recommendations for 2-8 track tape tracker

[quincyg]

Can i get a quality tape recording device for a couple of g

[audiothings]

do some research on the nagra 4s... its super robust and portable and sounds stellar... $2k may be cutting it too fine, but its in the price range. Kudezki at switzerland will bring it up to factory spec, and spares will be available for a long time to come.

.01,

[quincyg]

sorry my wireless keyboard died in the middle of my initial post. the concept is a 2-8 tracker for getting that tape sound on a couple of channels at a time. some questions that come to mind are:
1)how would i synch it with my protools session.
2)if i did only have 1 or 2 tracks what would be a practical way to track with it for say doing a vocal session. seems like i would have to immediately print each take before doing the next one, which would be a momentum killer during sessions.

[u b k]

record straight off the repro head into your daw and there'll never be a need to sync up to the deck. playback always come from the daw, the deck is simply a print-thru device.


gregoire
del
ubk

[Sizzleboy]

This link is from another thread, but may be of use:

http://www.endino.com/graphs/

It shows freq. resp. curves of various tape machines at both 15ips and 30ips. If nothing else, it may tell you what to avoid.

[quincyg]

Originally Posted by u b i k

record straight off the repro head into your daw and there'll never be a need to sync up to the deck. playback always come from the daw, the deck is simply a print-thru device.


gregoire
del
ubk

Is this really the sound of the tape or just the ciruitry of the deck?

would something like a studer b67 or a810 make sense for tracking?

can you reuse tape stock or is it just a use it once kind of thing?

[Benmrx]

Originally Posted by u b i k

record straight off the repro head into your daw and there'll never be a need to sync up to the deck. playback always come from the daw, the deck is simply a print-thru device.


gregoire
del
ubk

I've been seriously considering setting up my 2" 24 track this way.

But........

When you get to overdubs, do you just nudge the tracks back by a certain amount...due to the delay from the audio coming off the repro head?

How is your monitoring set up. Do you just monitor the main mix from the D/A and monitor the overdub before it even hits the tape deck.

Sorry if that was a confusing question, but I've been trying to figure out the best way to do this

[quincyg]

Originally Posted by Benmrx

I've been seriously considering setting up my 2" 24 track this way.

But........

When you get to overdubs, do you just nudge the tracks back by a certain amount...due to the delay from the audio coming off the repro head?

How is your monitoring set up. Do you just monitor the main mix from the D/A and monitor the overdub before it even hits the tape deck.

Sorry if that was a confusing question, but I've been trying to figure out the best way to do this

other threads on this subject mention the technique of sliding the tracks in protools by the predetermined delay. i suppose you could set your nudge amount to this number to speed things up. i think all of your monitoring would be off the daw.
this leads me to the question of whether the portico 5042 or fatso acclomplishes this same tape sound without the need for a noisy machine, tape stock or maintenance. i think i will start a new thread on this,