Looking for advice on recording to cassette tape...!

[lolalola]

Hi - I'm looking for advice on recording to cassette tape, then sending that back into Live. Is that straightforward enough? I'm just looking to get a lo-fi feel to a couple of tracks. Any tips, suggestions, ideas...? Would a regular old cassette deck suffice (in terms of ins and outs)? Looking to try a chillwave/glo-fi kinda feel :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DkslcOhytU

[shimmy]

I mixdown to a VCR /VHS TAPE in SLP speed. It works sort of.

[STRATEGY_510]

Whatever deck you end of getting, experiment with how much headroom it has. Try recording really hot and see how hot you can make it and still sound good. Also, try some chrome or even metal tape for different sounds. Another thing you might try to brighten up recordings, is to record with Dolby B enabled, but playback with it off. It will sound more hissy, but maybe in a good way.

I've had a couple of mid-range Onkyo consumer decks and I really liked them.

STRATEGY

[lolalola]

Whatever deck you end of getting, experiment with how much headroom it has. Try recording really hot and see how hot you can make it and still sound good. Also, try some chrome or even metal tape for different sounds. Another thing you might try to brighten up recordings, is to record with Dolby B enabled, but playback with it off. It will sound more hissy, but maybe in a good way.

I've had a couple of mid-range Onkyo consumer decks and I really liked them.

STRATEGY

What's "recording hot" mean then... ?

[t1mp]

Whatever deck you end of getting, experiment with how much headroom it has. Try recording really hot and see how hot you can make it and still sound good. Also, try some chrome or even metal tape for different sounds. Another thing you might try to brighten up recordings, is to record with Dolby B enabled, but playback with it off. It will sound more hissy, but maybe in a good way.

I've had a couple of mid-range Onkyo consumer decks and I really liked them.

STRATEGY

What's "recording hot" mean then... ?

clipping/loudness/in the red

[3phase]

Hi - I'm looking for advice on recording to cassette tape, then sending that back into Live. Is that straightforward enough? I'm just looking to get a lo-fi feel to a couple of tracks. Any tips, suggestions, ideas...? Would a regular old cassette deck suffice (in terms of ins and outs)? Looking to try a chillwave/glo-fi kinda feel :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DkslcOhytU

actually in comparison to the usual amateur daw/converter ... the tapedeck is the highend signal.. it can be seen as a mastering plug...

if you want something that really smears the sound in fantastic ways get an old valve tape machine... most of them are mono...

i can recomend old grundigs from the 50ties.. the are build with highest quality components and military grade rubber materials.. the usualy raun better than stuff fron the 60´s or 70´s...

[oblique strategies]

Whatever deck you end of getting, experiment with how much headroom it has. Try recording really hot and see how hot you can make it and still sound good. Also, try some chrome or even metal tape for different sounds. Another thing you might try to brighten up recordings, is to record with Dolby B enabled, but playback with it off. It will sound more hissy, but maybe in a good way.

I've had a couple of mid-range Onkyo consumer decks and I really liked them.

STRATEGY

All good advice. Tascam makes/made good tape decks. You can get similar tricks as STRATEGY posted with Dolby C, & different effects with DBX -which some decks had.

[lolalola]

Whatever deck you end of getting, experiment with how much headroom it has. Try recording really hot and see how hot you can make it and still sound good. Also, try some chrome or even metal tape for different sounds. Another thing you might try to brighten up recordings, is to record with Dolby B enabled, but playback with it off. It will sound more hissy, but maybe in a good way.

I've had a couple of mid-range Onkyo consumer decks and I really liked them.

STRATEGY

All good advice. Tascam makes/made good tape decks. You can get similar tricks as STRATEGY posted with Dolby C, & different effects with DBX -which some decks had.

Ok, cool - anything specific (on ebay, as a guide) you could point me to so I get an idea? And is it easy enough to send audio out from Live to the tape player to record it, then play it back to Live?

[leedsquietman]

Get a Revox B-77 or something like that, or better still a Studer or Otari reel tape with a Dolby SR unit.
http://cgi.ebay.ca/Studer-ReVox-B77-MK- ... 27b11b1d07

http://cgi.ebay.ca/OTARI-MX-5050-MX5050 ... 335c45ef24

There are pros and cons for everything. Yes, analog tape compression/saturation can be nice. There are still limits to how much you can push it into red before it becomes undesirable, but analog clipping is not as harsh as digital clipping.

I have a friend who will run your digital mixes into an Otari BX5050 mkIII with Dolby SR to get that 'analog' type tape compression sound for 10 dollars a track or 80 dollars an album, but 3Phase would probably accuse me of spamming - there is always PMs if you're interested. It's a ponzi scheme and I get 20% commissions

[shuutobi]

Honestly unless you have amazing converters I wouldn't recommend buying a reel to reel to get tape saturation.
Plugs would be a better choice.

As far as lofi, go nuts... VHS/Cassete have their obvious characteristics and noise. Just watch out for EMI.

Also try IRs of various tape machines for some color.

[e.g.:]

Bouncing to tape is always cool. Unfortunately, cassettes sorta suck and R2R's are a maintenance headache.

If you are going to make the jump to tape, do so carefully. If you find an R2R machine cheap, you'll probably have to put money and time into making it run well. Old machines will have dead or dying run capacitors, brittle rubber on pinch rollers, saggy belts, head wear and alignment problems...the list goes on.

If you are patient and can solder, most repairs are cheap. If you have the money, buy one already refurbished by a pro. It's worth it.

Tape can be a lot of fun.

[SimonPHC]

Tascam 424MKIII Portastudio
Tascam 202mkV Dual Casette Deck

I wouldn't get a Reel to Reel, personally

If you want lo-fi, or just plain dirty, I can recommend picking up a Marschall MS-2 Mini Amp or something similar.

[e.g.:]

If you're going to look for multi-track cassette machines, Yamaha can often be purchased a lot cheaper than Tascam via eBay. The MT4X is a nice machine.

[slatepipe]

some stuff i been doing lately involved just using a minijack to minijack cable from my laptop's headphone socket straight into the mic socket of a sony tcm 20dv tape dictation thing :

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sony-TCM-20-DV- ... B00005K4HI

listening to what was recording via the tape's headphones. it took a bit of fiddling about to get a reasonable level but it worked out pretty well - then i just switched the inputs round and recorded it back into ableton. i really like it as it has variable speed and pitch so you can really mess around with it, you can almost play it like an instrument

ive recorded whole jam sessions onto little tascam 4 tracks too - then recorded each separate track into the laptop and lined them up

here's me messing around with some loops with the cassette player in sri lanka : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AfQL2rAy_4

there's also the great wow and flutter vst thing which i use a lot : http://www.interruptor.ch/vst_overview.shtml

i think its only pc though so i dont know if that's any use to you

[3phase]

i am just resisting betting on this one .. i ve 2 revox g36..that has to do it... but its cute..isnt it?
mono with up to 8 k

http://cgi.ebay.de/seltenes-Schrank-Ton ... 500wt_1177