using 2 track tape machine as part of drum tracks?

[joninc]

Has anyone done this? say you are tracking like 6 tracks of drums:

kick
snare
tom1
tom2
overheads L and R

Have any of you tried running your kick and snare though a 2 track tape machine?

I am thinking that the tracks wouldn't line up phase wise as you'd have to record off the repro head and would have a time delay - correct?

It might be more feasible to track as usual and then send the recorded channels through the tape machine and line up visually in the DAW.

Have any of you done this? Tips?

[joninc]

might be worth mentioning that my tape machine is an otari 50/50 and has 2 preamps built in that i can run the mics directly into.

[Drone]

If you are resigned to lining them up visually in the DAW, why not just go ahead and track thru it?

[A.David.MacKinnon]

I did a whole record tracking each instrument one at a time trough one channel of a 5050. Details on it are here -

viewtopic.php?f=14&t=87908&p=704193&hilit=Surf#p704193

It was pretty easy once I got the hang of the work flow.

[joninc]

If you are resigned to lining them up visually in the DAW, why not just go ahead and track thru it?

I guess my thought was that then I'd have a direct visual to line up the tape'd tracks with otherwise I am just guessing.

[joninc]

I did a whole record tracking each instrument one at a time trough one channel of a 5050. Details on it are here -

viewtopic.php?f=14&t=87908&p=704193&hilit=Surf#p704193

It was pretty easy once I got the hang of the work flow.

Thanks for this Dave - i remember reading it now. I'd like to try something like that as well but for this stuff it needs to be multitracked so I can't sum it
all onto mono tracks...

[Drone]

If you are resigned to lining them up visually in the DAW, why not just go ahead and track thru it?

I guess my thought was that then I'd have a direct visual to line up the tape'd tracks with otherwise I am just guessing.

I would have thought you'd use the overheads to line up, then again I would have probably chose the overheads to go thru the tape machine to give you a mush sound.

[curtiswyant]

I used to have a "hybrid" setup where I would record to tape and dump to DAW while monitoring from DAW tracks, without SMPTE.

- Set your tape machine to record, and set the output to playback (i.e. playback what's being recorded).
- Play a "blip" from your DAW, run it through the tape machine, and record it to a DAW track.
- Calculate the latency in samples (i.e. line up the "blip" tracks and calculate the difference)
- Download the Voxengo latency plugin and apply to each of your "tape" inputs in your DAW
- Set the latency to the # samples your calculated before (you can do this for each of your tape tracks, though I didn't find there was much difference)
- Route your mic inputs to the tape machine
- Make sure your tape machine is set to record and playback the recorded output
- Hit record on the tape machine
- Hit record on the DAW
- Record your tracks
- The Voxengo plugin automatically lines up the recorded tape tracks, and there's no dumping afterwards! I found this process to work quite well, and the best part is you can jump from tape to digital very easily, even recording room mics to digital and close mics to tape, and so on.

[joninc]

I would have thought you'd use the overheads to line up,

I don't think that the snare and kick would be dead on with the overheads in a standard tracking situation - they would be very slightly delayed.

the snare mic is closer to the snare than the overhead mics are so it's a more accurate gauge to place the re-amped "tape" track and have the phase lock up good.

[joninc]

I used to have a "hybrid" setup where I would record to tape and dump to DAW while monitoring from DAW tracks, without SMPTE.

- Set your tape machine to record, and set the output to playback (i.e. playback what's being recorded).
- Play a "blip" from your DAW, run it through the tape machine, and record it to a DAW track.
- Calculate the latency in samples (i.e. line up the "blip" tracks and calculate the difference)
- Download the Voxengo latency plugin and apply to each of your "tape" inputs in your DAW
- Set the latency to the # samples your calculated before (you can do this for each of your tape tracks, though I didn't find there was much difference)
- Route your mic inputs to the tape machine
- Make sure your tape machine is set to record and playback the recorded output
- Hit record on the tape machine
- Hit record on the DAW
- Record your tracks
- The Voxengo plugin automatically lines up the recorded tape tracks, and there's no dumping afterwards! I found this process to work quite well, and the best part is you can jump from tape to digital very easily, even recording room mics to digital and close mics to tape, and so on.

interesting - could you do any overdubbing with this set up (was there latency?) or only all at once live tracking?

[curtiswyant]

interesting - could you do any overdubbing with this set up (was there latency?) or only all at once live tracking?

You can overdub while monitoring to your DAW tracks. It's similar to recording to tape, then later dumping to DAW. You're dumping as you record and the latency is compensated for using the plugin.

This won't work if your tape machine is wobbly.

You also need a monitoring system that lets you listen to your tape machine inputs and the DAW tracks at the same time. I was using a line mixer to sum my monitoring sources at the time.

The nice thing is that the tape machine works independently from the DAW, as opposed to using SMPTE. If you mess up a take, reset the DAW and let the tape machine keep running. I used this setup to record drums for years.

[Drone]

I would have thought you'd use the overheads to line up,

I don't think that the snare and kick would be dead on with the overheads in a standard tracking situation - they would be very slightly delayed.

the snare mic is closer to the snare than the overhead mics are so it's a more accurate gauge to place the re-amped "tape" track and have the phase lock up good.

[A.David.MacKinnon]

If you can split the send from the kick and snare pre so that one side goes right to daw and the other goes through the tape machine to daw you can use the digital kick and snare as a marker to line up the tape kick and snare.

[MoreSpaceEcho]

but the tape speed is invariably going to vary (!), so if you line up the first hits with the digital copies, it's still going to get out of sync after a certain amount of time.

you could get around that by cutting up the tape tracks every few measures or whatever and syncing them up but eeeeesh...so not worth the hassle.

[A.David.MacKinnon]

but the tape speed is invariably going to vary (!), so if you line up the first hits with the digital copies, it's still going to get out of sync after a certain amount of time.

you could get around that by cutting up the tape tracks every few measures or whatever and syncing them up but eeeeesh...so not worth the hassle.

In my experience if you take the tape feed off of the playback head while recording the fluctuations in speed are far less of an issue than you might expect. It's a very different thing then recording to tape, stopping and then dumping (and hoping it lines up). If the tape speed changes at the record head it's also changing by the same amount at the playback head. There will be some drifting back and forth but way less then you might expect. Still, I'd be slightly weary of it on drums unless the whole capture is happening through the tape machine. If it's only on part of the kit you may end up with some random, ever changing phase issue. Who knows. The best way to figure it out is to try it.