Home recording multitrackers

[JosephMartyn]

I'm thinking of getting an old digital multitracker to lay down ideas.

I have had a Zoom in the past which was good, but to be honest I'm looking for the simplest way to plug in and record multiple tracks (mainly bass, guitar and piano). 

I'm not too bothered about built in effects, rhythm or mastering..I just fancy an easy digital way to record multiple instruments on top of each other

any thoughts and advice greatly appreciated!

 

joseph.martyn.501 

[Dad3353]

42 minutes ago, JosephMartyn said:

I'm thinking of getting an old digital multitracker to lay down ideas.

I have had a Zoom in the past which was good, but to be honest I'm looking for the simplest way to plug in and record multiple tracks (mainly bass, guitar and piano). 

I'm not too bothered about built in effects, rhythm or mastering..I just fancy an easy digital way to record multiple instruments on top of each other

any thoughts and advice greatly appreciated!

 

joseph.martyn.501 

 

I have a Fostex MR8HD for this, which records up to 4 simultaneous inputs onto up to 8 tracks. Very old-fashioned, and clunky to operate, but one gets used to anything, and it certainly works well enough. A bit of a 'faff' to transfer tracks to PC for further DAW treatment etc, but, again, it works. Recording quality is good, with native WAV files. Long out of production; can be had for less than £100. The User manual is easy to download from the Fostex site, and is indispensable to understand how to operate the beast. Hope this helps.  

[Suburban Man]

If you're used to Zoom and don't mind paying a bit more (like £200 second-hand) their L8 is neat.

[Alexx]

I've had very good results with a tascam dp008. Recorded, mixed and mastered songs with it. Pretty intuitive to use, decent quality. There are a few on eBay around £150-200.

[Elfrasho]

1 hour ago, Suburban Man said:

If you're used to Zoom and don't mind paying a bit more (like £200 second-hand) their L8 is neat.

I've got the l12 and it's wonderful.  Us it doubles up as a proper mixer and an in ear setup for live use.

[TheRev]

Any particular reason you want to use a dedicated multitracker rather than using an interface into a pc?

I've owned a couple of Tascam units in the past and exporting the tracks was always a major PITA.

I found it much easier to do the same level of recording with a £30 Behringher interface and Audacity.

[madshadows]

I like the look of one of these ZOOM R4 Multitrack Recorder, the vids on YouTube show that recording pretty simple  

 

ZOOM R4

 

John 😎 

[TimR]

Zoom H4 will do that. Either 4 separate mono tracks simultaneously or overdub existing track. 

[JosephMartyn]

23 hours ago, Dad3353 said:

 

I have a Fostex MR8HD for this, which records up to 4 simultaneous inputs onto up to 8 tracks. Very old-fashioned, and clunky to operate, but one gets used to anything, and it certainly works well enough. A bit of a 'faff' to transfer tracks to PC for further DAW treatment etc, but, again, it works. Recording quality is good, with native WAV files. Long out of production; can be had for less than £100. The User manual is easy to download from the Fostex site, and is indispensable to understand how to operate the beast. Hope this helps.  

Good info! Thanks!

[JosephMartyn]

19 hours ago, TheRev said:

Any particular reason you want to use a dedicated multitracker rather than using an interface into a pc?

I've owned a couple of Tascam units in the past and exporting the tracks was always a major PITA.

I found it much easier to do the same level of recording with a £30 Behringher interface and Audacity.

Thanks! No real reason I guess other than old habits! I loved my cassette yamaha mt4x...captured some of the best sounds on that.

I moved to PC for a bit but found progress and output slowed down as I got addicted to plugins and mastering...so more recently I've taken live takes and  then had a friend who's job is mastering audio to do that bit for me (I'd rather pay someone better than me to get the best results and support the music industry professionals if I can  )

So, yeah, I suppose I'm looking for a setup that enables clean capture and then i can send off for post production mastering...but mainly just ease of plug and play 👍

[Musicman666]

the tascam model12 springs to mind ..its essentially their old 80s portastudio rebooted into this century ...its workflow is pretty much the same ie multitracking without too many bells and whistles getting in the way...only difference is that this time around there are about twice as many tracks and its digital. 

Edited December 3, 2023 by Musicman666

[tauzero]

On 02/12/2023 at 12:57, Alexx said:

I've had very good results with a tascam dp008. Recorded, mixed and mastered songs with it. Pretty intuitive to use, decent quality. There are a few on eBay around £150-200.

 

I've got a DP008EX - haven't used it much yet, keep meaning to get round to it. Easy enough to use, 8 tracks with 2 tracks simultaneously recording, so if it's just you or you plus A N Other that should suffice.

[12stringbassist]

I use the Tascam DP24 24 track. It's superb.
You do need to get all of your EQ in place when getting the individual tracks down.
I find that concentrating on that makes for better recordings.

[NancyJohnson]

I bought a Boss BR600 about 12 years ago.  Like anything, you needed to read the manual. 

 

My old, old band tracked about 20 full songs on it.  Great fun, perfectly adequate for what we wanted to do, also a fairly decent field recorder.