Will the 8 track be far behind?
 

Saw this on Production Expert. It appears cassette tape and analog tape for recording are making a comeback. Now I'm mad I sold all my old tape stuff at a garage sale years ago!



Will 8 track cassettes be up next?

Re: Will the 8 track be far behind?
 

I still have my Tascam TSR-8 reel to reel machine, but I messed it up some years ago trying to change the capstan belt. I used to record 8 tracks of drums to it and then dump them into ProTools. Or it could be synchronized to ProTools with an external box I have, but that wasn't quite as reliable.

Re: Will the 8 track be far behind?
 

Hmmm....I might get a little misty-eyed over a nice Studer 24 track machine, but cassettes??? Not a chance in (you know where):p:p:p

Re: Will the 8 track be far behind?
 

Amen!

What a weird article :rolleyes:

Re: Will the 8 track be far behind?
 

Didn't somebody do a cassette machine that ran at 3.75 ips and was just a 2 track?

Re: Will the 8 track be far behind?
 

just thinking about it.... and sorry in advance if this is a bit of a newby question. I sometimes use waves J37 in my mastering chain to try to add a lil analog warmth to my mixes. could I use a real live reel to reel in the same way? do studios these days still use reel to reel in this way?

I'm guessing I probably couldn't use a reel to reel as a plugin per say, or maybe there are reel to reel's able to do so. but through the mastering process lay the signal on to tape and peel it off back into PT, which would mean running the tape twice.

Re: Will the 8 track be far behind?
 

If the deck in question has a true monitoring head or separate recording and playback heads where you can monitor what's recorded it could be brought back into PT with only the delay due to the distance between the heads (and of course the conversions).

Re: Will the 8 track be far behind?
 

My 2 cents, save the hassle and keep using a plugin:o I use Slate's VTM on a lot of stuff and I have the plugin set to default to no analog tape noise(assume J37 has a way to do this too). Try that with a real tape deck:-). A couple of years ago, a friend found tapes from a band he was in way back when. He had it baked and transferred to digital by an experienced pro(we have a few of these in Nashville:rolleyes:) and brought it to me to remix. The first thing that slapped me in the head was how much tape hiss there was:eek::eek::eek:

Its easy to wax nostalgic about analog gear(and I love it as much as anyone), but the most important thing for getting a great mix is you:D A great song and a great performance rules the day(the mix mostly needs to not get in the way).

Re: Will the 8 track be far behind?
 

Seems like more hassle than its worth... I keep to J37 takes up less space in the studio :-)

Re: Will the 8 track be far behind?
 

Tape sound with real hardware sure introduces delay, because you cannot beat laws of physics. But have you considered real tube hardware sound to warm up your mixes? Something like this. Only takes DA/AD converter delay when you set up a hardware insert (and that would be automatically compensated if you have Digidesign/Avid interface).

And by the way, tuning the sound is as simple as changing tubes. open the box, remove old tubes, replace with new ones, you have different tone. There is also 8-channel version available (I own one and use occasionally) but of course the good and bad point here is every channel is unique because every tube is unique. Then again, isn't that why you'd want "analog sound" :D