I didn't mean to skip the BR-8. I was listing units from memory, and for some reason the BR-8 just wasn't rattling around in my big, empty head. There are many more units available than I mentioned, and a lot of them are great. I just listed what I could come up with off the top of my head.
PaulLepine wrote:
One clarification: in your "recap" paragraph, you mentioned a mastering device. Does that mean the "regular" 2-track tape deck that you described earlier, or is that some other specialty item?
Paul,
Yes, by mastering device I meant the regular two track tape deck. You could also use a minidisc recorder, a CDR, a DAT or any other "regular" two track recorder. All I'm referring to is getting the multiple tracks down to the stereo pair of a finished product.
I should probably be careful with the word mastering because in high end recording it has a very definite meaning that is much more involved than simply getting your multiple tracks down to a stereo pair, but for these purposes mastering means getting the multiple parts down to stereo so your friends can listen to your work.
Rubberdog wrote:
Hey, David M, in your experience with the digital units, are you able to collapse several tracks down to one? For instance, It has been our practice to get bass, drums, guitar on 3 tracks, then collapse them to one track, and then add parts to the remaining three (or two collapsing to one, etc) to build up layers. Are the digital units capable of this?
The answer is yes. In fact when you start collapsing from multiple tracks down to one (or two) on a digital machine the first thing you will notice is that with each instance of collapsing there is no loss in sound quality! Usually on a casette based machine when you bounce down to one track from many there is a loss of fidelity. If you bounce down multiple times the end result can sound awful. This does not happen on digital machines.
Here's a benefit of many digital machines that casette based machines simply can not do. In your example you mention bringing the bass and drums and a guitar track down to one track so you have track space available to add more parts. This works well in creating track space, but it means that those parts are now in mono (only one track). Several digital machines have "virtual tracks". For example, my Roland unit will play back a maximum of eight tracks at a time, but it can store 128 separate tracks!. What this means is I could record 6 separtate tracks, collapse them down to a stereo pair, and them place these two tracks on a virtual track so they don't take any space and now I have all of my tracks open and available for more recording. Since I'm doing everything digital there's no loss of sound quality when I collpase tracks, and I can keep everything in stereo for enhanced sound.
Some of the features now available in these little digital machines is just amazing. The BR-532 has a built in drum machine, guitar amp and microphone models and it will run off batteries. My only complaint is that it uses smart media cards rather than a hard drive. But the features list is pretty cool.
One other quick note. It's not hard to start looking at machines and suddenly decide you MUST have the better technology for better sound. Suddenly your $300 investment is looking like a $3,000 hole. Before you decide which machine to buy think about what you're going to use it for. Here are things to look out for:
1. How many tracks do you want to record at once? Are you going to try to record a full band all at once, or are you going to do things one part at a time. The machines that record a lot of tracks simutaneously are more expensive.
2. What type of music are you playing? The specs required for a beautiful classical guitar or solo fingerstyle recording are very different than those required to get a great sounding rock or country song recorded.
All digital machines will list their sampling rate and bit rate as part of their specs. For baseline comparison note that CDs are recorded at a 44.1KHz (kilohertz) sampling rate and 16 bit. So, no matter what sampling rate and bit rate you use to record on your multitrack machine, it's going to end up as 44.1KHz and 16 bit if it goes on a CD.
First of all, if anyone out there is an electrical engineer than I apologize in advance for anything I might get wrong in this next section.
Okay, the sampling rate refers to how often the recorder writes information to storage. Think of it like a movie. When you go see a movie what you are actually seeing is a whole bunch of still photographs taken in rapid sequence and then played in front of you at a high rate of speed. It looks like motion, but what you are really seeing are still photographs being projected at 30 frames per second. That's exactly what a digital recorder does. It takes a bunch of audio "photographs" in rapid sequence and then plays them back to make it sound like you're hearing everything. What you're actually hearing are a whole bunch of little pieces played back quickly (remember the movie analogy). A sampling frequency of 44.1KHz means that the recorder is taking 44,100 little audio photographs per second. Higher sampling rates mean the recorder is taking more "photographs" and results in a smoother sound. There are a lot of recorders that sample at 48KHz, and a lot of the new high end and expensive recorders sample at 96KHz. Higher sample rates will result in smoother sound. Without getting too technical the higher sample rates capture a lot of harmonics that add depth and beauty to recorded sound, but it's not obvious that you actually hear it. The big question is can YOU hear the difference using different sampling rates? Especially knowing that if your recording gets on a CD it's going to be 44.1KHz no matter how it was originally recorded.
The bit rate basically gives an indication of how much dynamic response your recording will have. If you're recording solo fingerstyle guitar with a lot of subtle quiet parts you're going to want a high bit rate recording to capture the nuances. If you're recording a rock and roll song where the amps are cranked and it's going to be loud at the start of the song and loud at the end of the song and loud in the middle of the song, high bit rates are not as important.
Digital multitrackers that record at 44.1KHz and 16 bit are a lot cheaper than 96KHz 24 bit machines. Think about your application before you buy. There's ALWAYS another piece of recording equipment to purchase, and if you spend the whole budget on a great recorder all your going to get is a very accurate representation of a bad signal.
I am NOT a recording expert. However, I've spent a lot of time trying to get a decent sound out of the equipment I have, but I'm still learning. I record solo fingerstyle guitar almost exclusively. I usually record to four tracks simultaneously (two microphones and stero out from the guitar) at 24 bit and 44.1KHz. I record with a Roland VS-890 hard disk recorder. Right now I'm using AKG C1000S mics (which are only okay but not good for recording acoustic guitar). My next purchase will probably be a couple of decent mic preamps and a couple of nice mics. I was thinking about a pair of matched KM184 Neumanns, but that's kind of expensive. I might get two Oktava 012's instead. They're cheap and I've read good things about them.
I started to write a quick reply, and this is what happened. Sorry if this is too long, but I hope it helps.
David