4/6/8 Track Recorder Suggestions?

I moved most of my music hardware setup away from my desktop, which I have always used for recording. It seemed like the computer was always a distraction as my job is from my computer. But now I need a way to record tracks to later work on in the DAW. I'm looking at Tascam Portastudios/Pocketstudio - the digital ones look like they would let me import individual tracks into my DAW later as wav files. I'm not looking for anything too fancy, just something to get the job done (right now I am using my DR-40).

Anyone have any experience with these, or suggest something along these lines that might serve me better? On paper, these sound like they would do the trick, but I've never used one.

I'd be recording mostly Neutron, Model D, modular, TT-303 and hopefully sooner rather than later RD-8.

I haven’t used the ones you mentioned, but I just picked up a Zoom Livetrak 12 earlier this year and can recommend it...saw they have out or about to be out a smaller one, 8 tracks I think? Might be in a similar price range.

I'm after a 4+ track next. Digital I guess, not worried about tape, the 2nd hand eBay options seems to be fetching good money still.

  On 10/21/2019 at 10:07 PM, auxien said:

I haven’t used the ones you mentioned, but I just picked up a Zoom Livetrak 12 earlier this year and can recommend it...saw they have out or about to be out a smaller one, 8 tracks I think? Might be in a similar price range.

This looks nice, but I couldn't find an 8 track and this is probably a little overkill when I was seriously considering the Pocketstudio. Looks like the L-8 is coming out at the end of November. Looks like another one that would have worked better than the Tascam options, but not sure I am patient enough to keep using the DR-40 until then

  On 10/21/2019 at 10:20 PM, Stickfigger said:

i had a zoom r8 (?) and recorded a bit of stuff with it. Really nice little device and very easy to get the files off and into your DAW

The Zoom R8 looks much better than the Tascam stuff in the same price range. See I can definitely pull the individual tracks into DAW the way I want, even some amount of DAW integration, and can record 24bit, whereas Tascam cannot.  Pretty cool, pretty sure I will go with this one, as its pretty cheap.

I have a Zoom R16 I got for cheap and tolerate it well enough. Editing and mixing on it seems insanely fiddly but I'm happy enough just using it as a .wav recorder.

I'm also on team Zoom after buying an L-20. Auto save + recording a few seconds before starting + switching between card and interface mode. Bigly IDM.

I've had a few multi tracks, love them. It's great if you can pick up an older machine for not much that was expensive back in the day - often they will have high end A/D converters etc. much better than what you might find on an affordable soundcard today.

Some disadvantages to older machines include lack of USB connection (or slow USB if they have it), small (for today) HD sizes and small monochrome displays that can make editing fiddly.

I've currently got a Tascam 2488, which I can recommend for the quality of sound, ease of use and usably-sized HD. It cost £999 when first released - think I paid about £150. It's also got USB for transfer of tracks/songs to computer however this process is slow - can take a good hour or so to transfer a whole song as separate tracks. It does work though and very useful to be able to get the tracks into a DAW for final editing, mastering and publishing on line. Has a good selection of onboard effects and is well laid out and pretty quick to get the hang of.

The 2488 also has 8 audio inputs allowing multiple tracks to be recorded simultaneously - great for making a whole track "live" in one take if that's your thing.

I've also owned a couple of Fostex HD Multitracks - the VF80 and MR-8. Both pretty similar apart from the VF80 has a spinning HD and MR-8 uses removable SD cards instead. I found the Fostex machines to be really usable and simple, easy to get tracks built-up and a good groove going. However they only record in stereo so you're creating your song one track at a time and either editing retrospectively or performing all the mutes, fade-ins/outs etc. manually whilst recording individual tracks - was never a big problem for me though. These can be picked up really cheap now I think and are a great way to get into hardware multitracking for minimal cost. Sound quality and effects etc. on both machines was really good imo and always sounded better to my ears than the same stuff recorded into a DAW via soundcard.

One thing I think is extremely important to have on any multitrack is MIDI connectivity. I've yet to find one that will (easily) act as a MIDI slave, so you need to bear in mind that the any multitrack you buy will be acting as the master MIDI Clock source and needs to sit at the start of your chain. You can certainly find machines with MIDI In (my 2488 has one), but usually they do not sync to MIDI Clock, and instead sync to MTC - this works in a different way to Clock and is not practical (imo) for most electronic music making purposes.

One machine I'd definitely have a look at is the Fostex DMT-8 - it's an older machine, no USB etc. but you often can find them with enhanced storage (up to 80gb with the right mod I think) so still useable today. Not only does it have a cool name with DMT in it, it's got some really cool features - multiple ins, flexible editing, great mixing section with 3 band EQ and aux sends. Not had the pleasure of owning one myself but have always wanted to...

Thanks again for the suggestions/info - I finally ended up going with the Livetrak L-12. More than I wanted to spend and probably more tracks than I will ever use, but overall looks much nicer than the other options and saw it was class compliant so I could easily incorporate iOS audio, a nice bonus. After I started leaning heavily towards the L-12 I did a lot of reading on the upcoming L-8 thinking I would hold out for that, but wasn't digging that nearly as much, but will very likely pick up one for my kid for Christmas, so Zoom thanks you all for the sales.

  On 10/22/2019 at 10:50 AM, BCM said:

Fostex DMT-8

I'm not sure but I think the DMT-8 (and probably a lot of similar machines) can also send MIDI CC from at least some of its controls, so in theory it could also double as a DAW control surface. I had a roomate that used one of the smaller early 2000s Fostex digital mixers as a DAW controller, didn't use the audio section of it at all.  Worked great and was cheaper secondhand than most similar dedicated control surfaces at the time.

EDIT: actually the DMT-8 is old enough that the mixer is analog, so it probably isn't one of the ones that sends CC but I don't have time to really look in to it right now. But given that you can get one cheaper than a lot of similarly specced budget mixers, so being analog is potentially another point in favor of it being an interesting thing.

indeed, DMT-8 is a great mixing device, doesn't send MIDI CC though.

my Tascam 2488 is also a fantastic mixer in its own right, with some really nice built in FX to boot. it also sends and receives CC from/to the faders so is pretty useful.