Topic: At a loss (Read 6651 times)

ivan · « **on:** March 26, 2007, 02:56:09 PM »

I don't know which way to go.

I have a bunch of old 4-track recordings that I want to make into MP3s (or whatever).

A few years ago, someone gave me an old 4-input board and breakout box made by MidiMan (now known as M-Audio). The driver for the board was written for Win-98. I tried for months, on and off, to get that bugger to work, but couldn't. I still have the breakout box, but the board is gone.

What I wanted to do was use audio editing software to record all 4 tracks in parallel. It looks like I can do that with M-Audio's Delta 44 board/breakout box, but it costs around $130. The problem is, after I transfer in all my 4-track stuff, I won't need the board any more. I can see spending maybe half that without a qualm, but $130 seems steep for something I'll basically use once and throw away.

My other options are:

1. Mix down all the songs and just record stereo WAVs, and forget about ever enhancing them (last resort).

2. Try to record 2 tracks at a time and synch them up somehow (which seems like it would be time consuming and unreliable).

What do you folks think I should do?

12AX7 · « **Reply #1 on:** March 26, 2007, 03:10:00 PM »

You will NEVER be able to synch them up unless you've striped a track with time code. Trust me on that. I tried for a loooooong time to do it "manually" and failed miserably.
Check with a nearby music store and see if they will let you rent the equipment you need; or possibly let you use a loaner. A lot of em will do that. Good luck, man!

pbsaurus · « **Reply #2 on:** March 26, 2007, 03:57:46 PM »

If he shipped them to you could you record them? I've heard a little bit and they're pretty good and need to be up on Haxorcentral.

milifist · « **Reply #3 on:** March 26, 2007, 04:05:37 PM »

I wonder if it is possible to use more than one of THESE at the same time? I've contemplated getting one just because they're so cheap (and portable).

If you can't rent, borrow, or steal something, you could always try the ebay route. I got my little Aardvark for about $70. There is often adequate equipment going in the $50-75 range. I haven't had any bad experiences with ebay, but I know a few people who have. It is still a lot of money for something you won't use much. I guess it just comes down to how important these recordings are to you.

pbsaurus · « **Reply #4 on:** March 26, 2007, 04:12:37 PM »

Also you can resell it, so if you get one for $100 and resell it for $95 you're only out $5.

12AX7 · « **Reply #5 on:** March 26, 2007, 04:14:57 PM »

I'd absolutely LOVE to; but this is tape, right? The shipping would probably be as much as renting the equipment. (Not to mention how it gets handled in shipping- even if you mark it "MAGNETIC MEDIA!!!!")
A better idea would be me shipping him my Fostex XR5 4 track.

12AX7 · « **Reply #6 on:** March 26, 2007, 04:16:29 PM »

Quote from: pbsaurus on March 26, 2007, 04:12:37 PM

Also you can resell it, so if you get one for $100 and resell it for $95 you're only out $5.

Alternatively, you could purchase one for 95$ and resell it for $100.

ivan · « **Reply #7 on:** March 26, 2007, 04:31:01 PM »

Quote from: 12AX7 on March 26, 2007, 03:10:00 PM

You will NEVER be able to synch them up unless you've striped a track with time code. Trust me on that. I tried for a loooooong time to do it "manually" and failed miserably.

That's what I suspected.

Quote

Check with a nearby music store and see if they will let you rent the equipment you need; or possibly let you use a loaner. A lot of em will do that. Good luck, man!

Great idea!

12AX7 · « **Reply #8 on:** March 26, 2007, 04:41:03 PM »

The reason is, without anything on the media to synch with; the drive motor runs at it's default, or wherever you have the pitch set. All of these motors will have very slight variations in speed both up and down over the course of the material. That; when matched with another track having the same variables (and these variables are both in the recorded material, and introduced on playback); there's no practical way of matching the material up over the course of the selection. You have to actually cut it up (in software) into almost each bar; and try to drag it into sync with all of the other tracks in that bar alone- then move to the next bar, etc. So it could be done; but it will not be the same song, with the same nuances, etc. It'd be much easier to get a second job, earn the extra cash to hire a band, rehearse, and go to a studio and record it.

pardon my eccentric use and interchanging of commas and semicolons.

ivan · « **Reply #9 on:** March 26, 2007, 05:07:24 PM »

Quote from: pbsaurus on March 26, 2007, 03:57:46 PM

If he shipped them to you could you record them? I've heard a little bit and they're pretty good and need to be up on Haxorcentral.

Quote from: 12AX7 on March 26, 2007, 04:14:57 PM

I'd absolutely LOVE to; but this is tape, right? The shipping would probably be as much as renting the equipment. (Not to mention how it gets handled in shipping- even if you mark it "MAGNETIC MEDIA!!!!")
A better idea would be me shipping him my Fostex XR5 4 track.

You guys are too kind! But as fond as I am of these old bits, I would not impose them on anyone else, especially in their pathetically amateurish and unfinished form. They were recorded on a Yamaha MT1X cassette 4-track I bought in the '80s. I don't play drums, so I used a machine. I had a cheap Casio keyboard, but my keyboard skills are rudimentary. I play only slightly better guitar. I can fake some bass lines. I can fake some singing. The guitar, bass and microphone were plugged directly into the 4-track, or maybe through a cheap noisy effect pedal or two. I have no idea how to manage hums and flutters and so on. I just plugged it in and played. Very crude stuff. That's why I want to clean it all up with an audio editor. The Yamaha still works fine. I just need to connect it to a PC somehow.

ivan · « **Reply #10 on:** March 26, 2007, 05:14:24 PM »

Quote from: 12AX7 on March 26, 2007, 04:41:03 PM

The reason is, without anything on the media to synch with; the drive motor runs at it's default, or wherever you have the pitch set. All of these motors will have very slight variations in speed both up and down over the course of the material. That; when matched with another track having the same variables (and these variables are both in the recorded material, and introduced on playback); there's no practical way of matching the material up over the course of the selection. You have to actually cut it up (in software) into almost each bar; and try to drag it into sync with all of the other tracks in that bar alone- then move to the next bar, etc. So it could be done; but it will not be the same song, with the same nuances, etc. It'd be much easier to get a second job, earn the extra cash to hire a band, rehearse, and go to a studio and record it.

pardon my eccentric use and interchanging of commas and semicolons.

Yes, those little speed variations are exactly what I was imagining would happen, but didn't have the language to express.

Getting a second job and hiring a band and buying studio time is what the Yamaha 4-track was supposed to save me from in the first place!

ivan · « **Reply #11 on:** March 26, 2007, 05:25:00 PM »

Quote from: milifist on March 26, 2007, 04:05:37 PM

I wonder if it is possible to use more than one of THESE at the same time? I've contemplated getting one just because they're so cheap (and portable).

If you can't rent, borrow, or steal something, you could always try the ebay route. I got my little Aardvark for about $70. There is often adequate equipment going in the $50-75 range. I haven't had any bad experiences with ebay, but I know a few people who have. It is still a lot of money for something you won't use much. I guess it just comes down to how important these recordings are to you.

This is just the kind of hack I was hoping existed. I'm sure there are plenty of people in the same fix as me -- surely someone out there has found a way. Like what if I put a couple of dirt-cheap sound cards in one PC and point my audio editor to the two stereo inputs, and send two tracks to each? I bet it can be done, but it would probably take hours of experimenting.

I will try ebay, but first I want to know that the product will do what I need it to. Ideally, I'd like to come accross a testimonial like "I used the blah-blah-blah to transfer old 4-track recordings and it worked great." I don't have time to pioneer this venture. SOMEONE out there has already done this.

milifist · « **Reply #12 on:** March 26, 2007, 05:39:47 PM »

Quote from: ivan on March 26, 2007, 05:25:00 PM

This is just the kind of hack I was hoping existed. I'm sure there are plenty of people in the same fix as me -- surely someone out there has found a way. Like what if I put a couple of dirt-cheap sound cards in one PC and point my audio editor to the two stereo inputs, and send two tracks to each? I bet it can be done, but it would probably take hours of experimenting.

I hadn't thought of that. With the right software, that should work. Cool Edit Pro 2.1 never gave me any problems recording from my built-in card and my Aardvark simultaneously. Alternately, you could try recording each track on to a different computer at the same time and then merge them all together.

12AX7 · « **Reply #13 on:** March 26, 2007, 08:27:33 PM »

That should work fine, ivan. As long as the taped tracks are playing together, it shouldn't matter if they are on different inputs (to the pc). The only synch issue is if the tracks are 'captured' to the pc at different times (ie., playback to capture tracks 1 and 2; stop, rewind, playback to capture 3 and 4 ). If you have four inputs, you should be fine. Cool Edit Pro that milifist mentioned would work great in the multi-track mode.

ivan · « **Reply #14 on:** March 27, 2007, 10:51:58 AM »

Looks like I've got some tinkering to do this weekend!

dcrog · « **Reply #15 on:** March 27, 2007, 11:05:10 AM »

Quote from: ivan on March 27, 2007, 10:51:58 AM

Looks like I've got some tinkering to do this weekend!

When you get that figured out, tell me how to convert all my VHS tapes to DVD.

ivan · « **Reply #16 on:** March 27, 2007, 11:28:32 AM »

I can tell you what you need, because I've already looked into it.

You need:

Something like this.*
A DVD burner.
Blank DVDs.
Time.

*I'm not endorsing this particular product, although the price is right. There might be better devices for not much more.

milifist · « **Reply #17 on:** March 27, 2007, 11:50:00 AM »

I use an old PCI ATI All-in-Wonder video card that I got of of ebay a couple of years ago. Works, well, wonderfully and it cost me under $10. I have standard dvd player, vhs player, and my really old RCA VHS camcorder hooked to it. It captures nicely, and it allows me to watch whatever on my PC. Eventually, I intend to get a higher end version and setup multiple monitors.

TheJudge · « **Reply #18 on:** March 27, 2007, 12:31:06 PM »

Neat, I had a Yamaha MT1X too! I may still have it in fact.

Here's a cheap and easy way to do what I think you want to do.

Download an evaluation copy of Adobe Audition (awsome recording program)

I beleive there is an AUX Master Send (line out) that you can just plug into using a typical 1/4 jack. On the other end of your cable, stick a 1/4 to 3.5mm converter and conttect to your sound card. Play your tape lower the volume of all tracks minus one and record with Adobe Audition. Repeat the process for all tracks. (you may have to use WAV, I don't remmeber if you can record directly in MP3 format)

Import your four tracks in a new Adobe Audition project. You should be able to synch them fairly easy simply by dragging the soundwave of each track and positioning them correctly. It's really not that hard. Now you can manipulate each track indepently, apply effects, fades, EQs, etc.

ivan · « **Reply #19 on:** April 30, 2007, 12:36:52 PM »

Ok, so this is what I finally did:

The MT1X has 4 RCA jacks that give direct track outputs. The signals go out unfiltered, just as they were recorded.

I installed 2 cheap sound cards in my PC. That turned out to be easy. First I installed one, then the other, and they coexist quite nicely. They are not very good sound cards, and they are pretty old, but they function.

I captured the tracks using Cakewalk, which is a pretty decent multitrack MIDI/Analog music composing package. I have 4 RCA leads coming out of the 4-track, and I paired them up using Y-adaptors, so I end up with two stereo signals, one for each board. When I capture the tracks, I assign tracks 1 and 2 to the left and right stereo outputs of soundboard number 1, and tracks 3 and 4 to the left and right stereo outputs of soundboard number 2.

Easy, but the results are not earth-shattering. First of all, there is not much I can do to improve the very amateurish raw material. I am not a fabulous musician, and I am an even worse recording engineer. Most of the tracks were recorded with way too much gain, so there's a lot of distortion. Also, I was over-enthusiastic about pinging the rhythm tracks, so 80% of the sound is in glorious muddy distorted mono. Further, the 2 soundcards have a slight difference in latency, so the tracks are a tiny bit out of synch. And finally, I never had it in my head that these were anything like a finished product -- I saw the 4-track as a scratch pad for song ideas. Most of the recordings were done in one or two takes, and I never bothered to fix mistakes. But, it was all a lot of fun, and should be listened to in the same vein.

I'm converting my old stuff in chronological order. These first 2 songs are from 1986. The first one, Catking, was written as a tribute to this really cool cat who used to hang out near our appartment. I'm not speaking 60s jive, I mean an actual cat. One day, we saw it get whacked by a car, and thought it was killed, which made for a very melancholy Sunday. I wrote and recorded the entire song that afternoon. Later we found out that the cat lived. The owner, whom we had never met until then, probably thought we were some kind of insane cat stalkers. I never got around to writing words for the song. The second song, TV, has words, but they are predictable television-bashing pseudo-edgy little rhymes. I didn't even have the heart to write a second verse, so I just sing the first one twice. Mainly this song was inspired by a brand-new 1-second digital delay, which allowed me to make some cool effects with my guitar, which is why it ended up as a very long self-indulgent jam. These tracks were horribly distorted, and unsalvageable, so I used Cakewalk to slap a ginormous reverb effect on it, which makes it sound like a very bad live recording. Which is kind of what it was, actually.

Unflattering comments, however accurate, will be ignored. Flattering comments, however untrue, will be taken to heart as encouragement to continue this, not to overuse the term, self-indulgent little trip down memory lane.

Catking.

TV.

milifist · « **Reply #20 on:** April 30, 2007, 01:53:10 PM »

Downloaded!

I can't wait until I have chance to listen to them tonight. I'm glad the two soundcard method worked for you.

Keep'em coming!

pbsaurus · « **Reply #21 on:** April 30, 2007, 02:49:08 PM »

Can't download anything at work, so I'll try tonight if time permits.

Agent_Tachyon · « **Reply #22 on:** April 30, 2007, 04:33:36 PM »

Catking is pretty damn cool sounding.

milifist · « **Reply #23 on:** May 01, 2007, 01:51:17 PM »

Just got done listening to them. They are great!

I couldn't quite make out the words to TV, but it rocked none the less. Well done!

I was half-expecting aboriginal blues, but you can't really judge a book by the cover.

ivan · « **Reply #24 on:** May 01, 2007, 03:35:40 PM »

Fortunately for everyone, I went through my aboriginal blues stage before I had a 4-track.

Thank you, Agent and Milifist, for the kind words!

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Author Topic: At a loss (Read 6651 times)

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