Tascam dr40x Vs porta studio

PetGerbil

If I want to record a 3 minute song with 2 guitars, bass, and vocals. It will take me approximately 12 minutes, And every track will be bang on synchronized with each other. (It will be rubbish, but in time...)
Plug DR-40 into PC with USB lead. PC sees it as a drive, load into DAW. Job done.

The problem I have is I'm never doing one thing. Sometimes I'm mixing, sometimes using VST instruments, sometimes etc etc
I can set it up for acceptable latency, but depending on what I'm doing It's easier to not have to worry about it.

If I want to record an overdub at a later date, after I've got VST drums and synths all over the shop, what's easier.. going into the settings for the DAW, resetting everything, muting all the tracks working out what Asio buffer settings to use...

Or, Hit "Record" on the DR-40 and have it done in 3 minutes, and then pipe it into my project. ?

andy_k

PetGerbil said:

If I want to record a 3 minute song with 2 guitars, bass, and vocals. It will take me approximately 12 minutes, And every track will be bang on synchronized with each other. (It will be rubbish, but in time...)
Plug DR-40 into PC with USB lead. PC sees it as a drive, load into DAW. Job done.

The problem I have is I'm never doing one thing. Sometimes I'm mixing, sometimes using VST instruments, sometimes etc etc
I can set it up for acceptable latency, but depending on what I'm doing It's easier to not have to worry about it.

If I want to record an overdub at a later date, after I've got VST drums and synths all over the shop, what's easier.. going into the settings for the DAW, resetting everything, muting all the tracks working out what Asio buffer settings to use...

Or, Hit "Record" on the DR-40 and have it done in 3 minutes, and then pipe it into my project. ?

I'm not picking holes, but if you have VST drums, and synths all over, how do you record over it on the Tascam?
Why do you have to mute things?
I render my VST based tracks to audio as I go, to save resources.
Buffer is either 64 or 128 for recording, or 256 or 512 for mixing.
To keep things in sync, you will have to export a copy of your mix as a wav, import into Tascam, to allow you to play along for a 'syncd' overdub, won't you?
Or are you going back to your original first recording on the Tascam, and recording extra parts to then re-import into the DAW, where the VST drums and synths exist?
seems a bit of a faff, but if it works for you, it works.
We all have different process, and I have go used to my own, so I am genuinely interested how others get it done.

PetGerbil

If I had a mix that I wanted to try some guitars on, I would render it over USB to the Dr-40. Turn It off and on again
 (you choose at power on whether you want it to use USB power and be a recorder, or a Hard drive...)
 Then overdub guitar onto track 3+4 (maybe multiple times until i get it right. Heh!)
Turn off and on again, tell it to be Harddrive. Then bring all 4 tracks into DAW. 
Because tracks 1+2 and 3+4 are sync'd perfectly, If I line up the mixdown track 1+2 with the rest of the mix 3+4 will also be lined up.
It won't be just acceptable, It will be sample accurate.

andy_k

PetGerbil said:

If I had a mix that I wanted to try some guitars on, I would render it over USB to the Dr-40. Turn It off and on again
 (you choose at power on whether you want it to use USB power and be a recorder, or a Hard drive...)
 Then overdub guitar onto track 3+4 (maybe multiple times until i get it right. Heh!)
Turn off and on again, tell it to be Harddrive. Then bring all 4 tracks into DAW. 
Because tracks 1+2 and 3+4 are sync'd perfectly, If I line up the mixdown track 1+2 with the rest of the mix 3+4 will also be lined up.
It won't be just acceptable, It will be sample accurate.

I think I understand what you are doing, and if it works for you, carry on.
It might not be the 'best' way, but it is what you are comfortable doing.
I prefer to do multiple takes inside the DAW, and then I can decide what works, or even edit different parts, all it takes is having the settings correct for the task at hand, a few clicks with the mouse rather than a completely different process with a different machine - which takes me out of the 'project' at hand more than it needs to.
I tend to treat recording and mixing as separate projects anyway really, if I am recording I will have mic's and DI set up, or it will be a multiple mic / multiple take session, and the mixing decisions are done later, without worrying about the stuff needed for recording.
If I use a lot of VST instruments or effects, and add midi to the project, I try and leave the project with a rendered 'mix' version of the entire thing, and then all the VST stuff can be bypassed, which makes the session load quickly next time.
Any new tracks recorded can be done while monitoring this 'mix' version, which helps to keep any latency down to a negligable amount ( ie nothing to hear here )
Am I right in thinking, if you are using a stereo track to monitor, on 1-2, you will have only a stereo track 3-4 to record to?
You are limited to doing one great take, or can you punch in a part if needed? Say you record a great verse and chorus, but you screw up at the end, can you jump back in at the screw up, or do you have to do a new full take?
If I tried this,I would soon give up, as often I find there are 'flaws' in a recording that make it interesting, and it is nice to experiment with different takes.
All this can be done on a single track in Reaper, which I think supports up to 64 takes, per track, although I try not to let things get too complicated in my projects - easier to come back to them over time if they are simple and straight forward.

PetGerbil

andy_k said:

PetGerbil said:

If I had a mix that I wanted to try some guitars on, I would render it over USB to the Dr-40. Turn It off and on again
 (you choose at power on whether you want it to use USB power and be a recorder, or a Hard drive...)
 Then overdub guitar onto track 3+4 (maybe multiple times until i get it right. Heh!)
Turn off and on again, tell it to be Harddrive. Then bring all 4 tracks into DAW. 
Because tracks 1+2 and 3+4 are sync'd perfectly, If I line up the mixdown track 1+2 with the rest of the mix 3+4 will also be lined up.
It won't be just acceptable, It will be sample accurate.

...Am I right in thinking, if you are using a stereo track to monitor, on 1-2, you will have only a stereo track 3-4 to record to?
You are limited to doing one great take, or can you punch in a part if needed? Say you record a great verse and chorus, but you screw up at the end, can you jump back in at the screw up, or do you have to do a new full take?
If I tried this,I would soon give up, as often I find there are 'flaws' in a recording that make it interesting, and it is nice to experiment with different takes.
All this can be done on a single track in Reaper, which I think supports up to 64 takes, per track, although I try not to let things get too complicated in my projects - easier to come back to them over time if they are simple and straight forward.

You can record as many overdubs as you want. But you can only listen to the last one recorded.

No punching in.

I should state I don't actually do this very often, as my workflow consists of "play guitar,come up with a riff that i like, Record it so i don't forget,maybe overdub some bass and another guitar.. squirt it into reaper to chop out the start and endings (or that rubbish middle bit) squirt it back to dr-40 to play to non existent bandmates or overdub some more to the now mixed 2 track.

It really is much much quicker than messing about recording on a computer (for me). If I come up with something, I can have it recorded in seconds. I then use the Daw for what it's good at,mixing.

I realise that this isn't the best way if you've got a different workflow, But I haven't. So...

PetGerbil

Also. You can record a click on tracks 1+2. Fire up a monster amp modelling plugin in standalone mode that needs huge resources in your PC, and offload the recording to something that has Zero latency. Without touching any buffer or Asio settings. Hurrah!!