388 Accessory Port

[gavintheaudioengineer]

I often use the 388 to track and dump to digital to mix.
Recently did a project where I had to expand beyond the 8 tracks for overdubs.
Resorted to digital dump of the first 8> mono rough mix of these back to a channel on the 388 to act as guide for the OD> do overdubs on the 388 > dump these 8 tracks to the same digital project using the mono rough mix to manually line up with the first 8.

Drift.

I'm too in love with the 388 to not use it in the workflow for projects like these.

So I'm looking at sync options. In particular slaving the 388 to a digital system.

Timeline Micro Lynx? Seems that it would be possible to connect this to the 388 with the possibility of needing to customize the pin connections.

Maybe I'm looking down the wrong path here, would be helpful to hear any recommendations and past experiences.

[kslight]

I think its possible, for example with something like the Tascam Midiizer + an adapter (the accessory port is a different plug on the 388 than most Tascam reel to reels).


It might be easier/better for your workflow since you want to do all the tracks on a 388... to sync two 388s together...I know that's possible, I've never tried it, though I do have two machines. I'll have to do it sometime, but you need a special cable. In the past when I have ran out of tracks I took a similar approach to what you said and that worked okay.

[gavintheaudioengineer]

Yeah, I mean the drift was really bad- like out by about 2 bars by the end. Luckily, the first 8 tracks were live rhythm section and the ODs were vox and guitars, mending it with elastic audio was possible and the tracks still usable. But I don't want to use it as the solution all the time because of what it does to the audio.

Midiizer looks pretty hard to come by in the UK. I'll see what I can find.

[kslight]

Yeah these machines drift a bit...actually I haven't met a tape deck that doesn't... That's why I tend to think that having 2 388s might be the absolute optimum solution while keeping the 388. The Midiizers/other sync stuff like that seems like funky voodoo on these machines, not much info about it especially in real life use, and hard to come by. Someone had a Midiizer in the TOMB BST not too long ago, I was looking at it but couldn't find enough info about it to want to commit to it...