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Joined: Dec 2003
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I have a Tascam Porta3 Recording Mixer that I used exclusively before DAW. It was THE ultimate tool for analog work. The belts were new and no signs of "keystoning" of the head when I last used it. It was a valuable piece of gear in it's day.
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Joined: May 2000
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Quote:
The multitrack cassette is a rather poor sounding technology that I for one will never miss...
Tape hiss (yes, even with Dolby), limited high end, wow, flutter, limited bass response, in many instances the pitch changes as the takeup reel gets larger with tape, the loss in overdubbing, all of these anomalies have been solved via pcm digital recording. ....
That's why its headed out the door here. Doing some cleaning up and re-arranging in my music room at home. That floppy based keyboard from another thread was part of it as well. Technology marches on. That old board sure taught me a lot about sampling and sequencing .
I'm sure I copied all the MIDI sequences from those (176) floppy disks to a hard drive around here somewhere, so it's pretty much useless now.
That hard drive is still useable though (although it may be a 100 meg drive if its the really old one laying here)
Gotta start swapping out drives now and see whats on each one. 16 or 17 years of digital recordings takes a few drives to keep track of. I should probably get another terrabyte external drive and replace quite a few of them. Always something to do here.
I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome
Make your sound your own!
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Joined: May 2008
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Bob, I kept my Tascam 246. Beautiful machine. Sits in my "studio" for mood lighting. Fun times but I sure don't miss all that bouncing down tracks. BIAB makes computer recording fun for me. It's the next best thing to having live musicians with none of the hassles. And all of the computer DAWs and plugins available now - many free - it was overwhelming at first but fascinating once I got into it. I still get frustrated but I got frustrated with the Tascam back when too.  When I looked at some newer stand alone recorders I didn't care for those itty bitty screens. I think computer recording has done what Tascam originally did and that is bring home recording to the masses - only even more masses now. 
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Joined: Apr 2003
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Mine was a Yamaha MT-50, I wore the heads out on that thing & took it everywhere there were folks willing let me set up 4 mics  Before that it was 2 cassettes decks & a Radio Shack mixer, before that it was Stereo Panasonic Reel-To-Reel that I used a piece of film negative over the Erase Head to do overdubs... I miss the one-kob-per-function way of doing things, just reach over & give 'er a spin! 
i5 3.20GHz, 32gb RAM, 1tb SSD OS, 12tb HDD, 4gb gForce vid card, 32" monitor, Audient id44, Win10 x64, BiaB/RB 2023, Reaper 6,IK Multimedia Total Studio 3.5 MAX, Waves 10
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Bob at first I thought you were joking, just making a comment about modern life. But, if you're serious, you do know how to arm a track in Real Band, right? It's dead simple. Plug in your instrument, arm a track and hit record. That's it. Same as the Tascam. If you want three other friends over to record live with no overdubs then get an interface with 4 or more 1/4" inputs. Don't worry about plugins, EQ, midi, effects or mastering. Just use 4 tracks and the mixing faders and create a 2 track stereo mix. Just like the Tascam. If RB is too complex for you then use the freebie Audacity. If you want to be brave and innovative use an analog tape plugin to give you that great, crappy, noisy tape sound. Actually, you don't even need that, run your audio outputs through some old yard sale amp or tape deck and record it back into RB. Be happy.
Bob
Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.
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Joined: Jan 2002
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Just to go kind of old-school, I recorded this little song intro with my iPhone and it's internal microphone in my kitchen, iPhone mic pointed toward sound hole, about 10" away. 4 tracks: an arpeggiated chord, two tracks of simple plucking the bass note, and a little modal melody on the 4th track. Used internal reverb and delay build into Garageband. Again, this is a 5$ application. https://soundcloud.com/rockstar_not/4-track-record-acousticCheap 60$ acoustic guitar BTW, at least that's what I paid for it used on Craigslist. New they were around $300. -Scott
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Bob, Quote:
Bob at first I thought you were joking, just making a comment about modern life.
You had it right the first time. My tongue was firmly in cheek, except that I was serious about wishing I’d held on to the old Tascam 244 and about how much recording I’d accomplished on it.
So far, my favorite DAW has been Sonar 4 PE. It’s very intuitive and easy to use, but unfortunately mine is 32 bit only. It won’t even install on a 64 bit system. On my last PC I had Win 7 64 on the C drive and XP 32 on the D drive and I had it set up as a dual boot system with Sonar running on XP. It worked great until the MOBO fried.
I got a new PC custom built earlier this year and I intend to add another drive for XP 32 so I can install Sonar 4 PE, but I haven’t done it yet. I’ve looked at RB and I’ll probably give it a whirl at some point before bothering to add XP. RB looks fairly intuitive and the ability to generate tracks is a definite plus.
In the thread, I was also wistfully remembering the “good ole days” of recording on a dedicated unit. I didn’t mean to give the impression that I’m a Luddite.
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See, you had me worried there buddy. Bob
Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.
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Just checked a stack in the garage and yup, I've got a TASCAM PortaTwo which I was given by a customer, and which I never used. Why? Before that I had a TEAC 2340-SX SimulSync four-track reel-to-reel deck which I mixed through a TASCAM M-106 desk onto whatever cassette deck I had at the time. With an outboard Dolby AN-60 I could get up to 10 mono tracks with what was, up until the mid 1980s, acceptable noise levels. Got a bunch of material with great (well, to me) vocal harmony work, but no drums--which is why I got Band-In-A-Box in the first place.
I also have a Korg DDM-1 drum machine which was supposed to take the place of a drummer, but I still had to program it and dump sequences off onto cassette. What a pain. By the time I got the PortaTwo I had already embarked on my digital journey with BIAB v. 7 and Passport's Master Tracks Pro. It hass been another kind of struggle as I learn to work with audio in the digital domain, but it is an infinitely more elegant process. It's still not easy, but the results are fantastic compared to what I was able to produce on my own with tape. The journey has been a lot of fun--when not trying to pull my hair out because this or that doesn't behave as expected.
"My primary musical instrument is the personal computer."
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About 20 years ago when I was in Chicago, we had an 8 track Fostex reel-to-reel that was hooked to a 2 track mastering reel. Somehow you could sync the two if needed.
We had a nice board to mix with, but not being able to save settings .. ouch
Sure you could get a really good mix set up and move sliders easily .. but the next time you wanted to work on it, it was a crapshoot if anybody did anything else in the mean-time.
Digital convenience for the win (IMHO).
I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome
Make your sound your own!
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Ask sales and support questions about Band-in-a-Box using natural language.
ChatPG's knowledge base includes the full Band-in-a-Box User Manual and sales information from the website.
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XPro & Xtra Styles PAK Sets On Sale Now - Until May 15, 2026!
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Band-in-a-Box 2026 for Mac Videos
With the release of Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Mac, we’re rolling out a collection of brand-new videos on our YouTube channel. We’ll keep this forum post updated so you can easily find all the latest videos in one convenient spot.
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Holiday Weekend Hours
As we hop into the Easter weekend, here are our holiday hours:
April 3 (Good Friday): 8:00 AM – 4:00 PM PDT
April 4 (Saturday): Closed
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— Team PG
Update to Build 10 of RealBand® 2026 for Windows®!
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