Tape Recording

In the modern Digital Recordings day we always deal by getting siginal from analog and directly put into Digital Audio Workstation. Digital Audio Workstation came out around early 1970s. Before that time we have to use Tape to record the sound on it. Tape Machines were invented around 1928. The day at soundpark recording studio was pretty exciting. But the first impression for me to getting into studio is really amazing. The place look normal not really modern but they have all the amazing gears and equipments there, really good microphones, outboard gears, synths and other equipments. The way they do treatment and decoration for each recording rooms are also pretty amazing. They have different elements decorated in the room to get different tones and absorb certain frequencies.

Since i'm role with the runner my job is to setup mics and help what other people needs. But recording on tape is really different from recording straight to the DAW.

It's a bit more job to get the signal get onto the tape and send it to the DAW. So we get the signal from the microphone send it to tape preamps and send it through the tape and come back into the DAW. Since we are recording the whole album on the day I have chance to work on tape machine for a few times. In the tape machine at sound park studio the maximum number we can do for multitracking is 24.

Need to setup the tape properly into the tape operator and we need to make the start point and get everything ready. What tape operator mainly do is rewinding, go foward and recording. So for every track we are recording need to make sure where the track starts on tape. So can easily go back to the certain area and check it back.

Having an experience recording on tape the whole day is really good for me. It’s different from all the experience I had before and it is a useful experience for me in the future. I believe this technology will be around for the next few years or maybe the time will come back and people are using it again but the problem will be the cost I believe.