• Registered: 2011-02-08
  • Posts: 18

Topic: FF 800 to 16 track tape machine

i have a friend who recorded 16 tracks to tape. i am going to mix the album, but it turns out i'm also going to have to handle the conversion from tape to digital. at first i thought we'd run 8 channels at a time into the analog ins on my FF. so i'd have to manually synch the 2 sets of 8 tracks for mixing. we'd add a transient at the track beginning and ends to help out. then i thought...will the tape machine really play back at the exact same speed? with this cause phase issues? i don't know.

now, if i am right about that...and i'm not sure i am. then i should try and pick up another 8 tracks of comparable analog line in. any suggestions there?

thx

  • From: Germany
  • Registered: 2007-04-10
  • Posts: 9,776

Re: FF 800 to 16 track tape machine

It would certainly be better to rent an ADAT-based 8-channel converter in order to record all channels in one go.


Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

RME Support's Website

3 Reply by MC

  • MC
  • MC
  • Administrator
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  • From: Germany/Thailand
  • Registered: 2007-04-06
  • Posts: 25,599

Re: FF 800 to 16 track tape machine

An analog tape machine can not stay 'synced' unless it can slave to the DAW. A digital tape machine does automatically, and putting a transient then indeed is enough to align all tracks. You did not say how long the recording is. The longer the more possible deviation. Up to 5 minutes should be no problem. If you did not put the left channel of stereo on the first block and the right channel on the second block then a small offset might be no problem at all.

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

MC's Website

  • From: Germany
  • Registered: 2007-04-10
  • Posts: 9,776

Re: FF 800 to 16 track tape machine

Good points. I sometimes manually align audio and video, but I'm not sure I'd do it with audio tracks...

It also depends on how well separated the tracks are. Studio recorded tracks of individual instruments may be less critical than separate tracks of a multitrack acoustic (classical) recording, where there is a lot more crosstalk between microphones.

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

RME Support's Website

  • Registered: 2011-02-08
  • Posts: 18

Re: FF 800 to 16 track tape machine

ok, thx. i've leaned a lot from this. still have some questions. so forget my idea of aligning transients from an analog machine. seems like that would be a mess. recordings are less then 5 minutes each. maybe 3-4 minutes average.

what about the time code option hardware for fireface? i didn't know this existed and it sounds like it could sync with a smpte signal from the tape machine. if the machine has that. can find out. but how that works in practice i don't know. my daw (samplitude) is put in slave mode and starts recording based on timecode sent from tape machine? then sync should be at least good every frame...or like 1/30th of a second...good enough.

seems getting an adat 8 channel converter would be easiest but won't i be taking a step down in converter quality unless i get something close to my FF 800?

thx again.

  • Registered: 2011-02-08
  • Posts: 18

Re: FF 800 to 16 track tape machine

went with the adat 8 channel converter. behringer ada8000. after considering everything i learned today it seemed like the best and easiest option. thx mc and rme support.