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Mike Rivers wrote:
In article writes: that's just what's been recommended so far. Narrrow gage analog recorders are a bit easier to move (in every sense of the word) and the "on line" crowd are more familiar with them. I had a TASCAM 80-8 that I did a lot of good work on, but my 2" Ampex was a big step up, both in sound quality and in "professionalism." People took me more seriously when I could stop saying "I have a TASCAM recorder." One consideration is that right now, this is a (fairly serious) hobby for weeknights and weekends; I don't ever imagine myself having clients of either the paying or non-paying variety in my apartment, nor am I pursuing a career in sound engineering. Basically I want to put out some records that 10+ people like and am totally not expecting to make any money here (ever, even if I buy gear costing multiple thousands of dollars); the absolute best scenario would see me break even. Tape cost is moderately important; I don't know if I want to pay for 2" tape (but would consider it). How prolific are you? Or more important, how vain are you? Do you feel that you need to save everything you record because you might like it some day, or are you disciplined enough to say "that was a turkey, I'll just record over it."? A half a dozen reels of 2" tape isn't a bad investment for a project. 30 reels is strictly "major sensitive artist" stuff. My biggest flaw is that I'm a perfectionist, and it takes many takes for me to get something "just right". In that respect, I'm thankful for MIDI, but I'm also rather worried that I might start killing my tape by recording over it ... and over it ... and over it. Sorry, I should clarify. I intend to do most of the song-writing and fooling around using my sequencer, and only go to tape when I feel I have something that's really "very ready to record". I probably don't want to sequence keyboard solos (quantization problems) or messing around with effects (no MIDI on most analog effects), but still, there won't be a lot of "maybe I could use this" material sitting around. At this stage, the cost of a good enough tape deck (inc. shipping and fixing it up) is probably more of a concern than the cost of tape. So, at the other end of the (entry-level) spectrum, I'm considering limiting myself to a cheap 1/2" 8-track like a Tascam 38 or Otari 5050 MK-III 8, and a simple 8-channel mixer to go with it. This would force me to use the crap stereo outs on the drum machine and synthesizer, but at the same time give me something rather simple to cut my teeth on, as it were. That's actually not a bad approach. It also forces you to make decisions as you go along, which gives you a better picture of how the project will end up as you're working on it. I've always liked working with limited resources, it's somewhat of a challenge, unless it's at the point where I'm banging my head on the wall (which is the point I've reached with computer audio, and again, those feel more like infinite resources to me). My only real fear is that if I happened to make something I liked, I don't know if I could go and "make it better" at a later date If you like it, why worry about making it better? Why not just do something new that IS better? Yeah, okay, fair enough. The stereo outputs aren't _that_ crap, but you can imagine that onboard mixers are worse than external mixers. Don't be too sure about that. When they only have to do one thing, they can do it pretty well. Well, the onboard thing on the Alesis certainly sucks at panning, and if you overload the mixer it sounds like shoe. The drums on the JoMoX are positioned within the stereo field on the stereo outs; I probably don't always want their opinion of where my drums should be. But it's not the end of the world. In the days of the $35,000 Studer, a console to go along with it didn't cost $3,000, it cost $200,000, and those consoles are now available for $10,000 or less. One thing that's both good and bad about cheap studio gear is that some of it tends to hold its value better than expernsive studio gear. On a related note, I've always had the (perhaps misguided) opinion that the middle range of stuff just isn't really worth it in terms of what you get for your dollar. It seems that for now I can only afford low or middle end gear from this discussion, and so will take my ass to a studio if I want high -- at least I'll have a better idea of what I want when I get there. God, that just divided a whole bunch of people's lives into three nice little categories ... Chris |
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