Recording to cassette

[rfurtkamp]

Think of your DAW as a glorified mixdown deck from the 4 track, it's literally no different than dumping to cassette minus the generational loss.

You might catch a break and dump a couple tracks that sync once in your days, but it'll be RARE, and by rare I mean unicorns flying out of butts while you win the lottery and angels sing with Mr. T rare.

[friendship]

Think of your DAW as a glorified mixdown deck from the 4 track, it's literally no different than dumping to cassette minus the generational loss.

You might catch a break and dump a couple tracks that sync once in your days, but it'll be RARE, and by rare I mean unicorns flying out of butts while you win the lottery and angels sing with Mr. T rare.

Good to know. Thanks man.

[whitecapsof]

picked up a Tascam 488 mkII for $100 on craigslist and aside from a few scratchy pots (not so sure about head condition) it works great

i'm more so using it to record guitar drone/ambient tracks and samples and then play the faders during playback to use it as an instrument...work in progress

[rfurtkamp]

Heads on those are usually in good shape and that's a late unit so it won't have 30 years of miles.

Big thing is that on the 488s (and I loved them) that you can't cheap out on crap tape. XL IIs or bust was my experience in the day, even moreso than other cassette units.

Also, if you overload the tape, you get bleed (and it's not fun bleed) more than a 4 track. Varies by unit, signal source, etc.

That's my summation of using one for about ten years, other than it sounded very, very decent and never let me down.

[Psyre]

I've recently gotten into 4 track recording. I came across a Yamaha mt3x as well as an mt100 in the same day, after a couple months of searching.

The mt3x had more channels, on board eq, and effects, but was pretty dusty/dirty on the outside, priced at $90 which was too high for the condition although the extra inputs would have been nice.


I went with the mt100. It's much smaller (nice protability) super clean, 1 user, low use, and not nearly as noisy as I expected.

Since working at Goodwill, I've accumulated about 20 high bias chrome tapes. Now just to find the best way to get all the recording equipment working together.