Double the BR1600 fun

[leighelse]

I've been away from Songcrafters and without opportunity to make any music for the last several months. Work has been overwhelming (anyone want to buy a software development company?). But I do have a gap in the traffic now, and I'm looking forward to catching up on new originals on Songcrafters and making some more music myself.

To increase my aural pleasure I've bought a second BR1600 ex-Japan. It was advertised on eBay as "professionally checked and 100% perfect". I don't know the profession of the person who checked it, but s/he wasn't an audio technician or recordist; the machine arrived with 19 of its push buttons in less than full working condition. In particular the Utility button didn't work at all and the No/Esc button only worked 20% of the time. If you know the model, you'll know just how useless it is in that condition.

Replacement switches should be here in a few days, then my friendly technician can disassemble the unit and get it working again. Once that's done I'm looking forward to syncing these two units via MIDI, which seems quite straightforward.

Has anyone else done this? Any tips or pointers for maximising my enjoyment?

[leighelse]

I received my second BR1600 back from the technician last night, and it slaved up without a hitch. I have the headphone outputs feeding into a small Behringer mixer for foldback.

I appreciate the attachment isn't the best of pictures, but it gives an idea.

[leighelse]

I've recorded and mixed an initial track using the two BR1600s. The Master/Slave relationship is seamless, but I had to fix a small sheet of paper over the transport controls on the slave as I kept trying to use them when recording on that machine. The only slave transport control you actually use is the Record button, which you prime before starting Play on the master, whereupon both machines sync up and the slave starts recording. It's nice that the machines remember they're slave and master after being powered off (I wish the phantom power worked that way). Overall, sweet and easy.

I also found it useful to set the tempo on the slave to the same value as the master, otherwise the read-out is confusingly different, even though both machines are always at the same spot. For a tune with complex beat, chord and tempo maps, I think it would be a good idea to set these up on the master, then back up the song via USB and restore it to the slave. That's if you want to use any of the BR1600's harmony, drum or bass features on the slave.

The key limitations are around mixdown. There's no way to introduce audio from the slave into the bounce process on the master - you have to record the slave's audio onto tracks on the master machine before you can create a mix. There are at least two ways to do this.

• Leave any pair of tracks 1-8 free on the master and poke the slave's output in as a stereo track. You can play the song and adjust volumes on both machines until you have a mix you're happy with, and then record the slave's output on that pair of master tracks. After adjusting the relative levels of that recorded stereo pair against your other master tracks, you can bounce the whole thing down to tracks 9-10 and master it.
• Alternatively, rationalise your tracks across the whole song, recording each track or submix from the slave to a separate track or tracks on the master, optionally combining them with tracks recorded on the master itself. This is what I did in the example track, but I think the first option may be the better one - I'll use that next time.

The big advantage of the slave machine is that you can get as expansive as you want with useless frippery and self indulgence. Just joking (although my initial track does sound as if that was my primary aim). The big advantage, really, is that effectively you don't have to think about track limitations. I started recording at age 14 on a sound-on-sound reel recorder, and planning a critical path to the outcome I want is second nature. But it's nice to have options, and it certainly lets me pick up on fresh ideas thrown up during the recording process.

[AndyR]

Wow! Nice one

I must admit that occasionally I do "run out of tracks" on the BR1600 when I'm arranging stuff and trying things out . Less so when I actually know what I want to play.

I'd find it very useful for creating backing vocal choirs - the ability to get up to 16 separate voices and hear them mixed together BEFORE committing to any one of them (without needing a "sub-mix" bounce) would be very useful sometimes.

For example, I could find out I need 6 Trebles, 4 Altos, but only 2 Tenors and 2 Basses quite easily.

I could also find out cheaply (time-wise) whether a backing vocal idea is going to work. Several times recently I've put loads into capturing layers of backing vox and then scrapped them. In several cases, I KNOW that a different arrangement would have worked, but I couldn't face going through it all again to find it. A little choir (like the one above) could be bashed in, and then left for review the next day... easy to expand on, or replace if the parts aren't working or are getting in the way of something else.

[Hook]

That's quite a set up you've got for yourself. So very neat, I imagine if I could keep my studio orderly I would benefit greatly.
I'm loving my Tascam DP24s mixing capabilities, extra faders rock...
On!

[leighelse]

I'd find it very useful for creating backing vocal choirs - the ability to get up to 16 separate voices and hear them mixed together BEFORE committing to any one of them

Interestingly, that's pretty much what I used the slave for on this outing, as the attached track list demonstrates.