8 tracks?

[Hog]

can 2 4 track recorders or 2 8 track recorders be connected together to double the tracks or am I talking nonsense? If Im not, how can this be done?

[Mouse]

You talking about old 4 and 8 tracks?

[Hog]

They can be new if they want too lol

[soundian]

They've got to have some way of syncing up so probably not unless they're designed that way.

Most digi recorders can be used as masters or slaves, and the master, if the timecode is transmitted properly between devices, will control the whole time thing.

[spellchecker]

I suppose if you had 2 four track recorders you could use one as a sort of mixing console?

i.e. Use one four track to record four inputs at once. Take the L and R from that four track, and plug it into tracks 1 and 2 of the other four track. So effectively, you could have a sort of eight track recorder, but then you wouldn't be able to mix the output of the first four track. This is a bit of a shit idea I'm wittering on about really.

Is there a specific reason you want to use hardware multi-track recorders instead of a PC/Mac? With a PC or Mac you can multitrack so many more tracks. Even if you have a cheapy soundcard, you can buy a small mixing desk from ebay for around 50 quid. That will allow you maybe four inputs at once (so if you wanted to mic up your guitar amp with four different mics, you can) and will include preamps too. Take the L and R out from the desk into the line-in of your soundcard, and there you have your very own multi-track recorder.

you can also buy a better soundcard that has a breakout box, but these don't usually have mic preamps which are useful.

which reminds me:

1x Creative SBLive available for a new home. Would swap for a few blank recordable CDs

1x Cambridge Soundworks surround speaker system for sale/swap. Includes 4 satellite speakers and big subwoofer.

Both in good working order. The SBLive is quite a snazzy card for a cheapy, it has non blocking access to the sound chip meaning you can record stuff, play stuff back, and play some more stuff back from a different source all at the same time. Nice technical description there.

[ghost]

I too recommend the SBLive and would happily swap you some blank CDRs for it... but I've got one. Still, wonder if I could fit two into my PC and *gasp* have multi inputs....

The technical term for the soundcard being able to record and play at the same time is "full duplex". Oh yes, 4 years at uni for that my boy...

[spellchecker]

Originally posted by ghost:

The technical term for the soundcard being able to record and play at the same time is "full duplex". Oh yes, 4 years at uni for that my boy...

Yeah, I was going to mention it being full duplex, but then I remembered that having full duplex capabilities isn't that uncommon now. But it was when I bought the card in 1999!! The best thing about the SBLive is being able to play multiple audio streams at once. Even now, most audio cards (especially those cheapy on motherboard jobs) only let one application write to the soundcard (e.g. play) at a time. In Linux, you get sound servers that mix incoming streams for you to get around this, but I don't know if windows XP now does such a thing?

what did you do at uni ghost, by the way?