rgb2109

Hello Everyone,

I'm about to embark on my first full length after years of demos. The albums aesthetic is going to be mostly acoustic instruments but lots of overdubs to give a kind of orchestral texture. I'm on a tight budget but I want to do it right. I've been recording mostly contemporary classical music for many years now via my MOTU 828 and a macbook pro.

I work at a small theatre and have access to quite a nice mic closet (lots of akg mics) and a tascam br-20 tape machine.

I'm strongly considering recording on tape and taking advantage of that tascam. Does it make sense to record everything on tape, and then convert to digital, mix in the box, and then export it back to tape? It's only a 2-track recorder, so I'm assuming my overdubs would have to probably be mixed together later. To complete the sound, I'm thinking of trying to score a used Trident S20 to input into the tape machine.

I guess my concern is, does it make sense to go to the hassle of doing this tape route if I'm just going to mix in the box anyway? If I EQ, compress and add reverb in the box, will that ruin that analog sound I'm shooting for?

If I record everything on tape, I could theoretically take it to a proper mixing studio and have them do, which is definitely an option, but for the record, I'm planning on utilizing very exact delay times, which I only have experience on my computer or digital consoles.

Any thoughts or words of wisdom?

Thanks