BigRedX Posted September 20, 2020 Share Posted September 20, 2020 What noise reduction system does the Fostex use? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dad3353 Posted September 20, 2020 Share Posted September 20, 2020 40 minutes ago, BigRedX said: What noise reduction system does the Fostex use? It's a Fostex 460, which has Dolby B & C; Dolby C would be used when recording hi-speed (3.75...) multi-track stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nail Soup Posted September 20, 2020 Author Share Posted September 20, 2020 I think I didn’t use any noise reduction though. It was a long time ago though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigRedX Posted September 20, 2020 Share Posted September 20, 2020 6 hours ago, Nail Soup said: I think I didn’t use any noise reduction though. It was a long time ago Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigRedX Posted September 21, 2020 Share Posted September 21, 2020 Apologies for the blank post above. I was going to write something yesterday, but my reply was getting too complex for me to type on my phone and after deleting what little I had written I then hit "reply" instead of cancel. Anyway... I would have thought you would have used noise reduction. IME all cassette recorders generated far too much tape hiss especially when bouncing tracks for NR not to be an essential option. Dolby B was fairly useless, but Dolby C was pretty good. On the 4-track cassette player I had, using Dolby C, we could go two bounces and still have a stereo master that we could make copies from without the results being too terrible. Also, unlike DBX, Dolby C didn't mess up the sync track, if you were using one. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpondonBassed Posted September 21, 2020 Share Posted September 21, 2020 I seem to recall that noise reduction was frowned upon in some circles. Tape noise was reckoned to be less of a handicap to the music than the head-under-a-blanket sound of NR. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigRedX Posted September 21, 2020 Share Posted September 21, 2020 11 minutes ago, SpondonBassed said: I seem to recall that noise reduction was frowned upon in some circles. Tape noise was reckoned to be less of a handicap to the music than the head-under-a-blanket sound of NR. If Dolby B was your only option, and you were making a single generation copy on a decent "HiFi" cassette machine from a good quality source then you were probably better off with using noise reduction. However all but the very cheapest 4-track machines had either DBX or Dolby C NR which were both vastly superior. For 4-track recording where you would almost certainly be doing at least one bounce plus a stereo master mix which would then be used to run off your demo cassette copies, you really needed to make use of the NR otherwise the tape hiss would start to over-power some parts of the recording. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nail Soup Posted September 21, 2020 Author Share Posted September 21, 2020 22 minutes ago, BigRedX said: If Dolby B was your only option, and you were making a single generation copy on a decent "HiFi" cassette machine from a good quality source then you were probably better off with using noise reduction. However all but the very cheapest 4-track machines had either DBX or Dolby C NR which were both vastly superior. For 4-track recording where you would almost certainly be doing at least one bounce plus a stereo master mix which would then be used to run off your demo cassette copies, you really needed to make use of the NR otherwise the tape hiss would start to over-power some parts of the recording. I was a bit niaive back then, didn't know much about noise reduction..... probably associated Dolby with Audiophiles etc to be honest. I was always working alone really...... 4-track was a solo activity, never collaborated so even less chance to exchange ideas about NR and so on. And no internet or Basschat either! In practice I only ever did one bounce per song, and tape noise was not the limiting factor in my recordings anyway! Some of the recordings ending up sounding good in a noisy lo-fi way. Others sounded the bad kind of lo-fi! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nail Soup Posted September 22, 2020 Author Share Posted September 22, 2020 Regarding a four channel audio interface, I found this one from Behringer. Sells cheap, like a lot of Beheringer stuff - e.g £68 plus postage. Look like it would meet my needs for the cassettes, and could double as a little mixer to feed into e.g powered PA speaker etc. If I'm reading the spec correctly. Or I could sell it afterwards. https://www.behringer.com/behringer/product?modelCode=P0ALM Advice/opinions welcome. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ahpook Posted September 22, 2020 Share Posted September 22, 2020 (edited) 11 minutes ago, Nail Soup said: Regarding a four channel audio interface, I found this one from Behringer. Sells cheap, like a lot of Beheringer stuff - e.g £68 plus postage. Look like it would meet my needs for the cassettes, and could double as a little mixer to feed into e.g powered PA speaker etc. If I'm reading the spec correctly. Or I could sell it afterwards. https://www.behringer.com/behringer/product?modelCode=P0ALM Advice/opinions welcome. I think that can only send the stereo mix to your PC, not four isolated tracks at the same time. Edited September 22, 2020 by ahpook 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nail Soup Posted September 22, 2020 Author Share Posted September 22, 2020 4 minutes ago, ahpook said: I think that can only send the stereo mix to your PC, not four isolated tracks at the same time. That makes total sense.... now that you say it 😖 Maybe I'll go for Behringer UMC404HDsuggested by @MartinB earlier! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Woodinblack Posted September 22, 2020 Share Posted September 22, 2020 I have the 2 channel one of the behringer and it is great. But then I also have the X18 if I want to record everything! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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