Can I use two MDs as a 4-track recorder?

[JamesW]

I need a small portable device for recording four tracks simultaneously, and of the few around - Tascam, Zoom etc - they all can only record a maximum of two tracks simultaneously, whereas I'd like to record three of four tracks at once (at my band rehearsals). There are some recorders that can record 4 or more tracks simultaneously, but these tend to be the high-end expensive models and aren't so portable either.

So I've had an idea: why not use two minidisc recorders, with two mics going into one MD (for tracks 1 and 2), and two into the other (for tracks 3 and 4), in oreder to record four musicians. Then when I transfer both stereo recordings to my computer / digital audio workstation, all I need to do is separate all four tracks and then align them so that they're all sync'd together. This way I'll end up with four separately recorded tracks for mixing / overdubbing etc.

Has anyone any thoughts on the above? I did wonder if one recorder might recorder a fraction faster than the other, or otherwise cause sync problems. Possibly a flanging effect might occur when all four tracks are played back together on the computer. I'm ust wondering if it's worth splashing out another £100 on a second MD recorder.

Thanks in advance. (I'm also not sure where to post this hence adding it to more than one forum - sorry!)

JamesW.

[jadeclaw]

Normally, that should be no problem, as these recorders are quartz controlled. However, long term stability might be a problem, so after 5 hours of continuous recording, they might run out of sync, but half an hour shouldn't be a problem.

[marcoleavitt]

No way is this going to work, at least not for the application you want to use it for. Okay, I haven't tried it, but I just can't see how you can sync up two or more recorders without the waveforms being slightly out of phase with each other -- the flanging effect you said you were worried about. The only way I can think of to do this, is if you can keep all of the sounds completely isolated, but you would need a professional studio for that, which you obviously don't have access to or you wouldn't be asking a question like this. I guess you could give everybody headphones and record the guitar and bass direct, but the mics for the vocals and the drums are going to pick up each other. Maybe you could record the vocals and drums to one minidisc so they will already be in snyc with each other and the bass and guitar to the other, but you'll need a good mixer for everybody to hear what's going on. You also need some kind of slate sound at the beginning of the song to help you sync later. Since the guitar and bass aren't miced, I don't know how you could pull that off. Doesn't sound like much fun with everybody wired up like that and playing in silence. Also, every guitarist I've ever known would rather die than record direct. I believe Tascam recently introduced a four-track Mp3 recorder that costs less than two minidisc recorders by the way.

[dex Otaku]

I have actually done this with non-MD digital equipment without seeing any drifting in timing at all. The big problem tends to be finding a reliable way to sync the recordings afterwards.

As long as you start the recording session with the same sound recorded simultaneously on all tracks, and end the session with the same [to measure if there's been drift] things should be usable afterwards.

Still, it's a more complicated [and time-consuming] way of multitracking than I'd want to use again.

[marcoleavitt]

Minidisc does seems to be very time stable, and I agree that drift probably wouldn't be the big problem. But if you were trying to sync, say a guitar, with a faint vocal in the background with a recording of the vocals with a faint guitar in the background, it seems like the overlapping signals would tend to either cancel each other out, or cause unwanted echos or flanging, unless they were really precisely synced up with other. Still, I've known people to make nice recordings with the humblest of equipment, so who knows.

[JamesW]

Well.......I've finally tried it (with an MZN-710 and an MZN-NH1), and it works brilliantly! Transferred it to my PC for editing and synching the parts together, and it was really easy. And in fact, you could have a couple of tracks slightly out of synch in order to create interesting delay/echo effects. But in general it's a success.

Now I'm battling with mic placement and so on, but that's another kettle f fish...

As for the tascam mp3 recorder, this and all the other 'pocket' digital 4-track recorders, do NOT allow you to record more than 2 tracks simultaneously. I checked them all and none of them allow 3 or 4 tracks to be recorded together. So I'm glad the two minidiscs solution works :wink:

Thanks,

JamesW

[marcoleavitt]

I'm glad to hear it worked out for you. I'm happy to have been wrong about this, actually.

[JamesW]

Well I was quite surprised myself. I did expect to get flanging problems etc. I also thought that playing back a disc in a different recorder than was used to record it would cause problems. But it was ok, seems that MD is very stable and precise, at least in the short term. Not sure about 1hr or more recordings, but we're only talking about 5 minute tunes anyway. Although..I have a feeling even long recordings would be ok.

I found it easy to synch aswell. I used two mics for the drums, one for bass (amp), one for the sax....and I tend to get quite a bit of leakage - hard to separate the instruments really (we don't have screens, it's quite a basic set up really). But leakage makes it easier to synch the parts together.

[722Forever]

I used to record the drum parts when I was in my band a few years ago.

We'd use 3 machines: 2 for recording, which took of course 4 mono parts (kick, snare, toms and a mono overhead mix), and one for playback of the clicktrack I'd create so the drummer could stay in time.

Then I'd just mix the drums down to stereo in the studio I worked at (before I had my home studio that I have now).

Worked a treat. Syncing was never a problem, as I'd just get the drummer to click his sticks together once before the song began. Line up the sticks, then the whole thing is synced perfectly.

:smile: