First Recorder???

OK so I'm wondering..... what was the first "Serious" recorder that you had...or used?

Not counting going into a studio where you paid for recording time OR a basic cassette player in your bedroom with a cheap mic OR recording your band to a cassette from the board mix...... what did you use for multi track when you started?

I didn't realize until I wrote this... I'm actually on my 5th generation of a personal multitrack studio.


Here's my multitrack history.

My first multitrack recorder was a used TEAC 4 track reel to reel tape recorder. I used a Tapco 8 channel mixer into the tracks, sync recording was possible. Problem was the tape would not stay on the reels when I hit stop after a FF or Rewind. The result was a totally ruined track. I ended up selling it to a recording studio. I had bought it from a hobbist.

My second...and more successful mutiltrack was a TASCAM PORTA-ONE. Four tracks, on a cassette, with a Roland programmable drum machine, this was pretty cool but again, very limited because bouncing increased noise, and made track mixes permanent. Sold it on E-bay when I bought....

My third multitrack was Cakewalk Pro 8 delux with a DMAN PCI card. This was a good studio and worked well until I needed to update my computer's OS. DMAN didn't update their drivers so the studio was not functional after that..... so.....

Fourth multitrack... bought on Ebay.... Korg D-1600 all in one..... used it a few months, I found it to difficult to work with, since it had a very small and cryptic control screen, and it was all in the audio domain... in other words, no midi , I didn't really like it, and sold it on Ebay.

Fifth.... and current multitrack...again Cakewalk using Music Creator 4 with a Saffire interface. Having a blast and recording my music. Hopefully, this studio will continue to work for quite some time.

That's my story...what's yours?

1. AMR MCR-4 four track cassette rack unit. Huge flywheel on motor, lowest wow and flutter of any cassette I've used, tape speed control, I still have it just for that so I can get cassettes in tune when I do transfers, playback sound is as good as cassette gets.

2. Alesis ADAT (black face). I was the first non commerical owner in Dallas. Paid $4000 for one of the first ones. Also got one of the first (USA made) Mackie 24.8 consoles paid $4000 for it. Recorded about 60 projects on that rig. Cakewalk for DOS 5 with a JLCooper DATASync for timecode from the ADAT. Rock solid chase lock.

3. Upgraded to three 20bit ADATs.

4. Cakewalk 2.2 with RME HDSP Hammerfall. Imported all my MIDI projects then transfered all my ADAT tapes in to line up in the project. Made first full backup of about 70 songs. Sold all my ADATs, the Mackie, two full racks of outboard gear, almost all my hardware (a room full)... on e-bay.

5. Cakewalk Sonar 6 with Lynx Two A card. Over the top sound quality and the computer does it all, full automation of everything. Woo Hoo ! Just a few preamps, guitar effects, and mics left in the hardware pile. SoundCraft Compact 4 is my analog front end.

cakewalk "gold", i think was the name of it. i'm pretty sure the computer i had was an AMD of some kind. a 200+ if memory serves. at any rate the cakewalk software came bundled with a soundblaster live i bought. two audio tracks max or something like that. i had a carvin mixer (which i still have), and a no-name SM58 knockoff that i borrowed from a friend. carvin went into the SB with a RCA Y adapter, if i recall. i had the breakout box but couldn't get it to mount in the computer (side screws in the case, bottom screws on the breakout box).

the rest, of course, is history

I never owned one, well unless you count a mini disc for recording..

DAT machines were quite expensive in the UK.. so if I wanted to put stuff to DAT a friend would borrow his machine to me.

or I used to use other peoples studios..

but I had an amiga.. 4 channels and a mod tracker when I started.. so that was my first multi track I guess.hehe

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And then came my first true love, sonar ;)

I got a lot of hours out of this workhorse.

ORIGINAL: vaiman

ORIGINAL: CreatingNoise

Fostex X-15-----------------Guitar Tracks----Sonar

I did some early recording with two cassette decks. Never reel to reel though.

Fostex X-15... damn I hated mine
Cool thread.

The most money I ever wasted on gear ($900) was the Fostex 812 mixer. The thing was so noisy I coudn't even use it for recording. I didn't have the heart to sell it to anyone else so I just gave it away to a band to use in their rehearsal room. Never bought a single Fostex product after that... an almost 20 year boycott and counting. I also talked a lot of other folks out of buying Fostex gear. The message here is there is high risk for a company to let even one bad product go out with their name on it.

ORIGINAL: Fog



but I had an amiga.. 4 channels and a mod tracker when I started.. so that was my first multi track I guess.hehe

Man, I thought that was so cool. Amiga 500, the 2000, then 3000 with '040 cpu... It was so easy to make good sounding rhythm tracks (for me). The step sequencer is kind of a step in that way.

I think I had one of those tascam porta 1's to start. Used that for a long time until I got cakewalk home studio xl (must have been about '99). I used it for a couple years just to make midi tracks that I'd play through my korg m3r. It was a big revelation to me that HS2002 did audio too (hsxl may have too, but I never did that with it). Those cakewalk people and their upgrade offers.... Now I'm waiting for 8.3.

Gary.... that looked like the first reel to reel I had too.

wow... fun stuff!

In college I had use of a Crown 800 which had all sorts of cool features for doing all sorts of tricks.

After college I had to find something I could afford, ended up with a Fostex X-15... not serious in terms of audio quality, though you could do a decent job if you were attentive, but it was so easy to use that I wrote and recorded a ton of stuff.

Then it was a Teac 80-8 and then an MCI JH-16 for multi-track, and an Otari MX-5050 and an Ampex AG-440 for stereo.

I still have all of them, and I still use the MCI. I was still using the X-15 as a scratch pad until very recently. The two track and 8 track machines still get work for transfers, but that's about it.

I never did get around to digital tape, I used both the ADAT and the DA-88 in other peoples studios, and they were OK, but both seemed plagued with annoying problems.

On the computer side I had a C-64 with a cartridge made by Sequential Circuits driving a DrumTracks and a MultiTracks. Next was an Amiga which was eventually equipped with a Studio16 AD-516 card and that served me well for a very long time, mostly because I was still using tape for audio and the computer for MIDI - mostly.

When I finally jumped ship CWPA V6 was just around the corner, and I've been a Cakewalk fan (mostly) since. These days I have a Frontier Design Dakota/Montana/Sierra combo and two Tango 8 channel converter boxes. I'd like more channels, but I can't justify them just yet.

My, what a long strange trip...

Sonar is my first dabble in the world of Sequencing & DAW's in general.

Prior to that, we were running a piar of Fostex D90 8-tracks, slaved together for 16 tracks.

We paid £1,400 EACH

This is the Sony TC-377 I was using in 1976


I then bought the TEAC 144 Portastudio when that came out. Later upgrading it to the 244 which had built in noise reduction (gasps of amazement).

I then jumped up to 8 tracks with a Fostex Model 80 and a Revox B77 HS half track for mastering. My compositions were based around the output of a BBC Model B computer running the UMI MIDI sequencer connected to a the inevitable Yamaha DX7 and Roland bits.

A few years later I bought my first PC and, after messing with Voyetra Sequencer Plus, eventually discovered Cakewalk products.

This may qualify as "serious", but here goes.

I had an old Grundig reel to reel in the late '70s. It was stereo and had sound with sound. It also had the green "eye" tube that acted like a VU meter. I bought it used and used it for five years. Can't remember why, I had to leave it behind when I moved to California in '83. Around '93, I had an opportunity to return for a visit and bring along an ADAT. After 10+ years, the Grundig worked like a charm. I was able to transfer a bunch of old tapes to digital. I've been "remixing" some of the tunes in Sonar.

If you count messing with my Dad's stuff as a kid... Pioneer RT-707 (stereo, but no multitrack).

On my own: Started in 2004 on a PC with EMU-1212m and Adobe Audition 1.5.

Now: PC with EMU 1820m, using Sonar 7PE/Audition 3/Project 5... Frontier TranzPort control surface, Event ALP 5 monitors, Sibelius 5.

 
Yamaha MT1X cassette 4-track recorder 29 years ago. I believe the members of my band all pitched in to get it, but it stayed with me most of the time anyway.
 
Then in college I upgraded to a Tascam 424 cassette 4-track, this time I had a box (JL Cooper PPS-1) that wrote/read a form of SMPTE time code so I can sync it with my Ensoniq EPS sampler workstation's sequencer.
 
My first job after college I bought a Windows 95 PC and Cakewalk Professional 3.01 and an Opcode MQX-32M ISA card MIDI interface. Stuck with the Cake ever since!