Just curious, does anyone here bounce to tape or record on tape and finish in daw here? If so what workflow have you found useful? Do you find portastudios are the way to go? Do you just use any cheap thrift store boom box or cassette deck? Have you noticed difference character from different methods? Any experience with dictaphones for certain elements? Vhs even? Would love to open a discourse and learn what everyone here has tried and their preferences/experiences.

A multitrack can be a nice SP-companion; depending on the features it has you can do stuff like EQ, pitching, saturation and bouncing more layers to save polyphony. In my opinion, regular 2-track shoebox style tape recorders with built in mics won't be useful for making final bounces if you want to retain any low end in your recording.

I record all of my own music playing live on the 404 pads, directly to a Mini Disc recorder- but I also record demos of stuff I'm working on to my Sony CF 720 tape deck from 1972 and a Yamaha deck (which I can never remember the model number of.) I've also used these tape decks to record some finished tracks.

The Sony 720 is one ugly looking thing and it's very heavy too, but it sounds awesome. I actually prefer to use the deck as a pre-amp and run the 404 through it that way, it just seems to add more grit, dirt and punch to the overall quality of the sound, which can never be a bad thing in my opinion!

Thanks for the reply. I’m just looking for some ways to sonically grit and warm up some tracks. I was considering implementing a dictaphone to certain elements to get wonky with it. The 4 tracks seem very appealing but just like everything else Lofi, pricey lol. I appreciate your input.

Thanks for that very thorough explanation of your workflow. I’ll def look more into the model you have. Def looking for that grit but also even more “experimental” sounds via dictaphone or whatever to add some low pads or elements to a song by just applying the sound to isolated tracks here and there. Again, thanks for taking the time to shed some light on your process and I look forward to soaking up more techniques from you guys. This forum is a great resource, been lurking in the shadows for a while. I am however waiting for some 23 year old to lash out at me for asking a question haha.

I have a tape recorder that I sometimes use to warm some loops up. I use two audio outputs from my interface to route audio from Ableton into the recorder. After I record whatever loop I want INTO the recorder, I have another set of cables that go OUT of the recorder back into Ableton, where I crop and export it onto my 404sx. It's tedious, but it works for me

If you already working with a DAW, then why not use a tape plugin?

Id suggest pushing the boat out with tape simulation by going for something like the Waves Abbey Road Studio J37 tape saturation plug-in..The J37 features three tape formulas, a really comprehensive delay section and wow & flutter controls.

It's not exactly cheap at around $299 but the way this thing works is amazing and definitely worth the extra money in the long run.


Highly recommended.

 

! Never buy Waves plugins at full price. They have sale after sale after sale. You can often pick J37 up for 20% or even 10% of full price.

There are many good, affordable alternatives btw. I'd like to know what kind of tape the TS would like to use. Hifi reel to reel or lofi cassette?

Yeah,this is true ..Waves do offer opportunities to buy their products cheaper with sales and promotions etcetra.

I've also mentioned before on SP forums about recording to VHS as a great alternative to cassette decks because people often don't realise that a 4 head VHS Hi Fi video recorder can actually record and play back near CD quality audio. 

I've used a VHS hi-fi video recorder as a mixdown deck for music projects in the past with some dope results. 

You'll get well over 90db dynamic range and a 20-20K frequency response. 

The VHS audio head spins against the tape offering a comparable tape/head speed of 80 ips. Most two track mastering reel to reel decks were 15 or 30 ips.  

A little opposite, but below is a track I made for an Op-1 beat battle a while back, I picked a cassette randomly & sampled 12 seconds of the first song into Op-1 (12 second sample limit), then sampled a drum break off vinyl, chopped it all up in the op-1 drum sampler & recorded onto op-1 tape. Gives an idea of the sound... really simple beat, only used Op-1, no processing or mastering & the cassette deck I used is really cheap ($12). Samples from cassette & vinyl seem to mix well together. I REALLY want a multi-track cassette deck.. maybe someday.

https://soundcloud.com/user-255622253/op1-emoji-battle

It ain't the same g. If that were the case I would just use mfx16 bc its onboard