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  #1  
Old 08-13-2011, 07:14 PM
Hank T. Tone Hank T. Tone is offline
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Default Yamaha 4416 & GarageBand

I'm sampling public opinion.

I would like to know what you think of: a) the Yamaha 4416 multi-track recorder; and, B) GarageBand.

Obviously, I have my own opinions and will share those, but I want to know what you think first.

I look forward to hearing what you think!
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Old 08-14-2011, 04:02 AM
Ty Ford Ty Ford is offline
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Here's what I thought about it when I reviewed it for MIX.

http://mixonline.com/mag/audio_yamaha_aw/

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Ty Ford
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Old 08-14-2011, 06:55 AM
Steev Steev is offline
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The AW4416 is a great machine in many ways. I used one for a few years and coming from an analogue 'knobs, switches and faders' background I really enjoyed the interface once I got to know my way around it. Disconnecting the fan made it much quieter and it never skipped a beat over many hours of use and several albums, although the CD drive died and needed replacement one time. The pre-amps are quite neutral and have reasonable gain in them. The FX are plentiful and useable. The screen is an annoyingly tiny and mono LCD, Yamaha said they were going to release a VGA output update but never did...squint city, but you get used to it. It has 8tracks of ADAT in and out plus SPIDIF and MIDI.
There is still an active AW Yahoo group with a lot of dedicated users offering good advice when needed and you can pick up one in good condition for next to nothing these days! I still have mine. I haven't used it in a while but don't want to part with it...

Garageband gets poopoo'd because it's free and looks a bit like a lollipop but I think it's pretty much a cut down version of Logic? I've heard some great stuff done with Garageband.
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Old 08-14-2011, 09:14 AM
Hank T. Tone Hank T. Tone is offline
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Default Observations

Very interesting comments.

I've had my Yamaha 4416 for about 10 years. I've cut a number of demos on it, including birthday songs for my kids, but have never really taken the time to sit down and learn the thing. I like what I can do on it it, yet at the same time, I know that I'm using it to only about 10% of its capacity. I'd really like to master the ins and outs of it.

As for GarageBand, well, I'm extremely impressed with what it can do also, but I find it one of the most frustrating programs to work with. Something as simple as turning off a live microphone can take several minutes to figure out. The results it produces are fine, it's just an extremely complicated, non-user friendly program to work with. I've recently downloaded the manual in hopes of getting a better handle on it.
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Old 08-15-2011, 10:30 PM
mellowman mellowman is offline
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We used Garageband to record and mix a CD for our acoustic string band (guitars, fiddle, mando).

While it did take a little time to figure out the different options, I found it to be pretty intuitive and much more feature laden than I would have thought. It really did everything we wanted it to do.

You can find a few sound clips from the CD here if you're interested: www.therealplacebos.com
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Old 08-16-2011, 05:45 AM
Joseph Hanna Joseph Hanna is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mellowman View Post
We used Garageband to record and mix a CD for our acoustic string band (guitars, fiddle, mando).

While it did take a little time to figure out the different options, I found it to be pretty intuitive and much more feature laden than I would have thought. It really did everything we wanted it to do.

You can find a few sound clips from the CD here if you're interested: www.therealplacebos.com
Hey Steve,

As I've mentioned before I find these recordings not only sonically great but wonderful, wonderful playing as well. It's fun to listen to. This should put to rest anyone's misconceptions about how good a free program like Garageband can actually be.

OT question however...these tunes are Mastered professionally yes?
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Old 08-16-2011, 06:46 AM
K-vegas K-vegas is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Hank T. Tone View Post
I would like to know what you think of: a) the Yamaha 4416 multi-track recorder;
I personally like the yamaha recorders. I've used the aw16 and currently use the aw1600. They hold up a long time and reported issues are few. ('lost knobs' the one I see most)

I've never mixed on mine and probably never will. The aw1600/2400 units have usb connectivity for transfering files to PC. This feature is nice, as burning CD-Rs just to transfer files is a PITA.

The pre's are decent(not great) and quiet up to 75-80% but if you plan to use only the onboard pre's you better have a mic that matches well or you will be shy of usable gain in some cases. I use an external mic pre-amp when necessary.

These recorders rock for field recording multiple tracks!

No latency or connectivity issues ever.

Hardware controls are easy to use and well thought out.

So yeah... I like em.

I wish they still made them.

Here is a forum that is just for these recorders: http://forum.dijonstock.com/
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Old 08-16-2011, 09:53 PM
mellowman mellowman is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Joseph Hanna View Post
Hey Steve,

As I've mentioned before I find these recordings not only sonically great but wonderful, wonderful playing as well. It's fun to listen to. This should put to rest anyone's misconceptions about how good a free program like Garageband can actually be.

OT question however...these tunes are Mastered professionally yes?
Thanks Joseph for the very kind comments.

I did double check and it turns out the versions we've got posted on our website were recorded prior to mastering so they're just with Garageband and some mixing. For the final versions on our CD we had Bill Wolfe in Nashville do the mastering and I think he made some really nice improvements that helped the individual songs hang together better on the CD and made some subtle but nice eq and other refinements. Can't recommend Bill highly enough!
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