Hi, Andrew,
In theory, most of the pieces are there to allow the Nakamichi Dragon to
be modified to do this. I have not investigated further, but the head is
four-channel and there are four head preamps which are internal to the
machine and not brought out. The EQ and Dolby processing would need to
be external for at least two tracks (but to have all four match, it
probably makes sense to treat all the same).
In the normal Dragon, the two pairs feed switches that select which
tracks are heard depending on direction of travel.
I have been thinking of doing this, but I have multiple Dragons and
MR-1s and multiple channels of A-D conversion, so it is less fuss and
muss to just run multiple machines in parallel creating what I call the
"cocktail party" monitoring environment with one or two machines being
assigned to each of my five monitors.
My Tascam 134 and 238 both suffered from belt-itis far too often for the
amount of use they received, so I sold them to another restoration
company that has a maintenance department. I have two DATATape CMS
four-track units that run at five different speeds (15/32-7.5) but do
not sound as good as the Nakamichi units. They suffice for voice logging
cassettes (their original intent). For the odd slide-sync tape, I make
two transfers, one in a Dragon and one on the CMS. I time adjust the cue
beep track using its lower quality mated audio tracks and then release
the assemblage of Dragon audio tracks and CMS cue track, all nicely time
aligned. I think I do about 0.2 of these tapes per year.
Cheers,
Richard
On 2014-03-13 4:59 PM, Andrew Dapuzzo wrote:
> Does anyone know if the same possibility exists for cassettes?
>
> machines that "could reproduce 4 tracks at once, which would speed up the
> digitization project. You'll need to reverse the two backwards channels" in
> the DAW?
>
> When we duplicated prerecorded music cassettes we recorded them this way
> but I am unaware of a playback machine that could playback all four at
> once. I assume they don't exist but .....
>
> Thanks
> Andrew Dapuzzo
> Sony DADC
--
Richard L. Hess email: [log in to unmask]
Aurora, Ontario, Canada 647 479 2800
http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm
Quality tape transfers -- even from hard-to-play tapes.
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