My TASCAM 414MkII portable recorder
walkman.archive - 2013-10-15 06:06
No, I'm not in studio recording now. But I couldn't resist to get one of this super-cool device...
This is not a walkman, it's a compact studio recorder, model 414 MkII. I got it recently and I can assure you that it's a lot of fun to record with this compact recorder.
It is a 4-track recorder, at double speed with dbx capability.
It has four line/mic/guitar inputs as well as two more inputs and all those typical knobs in studio recorders.
The european model is blue; the US is grey.
My 5-yr son and I had a lot of fun with it, recording up to 4 different songs simultaneously (not stereo, only mono) and then play them and pan the songs to the left, right, play with the speed... a lot of fun.
We also recorded our voices at low speed for playing then at high speed, so we are transformed in "smurfs" :-D
It can record in some tracks while playing other tracks, which I find an amazing feature for compositors.
The recording quality is pretty good, although the response is only around 60-10.000Hz which is low, but it doesn't sound that bad at all. In fact it sounds very good, specially with dbx on, which cuts the hiss until it's not heard at all.
You can connect headphones, speakers and line out separately, which shows how good connectivity does it have.
So it's a very very interesting device. A bit complicated to start with until you understand how sound paths are (after studying the user manual carefully), but it's definitely worth to have if you like to experiment.
In fact, I think it can be a very nice device to do your own mixes in tapes, as you can connect two stereo inputs and mix songs easily with crossfades and then use your own deck to record the result, through the line out. I guess in this case the response is not limited to it's deck.
Hope you enjoy it!
deliverance - 2013-10-15 06:38
great post very informative
seb968 - 2013-10-15 07:24
These are great little machines; good if you feeling creative, hours of fun.
walkman.archive - 2015-01-27 06:06
And here you can see it working: