters and just have good ears and trust their gut and win grammies...

I recommend you start by reading the handbook of acoustics front to back twice, slowly, and take notes the first time when you're confused so you absorb the material the second time through. Also read the manuals to your gear, no one does that. Get an electrical engineering basic textbook from the 70s or 80s too, lots of good ones.

Ive found it hard to find stuff about mixing that allows me to learn at home at my own pace...

Seriously? I just Googled "mixing and mastering courses" and got hit after hit of courses consisting of on-demand videos + downloadable materials. Who is even able to offer in-person mixing courses in the US right now? It's all virtual at the moment, and some of those virtualized classes are at your own pace.

Now... as to which of these are worth the time to watch, which is what you're probably asking anyway: that's a great question I don't have an answer to.

That said, in my personal experience, Software Engineers have a better handle on how to push themselves through learning new things than the population at-large. You've probably had to learn a few different languages and new design patterns, etc over the course of your career.

So my advice would be:

1. Use whatever approach to learning new things has worked best for you thus far, and ignore anyone who insists you deviate too far from that.

2. Prioritize advice from artists and mix engineers who are directly-responsible for tracks you personally love, tracks you'd be happy to use as mix reference tracks for you own work... and take any advice from anyone else, especially internet people with no tracks posted (like me) with a grain of salt. ;)