What are you guys recording with?

[McGoogle McDougal]

On the subject of dual monitors, it is true that most multitrack recording software becomes unwieldy once you get very many tracks going. The one piece of software that I know of that has purposely designed around this limitation is Mackie's new (relatively) Tracktion 2. These guys did a real good job of rethinking the whole idea of trying to emulate a mixer on screen. Their layout doesn't require lots of overlapping menus and toolbars. They designed it to very context sensitive, wherein you click on a track and just about everything you could want to do to it becomes available on screen. It looks very intuitive and is really intelligently laid out in a way that is quite different from all the other programs out there. I'm thinking of getting a copy myself - it's only $150 and comes with quite a bundle of plug ins too.

Eamon

[Bluesgeetar]

I like this post. It was nice to see what Rockstah uses cause it sounds like he is getting some good tones out of his puter kit.

My specs for my little puter: Dual AMD Opteron at 2gHz each for a total of 4Ghz, 2GB of Corsair extreme speed memory, 2X74GB Sata Raptor drives, Matrox dual monitor card, EMU 1820M soundcard, UAD DSP card, I have all the UAD plugins except the new Neve 1073, T-Racks full version, Cubase SX3, Wavelab lite, Acid Pro, Tons of other crap like soft synths and pianos and shit. To much to list.

For digital warmer: Old huge Magnacord Stereo reel to reel (all tube circuit) Many old mono Wollensak tube recorders reel to reel. And focusrite shit and to much other stuff. Although I bought this stuff before I got the UAD card and the T-Racks. Both are making me use my Tube reelers less and less. Tube condensor mics and SM57s and ribbon mic blah blah blah.

[BrownSound1]

I'm trying to refurbish my father's old Akai M7 reel to reel recorder. That bastard is old....early 60's. All tube of course. It has a great frequency response, but it is a bit noisy when it comes to tape hiss. BTW, the power tubes are at least 30 years old. Dad told me before he died in January that he thought he had only changed them once. Good ol' 6BQ5s (EL84s).

Anyway I thought about using that deck for the mic preamps that are in it. I saw a guy on the net taking the same ones and modding them with XLR in and outs.

On a completely different subject, a recording engineer friend of mine suggested I dig out my HiFi VCR and use it as a mastering deck. He said that the better quality ones work pretty good for that, since they have specs equal to CDs, except with analog tape warmth. Any of you guys tried this?

[VelvetGeorge]

Interesting idea. But don't they all operate at the consumer standard -10db, not +4?


george

[BrownSound1]

Yeah, they just have the standard -10db line ins and outs. I wouldn't think it would be a problem with most of the computer recording setups, which is what this was recommended for. I wonder how hard it would be to mod a HiFi VCR to accept +4db line level.

I wonder about the old professional VCR decks. Reckon any of those had +4db lines on them?


Could be worse...you could still be recording on a Tascam PortaOne 4 track and do mixdowns to a cassette deck. (Been there..done that)

[Maschinenmann]

Still doing that. And reel to reel. Currently looking for a nice fat 1/2" four track. Hated cakewalk, it was a chore to use. There's just something about saturated tape.....

[Necrovore]

I'm guilty of recording to computer and dumping it to casette, then back to computer to get tape warmth for guitar and vocal tracks.