Otari MX5050 repair help

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bannerj
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Otari MX5050 repair help

Post by bannerj » Mon Oct 19, 2009 1:06 pm

I'm wanting to send stems out from digital to my 5050 and then bounce them back in for final mix. I haven't used the machine in three years. Its been through a move too. I figured it would need some service, so I ran a test first.

I had my digital mix all balanced. I sent four stem pairs out my D/A into the 5050 with all the buttons pushed in and the knobs turned off. When I bounced the pairs back into my DAW the L/R blanances were are screwy. Nothing was consistently off.

There is a tech in town, but he doesn't work on tape machines regularly. I trust him to do good work, but I'd just like to get some ideas of where he might start.

Brian Roth, if you are still moderating, this is the same machine you set up for me 5 or so years ago.

Any of your thoughts would be helpful. Thanks.

arkestra
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Post by arkestra » Mon Oct 19, 2009 6:59 pm

how exactly are the levels screwy? im setting one I just bought up (you can check out my recent post) and had levels coming back from the repro head going weird and there were several things happening. Most had to do with the cards not being seated properly. Also it was really dirty. And im pretty sure it still has a bad bias setting. Hows your tape? I was using some RMG that had terrible shed and some old 456 with the same problem. Switching tape helped tremendously.

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bannerj
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Post by bannerj » Mon Oct 19, 2009 9:28 pm

arkestra wrote:how exactly are the levels screwy? im setting one I just bought up (you can check out my recent post) and had levels coming back from the repro head going weird and there were several things happening. Most had to do with the cards not being seated properly. Also it was really dirty. And im pretty sure it still has a bad bias setting. Hows your tape? I was using some RMG that had terrible shed and some old 456 with the same problem. Switching tape helped tremendously.
Screwy levels: meaning that when I send the same balanced stems from the tape machine back into the DAW, they are not balanced anymore. It seems that their gain levels are not all the same "0."

Tape is only a few years ago, 456. It's only been used a few times. I do re-track over it since I'm sending everything to digital anyway.

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