Cassette Multi-tracker: trying to get a listenable sound

TWISTED · #1 10-30-2002, 11:41 PM

I'm my recording my bass on a cassette multi-tracker at the moment and all I'm getting is a horrible sound that is sort of crackling the speakers. I read somewhere that if you take some bass out of the guitar track it can help clear up the low end. So before I try and tell my guitarist that I want him to change his tone (he likes his guitar sound fairly heavy)can someone tell me if this is the case. Or if I'll ever get a reasonably clear bass sound. By the way I record DI and my p/up is an EMG P-bass if that helps.

CS · #2 11-03-2002, 06:16 PM

The guitar thing refers to mixing. Whene you mix a track the sound of each track in isolation may not be stunning but when you pull the big picture manoever, it sounds good (or should do).

RE the crackling speakers it sounds like the speakers are distorting. I run two monitors from the headphone output and they dont like bass. Run some decent headphones from the multitracker and see if it still has the problem.

You could be recording to hot. I normally drive the inputs at +3db for analogue.

TWISTED · #3 11-04-2002, 01:17 AM

Cheers for the suggestions. I actually got a pretty good recording the other day by setting my bass tone control all the way towards the treble.

Bruce Lindfield · #4 11-04-2002, 03:06 AM

I used to do a lot of recording on a cheap Fostex 4-track and it never liked bass as a direct input - it was always a horrible bass sound. Enough bass and it distorted - turn down the bass and it sounded really wimpy - all click and no bass!

The only way I got round it was to buy a small mixing desk to put between the 4-track and the instruments.