Loadingā¦
25
My band's 4-track sound went from muddy to clean and all it took was one tape swap
Back in 2003 my band recorded everything on a Tascam 424 cassette 4-track in my parents' garage in Akron. The tapes sounded like a blanket was thrown over the whole mix, guitars blurred into the drums, vocals sat way back. We figured that was just how home recording worked, so we lived with it for about two years. Then a guy at a local music shop handed us a box of type II high bias cassettes and told us our old normal bias tapes were choking the high end. We swapped them in and tracked the same song the next weekend. Drums had snap, the guitars cut through, it honestly sounded like a different band. Anybody else remember the normal vs high bias tape thing, or was I just late to the party?
2 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In2 Comments
lily5747d ago
Oh man, the "blanket over the whole mix" thing hits so close to home. We did the same dumb thing with our Fostex, just figured that dull sound was the price you paid for not having a real studio. I remember spending hours messing with the EQ on our mixer trying to get the highs back, and it never worked because the tape itself was eating them. The day we finally tried high bias, my drummer literally pulled his headphones off and went "wait, what?" The drums just came alive with all that snap we thought we lost forever. Two years of thinking we were just bad at recording when it was a $3 tape the whole time.
4
max8087d ago
Switched to high bias and felt like we unlocked a cheat code.
7