Re: Used 8/16-track tape recorders

"D.M. Procida" wrote...
Mike Rivers wrote:
> Is the Akai model mentioned a particular dog, or a very
early incarnation of the genre?

I'm not completely sure which is which, but I'd put it at about 7-8
years old, a compact box without a lot of controls on it.

I think I bought it in 2001.

It was a very popular machine, and certainly many people seemed to use
it with great success. But nearly everything was 'virtual', so the
effect of any control was determined by some other setting, hidden in a
menu somewhere, and I seemed to spend most of my time trying to work out
what those settings were. Most of the buttons would do different things
depending what mode it was it.

It was the mixer that really flummoxed me. I simply couldn't make head
or tail of it. I had to work out all the details of its routing and all
the effects and EQ it applied (they were built-in) through a little
screen smaller than a business card.

I'd previously never even used a mixer. I had a little mixdown box, and
a patchbay, and a variety of home-made gadets. Mostly I recorded
directly into the tape recorder, and if I wanted to treat the sound I
did it on the way in using one of my machines, or more typically by
different physical arrangements of microphones, instruments and
amplifiers.

Then you should definitely look at something like the Alesis
HD24 (or the discontinued equivalent Mackie products.) It
is a simple 24-in and 24-out recorder with big STOP and
PLAY and RECORD buttons (and REW and FF as well).
Only downside is that rewind and fast-forward don't take
any time, and there are no big reels to watch going around.
(That gives me an idea for a product. A rack-mount panel
with a couple of reels that respond to the remote control
commands of your digital recorder. :-))

I have an HD24 and I love it. It is half the size and weight of
the 2-track tape machine I used to lug around on location.
And if they were to design it today, it would be half the size
it is. And the media (hard drives) are something like 1/100th
the cost of the equivalent tape stock and getting cheaper
every month, even as sources of tape stock come and go
(mostly go) almost quarterly.

I keep mine in a portable rack case with a 1RU 8-channel
mic preamp for use on location recording sessions. When
I need more channels of mic preamp, I take one of my
mixers and plug in more channels, etc.


.

Loading