Cassette Vulture

[Zoltan]

The exclusive club of hipster? A slang word for the perverts of the new era?
Both fitting descriptions, but i'm not here to educate you on that!

Instead of bumping my own songs i chose to make a new topic for this ramble that shall answer all your and hopefully my questions too!

Is the C-Cassette worth it? Is it the new new? What is it?

If you don't know the answer to the last question... I think you're in the wrong topic. This is aimed for old timers, or people who have one foot in the past (not in the grave).

Some of you have had the luxury of a proper 4-track when it still was a thing. I didn't have that luxury. I was a poor boy and i had a terrible luck with these machines over the years. The itch for the tape has gone and come. At times i've thought of it only as an obsolete format that's only good for LO-FI and bedroom pop. And that's the reason i eventually got it for. I hoped for more, but we all do...

Over the years i've heard some great recordings done with cheap 4-track tape gear. And i'm not including the Bruce Springsteen album Nebraska, or the drug fuelled outsider art of John Frusciante (Niadra Lades and Usually Just a T-shirt). I mean proper sounding recordings. The kind you wouldn't know were recorded with such a cheap gear.

What gives? Is it all a lie? I'm here to find out.

There are big obstacles in this journey. Mainly that i have a working machine at the moment, but that might change at a drop of a hat. Any moment might be the last. That i guess applies to anything, but even more so for a old machine that hasn't been serviced and i probably running on its original belts (!). Yikes! I don't know anything about the machines history except it was dirty. Dusty.

I know what i know about recording.  And i have ideas about gainstaging and noise. I love noise. I haven't read the manual and i haven't cleaned the tape heads. I don't have the right kind of tape and i don't have the right kind of cables. I'm using the headphones out and supposedly that isn't the way to get the cleanest sound. All of this is a big no no.

And guess what? I'm getting WAY cleaner sound than what i expected without even trying. And i can easily get that sound most of you who are familiar with the medium happening too.

So far it's all love. Way nicer experience than using a plugin(s). I think i can know appreciate more the fact that some of the plugins do sound quite realistic, but the experience is so different that it isn't even worth typing it down.

I don't have the fancy Tascam, or Fostex machine that people mainly gravitate towards, or the "Marantz" which has achieve a holy grail status. Instead i got a Yamaha. Which is weird. The plot thickens. The only Yamaha i intentionally seeked out was Yamaha DX-7 and then it turned into a curse of sorts. Everytime i seem to aquire stuff of old it's always Yamaha. I don't dare to visit Japan incase i might come back married to a one!

If this love affair with tape lasts more than a week, or two / few songs... I think i'll have to find another tape machine. Just to make sure the party isn't over until its over. There's been a few pricey(ish) Tascam machines in the wild lately (around 500e) and as steep as price that is... If the sound is there, it's there.

Everyone in real life that i've talked about this topic has said that i shouldn't buy a tape 4-track and instead of that just use plugins. The thing is... This is a plugin! It connects with DAW beautifully by the magic of cables and i can fly IN/OUT stuff easily. I can use DAW plugins for insert effects (!) if i so choose.

Then again i have this obsolete "Purple monster" guitar FX rack / preamp thing that i might just use both as the stand and as the FX for the multitracker.

This is still early days. I've done just three tests so far and i haven't done any tweaking. The tests and answers to the questions (as posted on the song topics) are outlined / answered below.

Party at Gacys
The original has compressed drums that are borderline bumping. The original drum sound is quite flat and boring. That was intentional. The stereo field is wonky. One hears it better with headphones. I intentionally played with stereo width and near the end i'm flipping L/R as an effect. The synth has both wobbly vibrato and stereo movement.

I intentionally recorded the tape version hot. I didn't do any test drives, but hoped that driving it hotter would make it at least bump and distort a bit. What it did was... It brought everything more to the front. Now the recording is way more wobblier. At first i thought it was the tape that's wobbly, but it isn't. I used the same tape for all the recordings. It just made the FX more noticeable and the natural compression that happened because of the hot signal made it positely more pumping/wobbly.

I've read that with lower tape quality the highs are going to get buried / lost so i hyped up the highs coming in and coming out from the tape. I used only the Yamaha EQ for that. This should have introduced a lot of noise, but i don't think it did. At least not as much as i would have expected.

I didn't clean any noise in the DAW. I did use the DBX in the machine, but that's a norm.

I recorded the vocs DI into the machine. I didn't have a proper signal chain for that and i messed up the recordings. I just played around with sliders and stuff so the "vocs" are what they are. Just a few words mumbled from memory. The vocs can easily be better with 30 secs more work before recording and maybe by concentrating on them a bit while tracking

Zero Fuzz Given
The track is already fuzzy. I now knew the highs would survive. Let's tame the highs with the magic of the tape. I didn't want to add a lot of compression, or movement to this recording so i recorded it less hot. Potentially even risking a lot of noise. The outcome? I think it works. I didn't do any test runs, or tweaks. I just added a bit of extras by introducing backwards sounds from the tape. A subtle hint: Back Street Boys are back with another single!

I probably shouldn't mention this, but while digging out the original recording of this song i noticed that it was born with a working title "Bo Dereks Dick". Now there's a visual song title...

Old Kid on the Block (not posted anywhere)
I checked the faders for noise and recorded drums WAY TOO HOT (intentionally) and DI guitar that lacked volume so i hiked up the faders, and did the same for another guitar track AND bass. With this we arrived to the NOISE CITY we all love and hate, or love to hate. It was easy. I knew it would be. Most of the 4-track recordings sound like that.

I might just keep this one to myself. It's a potential rap hit for the 80s IF i find the time machine. Then i'll be rich. Then there will be no OG rappers. Everything will be white boy rap. Singing in broken english. The girls will be wearing Zoltan T-shirts. The men will be growing beards. The birds will sing. The martians will come (for the music).

[AndyR]

What's the Yamaha?

I've got an MT2X in the loft. Did quite a few recordings with it.

[Zoltan]

What's the Yamaha?

MT3x.

I'm sure you got great sounds out from it!

[AndyR]

Yes... compared to previous attempts using two cassette decks!! (And mics inside acoustic guitars to create "electric guitar" parts)

But I'd already been in studios by then, so I was just using it for exploring ideas.

I have to say, it was real interesting reading through your post but...

There is NO WAY I'd go back to a 4-track cassette recorder

First attempts with a DAW (Cakewalk HomeStudio) absolutely wiped the floor, soundwise, with what the 4-track could do for me (and it was a lot more reliable - no jamming tape transport, etc, etc).

Then a Boss MBR for Christmas one year showed me (between opening the present and cooking the Christmas dinner) the way ahead for me. The MBR (4 track, digital) let me do what I'd been attempting on the MT2X years before, but sounding better... without the technical overkill of the DAW (and better sound than the crappy interface I was using on the pc). I think many of us on here found the MBR offering that... some are still using it. I always believed, for me, that it was the DAC in there that was so good - it was almost like I couldn't go wrong on the MBR.

I only got the MBR as a songwriting notebook... and I discovered it was a recording studio. So I ditched the DAW altogether. I did everything including mixing/mastering on the MBR. When that got too time-consuming, I bought a BR1600. That's fabulous... but it wears out. I knew I had to go back to a DAW. I'd tried Studio One a few years earlier and found it suited my mindset, so bought into it

Now, with PreSonus kit and software... (and a LOT of learning/experimenting you guys aren't hearing - I've released 30-40 odd acoustic demos, but the band stuff is all secret at the moment) ... I can achieve the same vibes with a DAW.

Yeah, I can see the attraction of a cassette recorder and how it feels, but personally I really don't want the lofi that goes with it

But bear in mind what I'm doing home recording for: recording demos of songs I write. I'm not really interested in "studio" stuff or chasing sounds for those sounds. That's not what moves me. What moves me is a) writing songs away from a studio and b) singing them to whoever will listen. If I want more than one person to hear them, then recording them is a necessary evil to get from a to b    

[StephenM]

good stuff on all fronts... very good read... yeah, I would probably play around with a 4 track again.. i had a nice tascam... i doubt I knew what I was doing but I was creative as heck even back then... I did some weird "dj" stuff with it too.

and recorded decent demos of our band that we used to get some good gigs... back in Charleston SC in the mid to late 80's... I was in the Navy but at shore duty so i had a good 3 year run of getting alot of gigs in the area.. some ones that bands way better than ours could not get and it was because we had a female singer that kicked butt. 

I lived on Cassettes back in those days.  Digital stuff is so easy though.. i do like faders and knobs though... which is why I still record on a deck...  have recorded direct to DAW but not much... I just record on the deck and transfer files to the DAW when i want to mix there.  Mixing in a daw is way easier if you are doing cut and pasted stuff... but I also like live kind of mixes on the board.

[bruno]

Ive still got an old Yamaha MTX3 4 track cassette recorder. Even recorded this on it :-)


https://songcrafters.org/forum/index.php?topic=25197.msg306481#msg306481

[Ted]

Did you know that back in 2016 we did an Old School Studio Fest? Not a lot of participation, but what's there is good.

I was unable to participate. In 2016 I was (and remain) on a different continent than my Old School studio gear, which is in a storage unit in the USA. My gear is a Ross 4x4.

I'd love to have access to that gear again, along with the time to mess around with it. I still have a lot of cassettes that include some sketches. I have a recurring dream where I play these old cassettes and discover fully-formed forgotten masterpieces.

In a previous post, I described my process for getting 6-tracks out of 4:

I used to have a complicated bouncing process that involved a second tape deck and tweaking tape speeds:

I would record an A note on my 4-track. That would be my reference pitch for tape speed. Then I would turn up the tape speed until it was a D note (using a guitar tuner to calibrate). That way I could record at a higher tape speed for better quality.

After recording four tracks (say drum machine, bass, guitar, keyboards) I would return the tape to the slower speed (again using the guitar tuner to calibrate) and "bounce" the four tracks along with the reference pitch over to my regular tape deck. With everything playing at a slower speed, it was easier to make on-the-fly volume and panning tweaks. So rather than bouncing two or three tracks to a mono track, I could bounce four tracks to a stereo track.

Then I would take the cassette tape out of the regular tape deck, and put it into the four-track recorder. The stereo tracks would be tracks one and two which I would respectively pan full left and full right. I'd crank up the tape speed again and I would be able to record two new tracks (say, lead vocal and harmony vocal) on tracks two and three.

Then I could record my master back to the regular tape deck.

I recently realized this is almost exactly how bands (such as The Beatles) recorded back when all they had were 4-tracks, except they weren't using cassettes.

I only have a few digitized songs that began on the 4x4 setup. One day...

[StephenM]

Did you know that back in 2016 we did an Old School Studio Fest? Not a lot of participation, but what's there is good.

I was unable to participate. In 2016 I was (and remain) on a different continent than my Old School studio gear, which is in a storage unit in the USA. My gear is a Ross 4x4.

I'd love to have access to that gear again, along with the time to mess around with it. I still have a lot of cassettes that include some sketches. I have a recurring dream where I play these old cassettes and discover fully-formed forgotten masterpieces.

In a previous post, I described my process for getting 6-tracks out of 4:

I used to have a complicated bouncing process that involved a second tape deck and tweaking tape speeds:

I would record an A note on my 4-track. That would be my reference pitch for tape speed. Then I would turn up the tape speed until it was a D note (using a guitar tuner to calibrate). That way I could record at a higher tape speed for better quality.

After recording four tracks (say drum machine, bass, guitar, keyboards) I would return the tape to the slower speed (again using the guitar tuner to calibrate) and "bounce" the four tracks along with the reference pitch over to my regular tape deck. With everything playing at a slower speed, it was easier to make on-the-fly volume and panning tweaks. So rather than bouncing two or three tracks to a mono track, I could bounce four tracks to a stereo track.

Then I would take the cassette tape out of the regular tape deck, and put it into the four-track recorder. The stereo tracks would be tracks one and two which I would respectively pan full left and full right. I'd crank up the tape speed again and I would be able to record two new tracks (say, lead vocal and harmony vocal) on tracks two and three.

Then I could record my master back to the regular tape deck.

I recently realized this is almost exactly how bands (such as The Beatles) recorded back when all they had were 4-tracks, except they weren't using cassettes.

I only have a few digitized songs that began on the 4x4 setup. One day...

my mind is melting reading this.... what the?  cool...

[Ted]

what the?

I kept pretty meticulous records on my process: naming conventions for my cassette labels, tape counter positions on both the Ross 4x4 and the cassette deck (so I could quickly locate songs on either deck).

I developed a record-keeping process for the MBR as well. I think that is partially why the Boss Micro BR eventually stuck with me, whereas some people find it too fidgety and idiosyncratic. It goes somewhat against my messy nature. But I think I approached digital home recording with prior assumption that pencil and paper would be involved.

[Zoltan]

Lots of interesting info. I agree with most of what's being said. Especially the first poster seems to be on point...

I'm positively surprised how good pre-recorded tapes sound. There's the (exaggerated?) high-end that i was remembering and missing.

You all probably know what i'm talking? It must be a somekind of tape / consumer EQ thing as a simple EQ doesn't sound like this. The hyped highs and clear lows make for a sound that's deeper than regular MP3. No?

On a final note. I wish no real audiophiles ever find these rants