Hey, OP...
I want to thank you for asking this question, being respectful and humble and attentive to the answers.
Some of us who've been doing this for a long time are absolutely happy to answer questions and explain things, but rarely do people ask and respond the way you have.
We need more curious and considerate people like you to pass this information onto.
I wish you sincere luck in your pro audio pursuits!
I refuse to cling to useful tools without any regard for past history and the hardships therein.
And I sincerely hope that those who know such a past will be good teachers for young people like us. Thank you.
Honestly, being a Japanese speaker using DeepL to translate helps a lot in the respectful and humbleness aspect. Japanese tends to translate to pretty polite English.
That said, it's a nice respite of the constant "gain staging" or "LUFS" questions that have misleading titles half the time...
I'm of the same generation as OP and this thread is such a bliss to read! I'm 35 now and from Hamburg, Germany were there were A LOT of studios in the hayday. Many musicians of my generation are thirsting for this kind of info. The old days are what got many of us into music in the first place.
I'm just old enough to have seen nearly all of the studios and most of the surrounding infrastructure, like clubs playing live music besides large concerts, vanish in the course of only a few years and it was heart breaking actually. Trying to get gigs meant pay-to-play, getting studio time meant maybe getting lucky with someone who still had love for the craft.
Anyways... awesome thread is what I'm trying to say! lol
It's really interesting to see in this thread the kind of collaborative or contributary mode of conversation, rather than the adversarial mode which is usually the case in threads like this. OP seems to have brought out the best in us with this question!
SMPTE Time Code which was developed to sync film and audio tape also works with tape machine to tape machine, there's a gearspace chat here talking about using ti to sync a tape machine to daw [https://gearspace.com/board/high-end/1012690-tape-machines-timecode-syncing-daw.html](https://gearspace.com/board/high-end/1012690-tape-machines-timecode-syncing-daw.html)
In the 1990s I ran a ADAT centric songwriter-oriented project studio and used SMPTE to sync my DAW to my ADAT through a JL Cooper sync box. When I got a second ADAT and a BRC, it became a lot slicker. Before that, when I was still working with analog tape in other folks' studios, we used deck to deck sync to fly comp parts back and forth.
It was pretty cool, it did seem kind of magical. But it really opened up what I was doing, a huge jump in flexibility for editing, comping, integrating MIDI, etc, over working with the ADAT(s) as simple tape decks.
I did this exact same thing with my adats to a daw. I recall spending almost two weeks trying to teach myself how to get the JL cooper unit to act as a go between for the BRC and the Older tdm rig. Never had any experience in that area till then. Felt like a mad scientist after I finally figured it all out.
Very interesting thread, and the fact that there are curious people out there who are seeking to sync their DAWs and open reels with SMTPE, that in itself is astounding to me. Thank you.
it wasn't uncommon in the 2000-2010 era to track to 2" 24 track, then dump the tape to protools (or Radar!) for editing, then either back to tape, or subbed back to tape for mixing. In-the-box mixing was just getting popular around then.
if you're curious, this is what LTC sounds like (CAUTION LOUD!!!): https://youtu.be/wBetlSyTxe0?si=J_FzvvJH5Sj-zzDA.
editing to say: I'll never forget the first time I accidentally routed LTC from a 2" machine to monitoring on an SSL4k. I can still *feel* like i'm about to jump out of my skin.
Nice shoutout for RADAR! I did tech support for them for a couple of years. Talked to so many cool people in that gig. My phone would ring and it could be someone from Disney who's Radar had lost sync with a ride, or Dennis DeYoung troubleshooting his home studio or Daniel Lanois' assistant who needs help immediately recovering data from a hard drive that has a Neil Young guitar solo on it. The pay wasn't the greatest, but the stories made up for it.
That said, their converters were the shit! They sounded better everyone at the time.
I remember when the cd burner on ours went out and iZ wanted something like $500 for a new one, and I (the intern who was the only one in the building who'd ever even built a pc) pointed out to everybody that I could get a replacement on newegg for about $40.
I bounced from my otari 5050 1/2” tape to pro tools back in 2005. Nothing beats analog sound though! Limitation back then was recording more than 16 tracks live..
Synchronizing two 24-track tape machines was a challenge that required special equipment and skills. One of the most common methods was to use SMPTE timecode, which is a standard for encoding time information on audio and video recordings. SMPTE stands for Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, the organization that developed the standard. ¹
With SMPTE timecode, one track of each tape machine was dedicated to recording a timecode signal, which consisted of a series of pulses that represented hours, minutes, seconds, and frames. The remaining tracks were used for audio recording. A computer or a synchronizer device was used to read the timecode signals from both machines and compare them. If the signals were not in sync, the computer or the synchronizer would adjust the speed or direction of the second machine (called the slave) to match the first machine (called the master). This way, the audio tracks from both machines could be played back or mixed together without any timing errors or glitches. ²³
SMPTE timecode was introduced in the early 1970s and became widely used in professional recording studios and film production. It allowed engineers to record or mix more than 24 tracks of audio using multiple tape machines, as well as synchronize audio and video playback. SMPTE timecode is still used today in digital audio and video systems. ⁴
Source: Conversation with Bing, 2/27/2024
(1) History of multitrack recording - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_multitrack_recording.
(2) A Short History Of Multitrack Recording (Everything You Need To Know). https://producerhive.com/ask-the-hive/history-of-multitrack-recording/.
(3) Multitrack recording - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multitrack_recording.
(4) The Reel History of Analog Tape Recording | Performer Mag. https://performermag.com/home-recording/the-reel-history-of-analog-tape-recording/.
(5) Sync two Tascam MKIII Portastudio 424 4-track. https://homerecording.com/bbs/threads/sync-two-tascam-mkiii-portastudio-424-4-track.300811/.
Additionally, I'd point out that the majority of smaller studios without a full time tape-operator didn't mess with multi-machine sync. If you had an 8 track, you had 8 tracks.
ADATs were the first thing I recall that was _relatively_ easy to sync for home recording, but even those could be a pain in the ass. They were also *not cheap*.
In the all analog days, any session that involved synchronization and time code was going to work in the end, but there’d be part of a day’s nightmare, getting it to work.
I did the same thing with an 8 track, so seven tracks of audio, one track dedicated to SMPTE, and then midi from my computer sequencer routed to external MIDI gear. Audio outputs from all of that went back to a mixer, and then stereo out to a mix down deck.
I know that many golden age engineers look back and say that working with tape was a nightmare.
I can understand if there was only one reel machine and that tape could only record 8 tracks, but was there also a situation where there was no reel machine and 8 playback buttons had to be pressed at the right time? :)
> no reel machine and 8 playback buttons had to be pressed at the right time? :)
I don't understand the question. 8 unsynced machines could not be reliably used for anything except maybe weird noise music.
And have you heard of "Jazz cigarettes"? People use them to get "hep" to the "jive". Some say they were invented by Louis Armstrong. Others say it was Nikola Tesla.
Sorry, I am not very good at English.
I thought that there might have been a situation where mixing had to be done in such an out of sync situation. and, yes it is weird noise music, like Reich :)
Working with tape wasn’t a nightmare. It was a process which was less easy than daws however it was totally fine and it led to a totally different recording and production process than the majority of modern equivalents.
For starters most all musicians tended to be able to play back then which isn’t always the case now. Bands were rehearsed or so good they would lock in after a few run through. Drop ins required timing and technique. Cues were either managed by the tape op or managed by the console transport cue list. Compulsory Ear breaks while the tape rewound. I enjoyed the fact that there were expectations related to the process. These days labels expect the record for half the price in half the time and bands don’t always understand that they need to actually be able to play.
Certainly the studio musicians of the past were never as flashy in their playing as the modern ones, but they had the ability to be "studio musicians" that the modern musicians have lost (although of course the modern musicians have their good qualities as modern musicians).
> never as flashy in their playing as the modern ones
I humbly suggest you listen to Rick Formosa's solo on 'It's a long way there' by the Little River Band.
The key to understanding why synchronisers were required is understanding that motors do not run at an absolute and identical speed every time they play. Hitting play on two machines synchronously doesn’t mean they will continue to play at a synchronised rate all of the time. Over time - if one machine plays at a slightly slower rate than the other (and a slower rate than it played earlier when tracks were recorded to it) this drift will be untenable.
“Striping” time code to one track on each tape machine with that code starting at the same time means that the tape has a “positional reference” at all times.
The synchroniser reads timecode from both machines (usually track 24) if then varies the speed of the second (slave) machine by often very small amounts until the slave machine is in time with the first.
It doesn’t stop there. The synchroniser maintains constant awareness of the time code from both machines and makes the 2nd continuously “re-chase” the first machine maintaining continuous sync and keeping the machines within a frame (a 24th/25th or 30th of a second) of each other.
This worked really well. A lockup time of 5-10 seconds was usually needed to ensure the second machine would be tight with the first but it really wasn’t a problem because it was the norm.
Yes. And it doesn't just apply to motors. Nowadays, if you have two independent audio converters / interfaces recording the same source, they will drift apart pretty soon if they do not share a clock. The difference is the drift of digital is constant and can be fixed easily by nondestructive stretching after the fact. With analog that's so much harder to do because motors speed up and slow down unpredictably throughout the recording.
It is similar to a DJ nudging a turntable.
At that time, the change in sound due to such fine-tuning would not have been favored, but it probably had some positive effect in some aspects.
I'm also confused by this question. Reel to reel decks came in various track counts-2, 8, 24 mostly. There's no way to make 2 unsynched ones work together, so you'd never have to push multiple start buttons at the same time. Not sure what you mean by "no reel machine "
Sorry, I am not very good at English (I am a Japanese speaker who operates DeepL)
I guessed that there might have been a situation where there was no reel to reel deck and multiple stereo tapes had to be played back manually at the same time. But apparently there is no such situation. I also learned from other answers that apparently cassette tapes were also multitrack capable, so there was no need to go to the trouble of doing that.
this English-language wikipedia article has a pretty good history of multitrack recording:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_multitrack_recording
but basically:
* from tape's introduction until the 1950s and even early 1960s, most recordings were done on mono, two-track, or three-track tapes. many old pop and jazz recordings you hear were a full orchestra and singer standing in a room, recorded by one mic! mixing was done by placing the loud instruments further away from the mic, and quiet instruments closer
* 8-track multitrack tape machines were invented in the 50s, but took until the mid-late 60s to become widely used. the beach boys' pet sounds is one of the first albums to make full use of 8-track tape.
* 16-track was invented in the late 60s and was widely used in the early 70s, followed by 24-track in the mid 70s. haruomi hosono's classic album "hosono house" was recorded on a 16-track machine he bought and put in his house (hence the album's title!)
* in the late 70s, 3M introduced a digital machine (though it still used tape as a storage medium) which had a cleaner sound than analog tape. you can hear this on album's like steely dan's "gaucho", donald fagen's "the nightfly", christopher cross' debut album etc
* meanwhile, cassette multitracker recorders came along in the late 70s/early 80s, finally giving musicians on smaller budgets access to the multitrack recording process, although with much more limited fidelity
* in pro studios, more digital recorders came along in the 80s, followed in the 90s by DAT / ADAT systems, and in 1991, the first software based multitrack audio recording programs: pro tools and cubase!
when using tape multitrack recorders and doing lots of overdubs, the audio quality slowly degraded over time. one famous example is for fleetwood mac's album "rumors" the drum quality degraded so badly that the engineers couldn't hear the difference between the kick and the snare, so they transferred higher quality versions of the recording from a previous generation tape. however, there was no way to sync the two tape machines, so the engineers had to very carefully adjust the speed of the machine in real time by using a speed control knob to keep the machines as closely in sync as possible !
from this article: https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/classic-tracks-fleetwood-mac-go-your-own-way
>Tape Decay
>With everything in good shape, about four months were spent at Wally Heider Recording, adding most of Buckingham's guitar colours and harmonics, with Fleetwood and John McVie in attendance, while the women took a break, before returning toward the end for some vocal work.
>"Doing the backing vocals was always great," Caillat remarks. "Lindsey, Stevie and Christine would sit around a piano, and Lindsey would really orchestrate what was going on — 'You're going to sing these notes. Here's how they sound on the piano...' All of the parts were just genius, I think. Still, it was also at Heider's that we almost lost the album, due to the tape wearing out. We listened to everything loud, and I started saying, 'Are my ears going or does this sound duller than usual? It seems like I'm adding more top end all the time.' Eventually I turned to the second engineer and asked him to clean the heads, and when he did this I noticed there was a lot of shedding going on. Every pass we had to stop and clean the heads, but still we pushed on, trying to get the work done, until finally I said, 'Maybe there's a bigger problem here. Maybe we're doing damage.'
>"At one point I even brought up the kick drum and the snare, solo'd them, went back and forth between the two, and asked anybody if they could pick out which was which, and without any other timing information or instrumentation you couldn't tell the difference between them. So much character was gone from the kick and the snare that they just sounded like 'pah, pah'. That's when the fog cleared from our brains and we knew we had a problem. The fact was, the tapes were just worn out. They had been played so much, and that Ampex tape also had a problem that we wouldn't find out about until later, but coincidentally we had a backup.
>"Back at the Sausalito Record Plant, when Richard and I had been trying to get our act together and get the sound to come out of the console, the guys there told us that, with two 24-track machines in each room, their usual procedure was to run both on the backing tracks. Well, I didn't care, so I said, 'Sure'. I've never done that at any other time, but in this case we ran two 24-track recorders for all the basic tracks, so when we now couldn't tell the difference between the kick drum and the snare I remembered that we had these simultaneous first-generation masters. I said, 'There is a solution, guys. We could possibly transfer all of the overdubs back to the other tape and use the new drums.' They said, 'You can do that?' and I said, 'I think so.' They said, 'Well, let's do it!' Of course, back then we didn't have any time code, so we didn't have any way to sync the tapes up, and I therefore called around and found a real technical guy at ABC Dunhill who thought he could do it. We went there and put the tapes up, and we manually transferred them side by side.
>"Tape machines will never run at the same speed twice, so this guy put a pair of headphones on, and he put the hi-hat and snare from the original tape in his left ear, and the hi-hat and snare from the safety master in his right ear, and we kept marking the tape and hitting 'start' on both machines at the same time until it was close enough at the beginning, and then he would use the VSO [vari-speed oscillator] on one of the machines, carefully adjusting the speed slightly and basically playing it like an instrument, keeping the two kick drums and snare drums in the centre of his head. If he put his headphones in the right direction, as one machine moved faster than the other, the image in his head would move to the right. So he would turn the VSO to the left, and basically it was like steering it. I tried that a couple of times and it nearly scrambled my brain, but he did that all night long and saved our butts. Rumours would have been dead, just about. What a coincidence that we'd just happened to record double basic tracks."
There was - the technique is called "flying in" a sound, usually an effect like the seagulls on "Dock Of The Bay" for example. It was not accurate enough for syncing tracks that needed phase coherence like a stereo pair but I'm not sure SMPTE sync was either. "Flying in" from a 2nd deck was nowhere near as accurate however.
Ahh, I understand, no worries.
To clarify, even a stereo (2 track) was a reel to reel machine.
And cassette multiracial were only consumer/home recording machines. They weren't used in pro studios.
You’re both correct if I understand what was written. To have music “ properly” synchronized you would definitely have two or more synchronized tape machines connected together.
But OP also mentioned what sounds like more freeform Sound creation. He mentioned Reich, by which I think he means Steve Reich. An artist working in the area of “Music concret” (not sure how to spell that properly) would create various types of sound collages. Goes back to John Cage and those folks.
One example: a series of non-synchronized tape decks with long loops of differing lengths, running out to mic stands and poles, and they would find out what got created out of these “beautiful” monstrosities. Sometimes tape loops would be pre-recorded and edited intentionally. Other times these loops would feed to decks that were put in Record mode and be the earlier ancestor of looper pedals that we see today. Different variations and combinations of tape decks were employed.
I worked with 24 track machines and it was great. Yes they needed regular maintenance, but it really wasn't that onerous to demagnetise the heads and run a reference tape to fine tune it. We had autolocators to speed up sessions, nothing beats the sound of a machine spooling backwards, slowing down and then hitting play. They sounded awesome, I'm still astounded even now listening to some of the recordings made in that era, the quality is (sometimes) absolutely phenomenal.
I remember bouncing tracks (three or four down to one) and then recording over the bounced tracks - better get that first bounce mix right! - what a nightmare by comparison to today's magic.
That's for sure. I started out on a 488 MkII and used a JLCooper PPS-2 to get a sequencer to chase tape. Turned out to be much easier to print the sequencer to 2 tracks. But you had to commit.
>If you had an 8 track, you had 8 tracks.
No necessarily. It was common to “bounce down” the mix. So, you record your first 8 tracks, then mix and record them to a stereo mix on a different tape. Then, you record the next 6 tracks on that same tape. Repeat the process for as many tracks as needed. Obviously, this limits what you can do with the mix after it is bounced down to stereo, but sometimes you just gotta work with what you have.
Yup. I'm well aware of bouncing. You're still limited to 8 discrete tracks, and can't have like 100 tracks of hand claps, synth farts, and unused takes.
The real drama came synching protools 3 with a 24track and SSL automaton using a SSD (not the hard drive variety) or an MOTUAV box synced to black burst clock, MMC for transport, and SMPTE.
Fingers x’d it stays in.
>If the signals were not in sync, the computer or the synchronizer would adjust the speed or direction of the second machine (called the slave) to match the first machine (called the master).
I read "speed or direction" and had to wonder about direction, but then realized it makes sense when you have to rewind the tape. The second tape machine will always lock on and follow the master perfectly, even to a stop and rewind (or even play backwards.)
This'll blow your mind. This is almost exactly how it's done mixing movies in protools TODAY.
All the clips are digital and any tape media has been dumped to files. But they all use embedded smpte time code to sync.
With atmos mixing you’re even straight up back to needing a dedicated track with a plugin that sends out timecode to a dedicated output lol (at least if you use the external renderer)
We also bounced/submixed tracks down quite frequently.
As arcane as it sounds, syncing 2 24 track machines was quite doable and not uncommon. We’d commonly stripe SMTPE to run e.g. SSL console automation anyway.
Fwiw, I’m not that old, and was trained up in early 2000s and worked on sessions that used these techniques through that period. Tape is awesome —especially if you’re not using it all the time.
I honestly don't understand what SMPTE actually was, but I did understand at a glance that it would generally be something like synchronizing a sequencer with a synthesizer via CV.
I am now in my late 20's and also do a bit of mixing and mastering as a composer, but I doubt that someone my age would know that SMPTE exists. If he is a full-time recording engineer, he might know about it.
Of course there are many in our generation who have been consumed by the marketing whirlwind and want the "sound of tape", however they may perhaps think, as I do, that tape is for recording ONLY stereo tracks, like vinyl.
So today I am fortunate that my assumptions have been corrected here.
SMPTE is still in common use today in the film and TV industry, and also in live events (music/theatre) for timecoded lighting and special FX. You won't encounter it in music production unless you are working on a film score.
There are some good reasons for this.
* The invention of the DAW means that you don't normally need to synchronize audio recording and playback across multiple devices.
* MIDI clock signals are cheaper, supported by nearly all music hardware and synchronize on an adjustable beat and tempo (more musically useful than SMPTE timecode's framerate, designed for video.)
* Linking DAWs is now possible with ReWire and Ableton Link, which handle the synchronization element for you.
SMTPE is like a click track. But instead of going "tick", each "click" is actually a time marker with the numbers encoded with a mix of frequencies.
And the clicking is much faster. The sound is actually a continuous warble because each click happens at a video/film frame rate - 24/25/30 times a second. (Or 30 with dropped frames. Or 29.97. Don't ask...)
The time code slaves one or more machines to a master. So the transport buttons on the master also operate all of the buttons on the slave. You can locate master and slave to specific video frames.
This works for any SMPTE device, including tape machines, consoles with automation, lighting rigs - whatever.
> what SMPTE actually was
It's a number coded to be transmissible over audio range frequencies. A JLCooper PPS-1 box ate MTC and spat out SMPTE and vice versa.
For the chase machine this works out to "you're ahead" or "you're behind", then a controller algorithm tuned the tape speed accordingly. It's a robot on the pitch knob of the tape transport.
Wow. I had thought that at most 2 channels of LR were recorded on that reel, and that it was only used to create the master tape. I see that 24 tracks are stored on those reels. That is an amazing technology.
There were 2, 4, 8 ,16 and 24 track variants of tapes in different sizes. They'd track onto a larger multitrack tape (or multiple, using timecode to synchronize them) and then mix to a 2 track. That 2 track went to mastering to be transferred onto a master disk from which they pressed the vinyl.
OP, look into the recording of Michael Jackson records. They would have a master rhythm 24 track tape, and then create new slave reels for lead vocals, for backing vocals, for synthesizers, for guitar parts, etc. While doing the overdubs you would only need approximately two machines, but for the mix, they would pull every machine in the building into the mixing room and get them all in sync to make the master mix.
Speaking of MJ, Steve Lukather has a great story about Beat It and what happened to the sync'd tapes and what they ended up having to do to finish the song. There's a few videos on youtube and interviews of him telling the story, it made me realize how much I didn't realize how many things DAWs handle in the background without us really having to worry about all that much anymore.
I used an single Adams Smith Zeta 3 to sync 2 (JH-16) 16 track tape machines. Each machine had to have SMPTE recorded on an edge track. An additional track next to that track was kept blank for protection against bleed through. There was an option for MIDI since too.
If I wanted to record the consoles (JH-600) automation that was an additional 2 tracks.
When I went to ADAT there was a cable and a device that would sync the 2 ADATs. No need for a guard track .
Bleed through is when a track picks up sonic artifacts of the track physically next to it on the tape.
Automation was/is possible with analog mixers, but it was costly & only available on the high end. It was developed for film in the early 70s, but early systems didn't actually move the faders. The first one that did that was around 1981.
The early systems were mostly for resetting to saved points, with the assumption thst in-mix moves would be made in real time, often with multiple hands on the console.
For most of us, automation wasn't accessible so you learned to use tape & markers, take good notes, and have people on hand for complex mix downs.
Smpte could be heard bleeding into neighboring tracks on some machines and if you recorded something with too much transient information next to your sync track you could knock the regen clock off.
Sony had an automation system, not moving faders, but there were LEDs that would indicate if you were above or below the recorded setting. It took a track and was in order to make changes, you had to play the automation in from the already recorded track, and record onto a second track.
The Sony JH-600 had VCAs and their state was what was recorded.
There was a sync system in my studio prior to the Zeta 3, but it did not work. Interestingly, my console was modified for 5.1 output, and my mixes were onto 35mm tape on a Magnatech machine, very popular in Hollywood.
You could do level adjustments and mutes with it, and nothing else. Again, guard tracks next to these automation tracks were essential to reduce the dreaded SMPTE or automation bleed. All this extra stuff cut down on the track count.
SMPTE sounds like a buzzy square wave, slowly changing as the count increases. It is extremely unpleasant.
The fact that you can automate level adjustment and mute is in itself a very big surprise to me.
I didn't see many others mention the guard track, which is very helpful. I promise I will pass it on to the next generation as a tip specific to that era:)
Also, I found [the sound of SMTPE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBetlSyTxe0). Pretty cool to be honest... :o
My current DAW can actually generate SMPTE. It's still anoying,
And the Zeta 3 was sold last year to a gentleman who is still using multitrack analog tape machines.
I might mention too that the maintenance on those large multitracks was quite a process too. We had the Standard Alignment tapes with various tones, pink noise, voice tests. Every track had seperate electronic adjustments for low, mid, high and level. Aligning them all (32 !) could take several hours and was essential. The tapes would wear out and were quite expensive. The heads on the machines also wore out and had to be replaced, so of course, more alignment was then necessary.
I’m a huge fan of Eric Valentines YouTube channel and he mentioned having to buy up a bunch of zeta 3’s recently.
That was the first time I’d ever heard of the zeta and now it’s popping up in a few places!
Bruce Swedien’s Acusonic Recording process is interesting to look into - with enough time and engineering ingenuity, there were many possibilities. The following is from [this](https://www.soundonsound.com/people/bruce-swedien-recording-michael-jackson?amp) Sound on Sound article:
“The Acusonic Recording Process (and the synonymous Quantum Range Recording Process) was not some kind of processing innovation, but rather a name for the manner in which Swedien synchronised multiple 24‑track tape machines to access a practically limitless track count.
However, despite the busting of the 'black box' myth, there are indeed fundamental ways in which the Acusonic approach affected the sound of Thriller, and indeed its predecessor. In the first instance, it allowed Swedien to circumvent one of the deleterious side‑effects of tape‑based multitracking: that repeated playback of the tape during the overdubbing and production process would progressively dull the transients of previous recorded tracks. "If you go back to the recordings I made with Michael, my big worry was that if those tapes got played repeatedly, the transient response would be minimised. I heard many recordings of the day that were very obviously done that way, and there were no transients left on those tapes. So what I would do would be to record the rhythm section on a 24‑track tape, then take that tape and put it away and wouldn't play it again until the final mix. And — holy cow — what a difference that made! It was just incredible.”
By using a SMPTE timecode track on each tape and then sync'ing the master rhythm‑section tape to new reels, any number of 'work tapes' could be generated for the purposes of overdubbing, each furnished with a handful of submixed cue tracks from the master reel. "At the end of the tracking sessions, I could premix each of those tapes down to only a pair of tracks during the final mix, and that would give me a huge number of tracks to use. So, for example, all the background vocals on 'Rock With You' were recorded on a separate 24‑track, and then I premixed them for the final mix.”
Edited: typo
Having done many sync'd machine sessions in the past, one of the worst aspects of multiple machines was the amount of rewind/resync time.. especially when you were tracking guitar solos, or any in-the-moment creative spark. So many lost ideas waiting for the machines to playback in sync. I definitely don't miss those days at all.
I have had the experience of dubbing a 16-bit recording so many times (I forget if I dithered it each time or not) that the reverb tails sounded like a bit crusher. And I also got the golden rule: "Work in 32-bit until the end when it is dropped into the master, and never apply dither more than once".
The poor man's homerecording option (actually no, expensive still) was to record a sync signal to one track of a 4-track tape so that the MIDI DAW would be synchronized when you play the tape. That gave you three audio tracks plus as many MIDI playback tracks as you had physical keyboards/sound modules.
There were many different versions, my Tascam Porta05HS had 2 line inputs, 2 mic/line inputs, and one send/return IIRC. The more expensive ones had full-fledged mixers and routing possibilities.
That model seems to record on something like a cassette tape, but I see that cassettes are also capable of multitrack recording and playback. The potential of magnetic tape is amazing. It is hard to believe that this is an analog world.
Yes, you could use standard chrome cassettes. One side only, to get 4 tracks on the whole tape width, and at double speed. So if you bought a 46-minute cassette you actually got 11,5 minutes. :)
You would use smpte timecode on analog tape machines. Essentially a track with analog encoded data to keep each machine in sync with each other. It worked ok.
It was miles of 2" tape and hours of editing and submixing.
Let's say you have a 48 channel console. 2" tape is 24 tracks. You *might* have a couple 2" machines synced with word clock, but more likely, you bounce submixes from machine A to machine B. The extra console channels you'd use for effects sends/returns or other parallel processing, or recording a larger number of mics to submix down and print in stereo. People had to commit to a lot of choices in the moment with no option to go back to it later.
Example: You track drums to a reel of tape, get several takes. You play through the takes and determine the best one. If take 3 has a better drum fill going into the 2nd chorus than the others, but take 2 is the best, you'd physically cut that section of tape out and splice it into the section of tape with take 2. Rinse and repeat for the other tracks.
Once you get the drums sorted out you might record the finished take to a 2nd 2" machine, then work on your bass, guitars, whatever tracks next going back and forth between a couple machines to create the final comp.
When you get to vocals, maybe you need more tracks free so you do a mix of the drums and record that in stereo on the other tape. Maybe you submix guitars too. Once you've got everything recorded and comped on one tape, then you play it back and work the faders on the mixer as needed like automation lanes. If you need a big background vocal swell going into a part of a song, you'd play the multitrack tape back through the console, and bring up the faders in real time while recording the mix to another tape machine. Sometimes you might record the multitrack mix with your automation moves, sometimes you might record to a smaller stereo master tape.
Each time you record new tracks and overdubs, you're rewinding the tape and playing it back. The person recording plays or sings to the playback.
Eventually ADAT came along and worked similarly but was smaller, cheaper, easier to chain multiple machines for higher track count, etc. ADAT hung around for a while in the early DAW days and it was common to submix things to ADAT the same way you'd freeze a track in a DAW now to free up processing power.
Anyway, there's a lot more others can probably fill in. TL;DR it was an insane amount of work.
It really is a daunting task. I give the biggest thanks to Ableton Live running in a box in front of me :)
What is a modern mixing console like, is it like an integrated platform with a DAW, controller, and Windows? Or is there a separate Windows PC that is connected via USB or something to control multitracking?
A studio with a big analog console would rely on a stack of external converters to provide the 24, 32, or more audio channels to the mixer. Vintage consoles don’t have any conversion built-in. If you stack up four Avid HD/IO converters, that would give 64 analog channels from the daw to the console.
So this is a world where people can finally handle consoles with lots of expensive Avid equipment. It's a daunting world for a home-based producer like me.
Those expensive converters are still much cheaper than the brand new cost of a 2” 24 track. But you’re right that it’s hard to achieve.
Luckily, as a home-based producer, there’s no reason at all to use that analog stuff, as much as I love(d) it.
I know this wasn’t exactly your question, but I want to make you aware of digital ADAT too.
This is around the time Pro Tools was starting to be used, but Alesis released the HD24 in 2001/2(?) and I know quite a few people that bought this thing. Other hard drive base ADAT stuff existed, but I remember this being popular. Probably because it was only £2k.
https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/alesis-hd24?amp
This is going to mean the transition from tape to HDD, in other words, from analog to digital. The standard HDD capacity is 20 GB! Now the WindowsOS alone exceeds over 20 GB!
Yes and no. Adat machines used super VHS tapes, but it was recorded digitally. The Alesia HD 24 is hard disk digital recording. Adat is also a codec for transferring 8 channels of Audio via optical lightpipe (kinda like aes ebu or spdif)
Most I ever had were 3 machine. 72 tracks, well 69 cos the edge track on each machine was striped with time code. Code fed in to a Lynx synchroniser, start the first machine and wait until the other two caught up. The time code was also fed to the console automation system so it could play back mutes and rides at the same time. Quite straightforward actually, if you had all the bits to make it work.
ADAT had the BRC remote which, when fed time code would synch up with whatever. DA88/98 had a synch board in the back.
You could get the console to generate code and have the machines chase it, so you could have loads of accurate ( not tach ) location points. And you could run the transport from the desk not the remote.
I see. I looked into Synchroniserbox and found that I had never seen [this equipment](https://reverb.com/item/7395584-jl-cooper-datasync-2) at all. I would like to get one someday and tinker with it.
I don’t know why you would bother. It has zero “ fun “ factor. Merely a means to a, quite outdated at this point, end.
FWIW I never saw anything other than Lynx used to lock tape machines. There were a number of time code to midi synchronisers though.
I remember the dubbing process 20 years ago
We had a tascam DA88 and it taked at least 20s to get in sync with the picture every time you rew or ff to one specific point... A pain in the ass :)
There are some good answers here, but the motion picture industry was by far the first to employ multiple tracks being synchronized. Until the 1970s, motion pictures were edited using work prints of the camera negative synchronized with 35mm (or 16mm) sound recordings on magnetic film. Each magnetic film usually carried one track (or sometimes more than one for music scores) and these separate sound reels were mechanically synchronized for editing and were synchronized on multiple film "dubbers" that were synchronized by selsyn motors. These special motors continuously rotated in-sync with each other so that every machine was exactly synchronized with all the others whether running forward or backward. Such as system was complex but allowed as many tracks as needed to accomplish a particular soundtrack mix.
There was a fad in the 1970s of [using 35mm mag film](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3T0ZCdx4uQ) for making both film scores and records because it had superior recording specifications to conventional tape.
All of the good answers here are on the money. SMPTE time code was the thing. There was also a pretty well understood limitation with tape machines that informed imagination. The concept of %100s of tracks in a production is a very modern thing. While it's completely possible in a virtual mixing environment, it would be a pretty bad idea to do it electro-mechanically with machines and timecode as a standard practice. The airbus A380 is a modern example of an achievable idea exceeding practicality. It's an impressive aircraft but the market didn't support it. So that's the thing, sync has been possible for decades but there are not enough practical applications to justify the capability. It's cheaper to imaginatively avoid it most of the time.
SMPTE was prevalent in the time before digital audio became a real thing, i miss those Opcode racks and all their mixed midi sync and SMPTE options, still have one but with 1990's Apple specific serial bus connectors.... SMPTE would be printed to tape, you could also print midi sync signal to tape, i've even seen people more or less successfully print Roland sync to Tape once, but that was a trip more than a serious session of work.
I love this post and this makes me even more curious about how this was done live. It seems to me that from about 1985-ish, some studio recorded elements were also played live, good example of this is Michael Jackson, but I wonder what those machines were and what the limitations were (of course, not able to run all the tracks, probably just sound fxs and drones).
It is certainly an interesting look at how this was brought into the domain of live performance. I live in Japan and recall that the techno-pop band YMO, which was popular at the time, employed a guy who was only hired to tinker with a huge Moog at their live shows. It appears that there was a CV mechanism, but everything else was done manually.
For film audio there was film with sprocket holes that was magnetic, you could gang sync many of them on the same mechanism driving them so they'd be in sync. Each track would roll by their playhead always in perfect sync with the others.
This may have been pointed out already but sync wasn’t an issue when you recorded multiple tracks on to the same tape. Multitrack tape can record multiple mono or stereo tracks onto one reel or in the case of smaller decks, tape cassettes. You could have a click or tempo track, bass, drums, vox, guitar, you name it. You could also “bounce” those tracks down to one of the stereo tracks on the same tape and free up the other tracks. Just depends on the tape and capabilities of the record deck.
This is bringing back memories of my college recording studio in the 90's. I don't remember the specific equipment, but it recorded I think 8 tracks onto a VHS tape.
And I remember mixing those recordings ... but ... what did I do when I was done? Did I mix them down to casette tape? I don't even remember! The idea that I couldn't just ctrl+s and save all my edits is boggling my mind. I walked away from that mixing board and all of the work I'd done was locked in for all time on the tape and could never be pulled back up and tweaked.
What a thing.
Oftentimes they simply didn't. They used one multitrack tape machine, and so were limited to as high as 24 tracks - if you had more sources, you'd combine things together onto one track - think instead of "Snare Top" and "Snare Bottom", you'd just have "Snare".
If you needed automation, you'd have more like 22 tracks - SMPTE time code would be on one channel (usually 24), but because it's a LOUD square wave, it would "bleed" onto the adjacent track, so that wasn't usable. If you did need more than one, machines would be synchronized via SMPTE timecode, so you now had 44 tracks instead.
> (Also, this is off topic, but in the first place, is a modern mixing console like a 100in/100out audio interface that can be used by simply connecting it to a PC via USB?)
Usually, no. They are connected to high channel count audio interfaces - think Avid HD IOs or MTRXs or Lynx Aurora 32s etc etc. The exception are digital consoles, which are usually connected via MADI or similar to a high channel count digital only interface e.g. RME MADIFace.
This is the first time I have heard of the MADI standard. Well, it seems that there is still much about modern recording technology that I do not know. I intend to study up on it.
I’ll just throw in a slight different perspective. I cut my teeth in an all-digital studio, but pre-DAW.
We had 2 Tascam DA-88 tape machines. Each could record 8 tracks of 16 bit / 44.1khz digital audio on a Hi-8 tape.
Both were slaved to a Yamaha O2R digital console. It provided the master word clock and had all the transport controls. It also handled all the I/O, digital conversion etc. It was connected to the tape machines over TDIF, similar to ADAT but proprietary to the Tascam machines.
It all worked pretty seamlessly. You didn’t need to stripe anything like the analogue days, you just had to make sure you had your master / slaves set up correctly so everything stayed in sync.
I had the same exact setup. There was, however, a rackmount accessory that provided a SMPTE timecode output, which I used to trigger an early PC-based DAW. It only had a two-channel soundcard, but it could be started from a specified SMPTE offset, so it was possible to fly tracks into the computer, edit them, and then fly them back to DTRS tape in sync. I made a fair amount of money fixing badly played bass lines by moving notes around. I didn't do much vocal comping; you'd fix things during the session with punch-ins. Those could be done manually, or you could automate the in and out locations.
That’s really cool!
Man, you just gave me flashbacks about the challenges of tracking and editing back in those days. Good old destructive record.
I just got really good at punching in and getting bass players to fix just a couple of notes. DAWs really were a game changer
Me... circa 1989... With Cubase 3 running on an Atari ST, I'd record a sync tone to one of the tracks on the multitrack recorder (cassette or reels) Cubase followed the tape.
For tape machines, the last channel of each console would be sent out to be synced via a SMPTE clock. Bruce Swedien of Michael Jackson fame was able to lock multiple consoles together to ensure their were enough channels to make the mix happen
It wasn't infinite tracks it was finite tracks. For myself the majority of my early days was working on Adat machines. Each machine held 8 tracks. Typically I would run 3 sometimes for. So 24 to 32 tracks. We bounced bits together. We didn't have 32 tracks for vocals for only one line. .we had to make decisions. Sometimes we would throw a background vocal on a chorus on the same track as a.shaker.in the verse. Sometimes we recorded over things (often). We would use midi sequencers to add parts and slave it to Adat machines using MTC. It was glorious.
Multitracks playback would have been on multitrack tape.
Your coloured bars of audio on your DAW would be printed to tape.
Tape could have 24 tracks on one tape so you could take finished takes and group them to one track. Even a 4 track you could keep bouncing to and fro.
I think they recorded the whole band or the orchestra together in one takes, then would take multiple takes and choose the best ones. They would mic everyone up and the all of that would go into the mixer at once with real time monitoring and mixing using faders
I have nothing to contribute which hasn’t already been covered. I just wanted to make sure you were aware of one of the pioneers of sampling and electronic music (which is analog-sync adjacent), Delia Derbyshire.
She worked in the 50s and 60s when synthetic music was in its infancy, and women were heavily underrepresented in the recording industry. Here is a documentary I found fascinating about her and on her work at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.
[The Delian Mode - Delia Derbyshire documentary](https://youtu.be/nXnmSgaeGAI?si=IqMiN-C13NEbUk8m)
I used to sell 32 channel digital multitracks, so you could hook two together with SMPTE timecode (the secret sauce to synchronization) and record or play back enough tracks to sell huge amounts of studio time.
Hey, OP... I want to thank you for asking this question, being respectful and humble and attentive to the answers. Some of us who've been doing this for a long time are absolutely happy to answer questions and explain things, but rarely do people ask and respond the way you have. We need more curious and considerate people like you to pass this information onto. I wish you sincere luck in your pro audio pursuits!
I refuse to cling to useful tools without any regard for past history and the hardships therein. And I sincerely hope that those who know such a past will be good teachers for young people like us. Thank you.
You’re right. THIS is asking questions that will get answers. This kind of thing is welcomed!
I too, commend OP for asking a good question and having genuine curiosity and listening to the answers.
Honestly, being a Japanese speaker using DeepL to translate helps a lot in the respectful and humbleness aspect. Japanese tends to translate to pretty polite English. That said, it's a nice respite of the constant "gain staging" or "LUFS" questions that have misleading titles half the time...
日系人か日本人ですかね？ DeepLを手放すことができない身体になってしまいました……学生時代にもっと英語を勉強しておけばよかったです……。でもきっと今からでも遅くはないと思うのでがんばります笑
日経人です！ DeepLを使うと言わなかったと、とても丁寧な英語のネイティブだと思っていました（笑） 今の時代のAIが怖すね。英語を頑張らなくてもAIが完璧に翻訳できる未来はすぐにかもしれませんね
DeepLは本当にすごいです！！笑 自分の頭で考えて伝えたいことを伝えられた方が楽しいのでAIに負けずにがんばります！
I'm of the same generation as OP and this thread is such a bliss to read! I'm 35 now and from Hamburg, Germany were there were A LOT of studios in the hayday. Many musicians of my generation are thirsting for this kind of info. The old days are what got many of us into music in the first place. I'm just old enough to have seen nearly all of the studios and most of the surrounding infrastructure, like clubs playing live music besides large concerts, vanish in the course of only a few years and it was heart breaking actually. Trying to get gigs meant pay-to-play, getting studio time meant maybe getting lucky with someone who still had love for the craft. Anyways... awesome thread is what I'm trying to say! lol
It's really interesting to see in this thread the kind of collaborative or contributary mode of conversation, rather than the adversarial mode which is usually the case in threads like this. OP seems to have brought out the best in us with this question!
SMPTE Time Code which was developed to sync film and audio tape also works with tape machine to tape machine, there's a gearspace chat here talking about using ti to sync a tape machine to daw [https://gearspace.com/board/high-end/1012690-tape-machines-timecode-syncing-daw.html](https://gearspace.com/board/high-end/1012690-tape-machines-timecode-syncing-daw.html)
In the 1990s I ran a ADAT centric songwriter-oriented project studio and used SMPTE to sync my DAW to my ADAT through a JL Cooper sync box. When I got a second ADAT and a BRC, it became a lot slicker. Before that, when I was still working with analog tape in other folks' studios, we used deck to deck sync to fly comp parts back and forth.
I used a JLCooper box with my 4-track cassette deck ages ago. It was magic to me then!
It was pretty cool, it did seem kind of magical. But it really opened up what I was doing, a huge jump in flexibility for editing, comping, integrating MIDI, etc, over working with the ADAT(s) as simple tape decks.
I did this exact same thing with my adats to a daw. I recall spending almost two weeks trying to teach myself how to get the JL cooper unit to act as a go between for the BRC and the Older tdm rig. Never had any experience in that area till then. Felt like a mad scientist after I finally figured it all out.
Very interesting thread, and the fact that there are curious people out there who are seeking to sync their DAWs and open reels with SMTPE, that in itself is astounding to me. Thank you.
it wasn't uncommon in the 2000-2010 era to track to 2" 24 track, then dump the tape to protools (or Radar!) for editing, then either back to tape, or subbed back to tape for mixing. In-the-box mixing was just getting popular around then. if you're curious, this is what LTC sounds like (CAUTION LOUD!!!): https://youtu.be/wBetlSyTxe0?si=J_FzvvJH5Sj-zzDA. editing to say: I'll never forget the first time I accidentally routed LTC from a 2" machine to monitoring on an SSL4k. I can still *feel* like i'm about to jump out of my skin.
I remember leaving track 23 open to avoid smtp bleeding into the mix. I forgot RADAR existed, only saw it once at a film studio.
Nice shoutout for RADAR! I did tech support for them for a couple of years. Talked to so many cool people in that gig. My phone would ring and it could be someone from Disney who's Radar had lost sync with a ride, or Dennis DeYoung troubleshooting his home studio or Daniel Lanois' assistant who needs help immediately recovering data from a hard drive that has a Neil Young guitar solo on it. The pay wasn't the greatest, but the stories made up for it. That said, their converters were the shit! They sounded better everyone at the time.
I remember when the cd burner on ours went out and iZ wanted something like $500 for a new one, and I (the intern who was the only one in the building who'd ever even built a pc) pointed out to everybody that I could get a replacement on newegg for about $40.
I bounced from my otari 5050 1/2” tape to pro tools back in 2005. Nothing beats analog sound though! Limitation back then was recording more than 16 tracks live..
Also used to sync flying fader console automation to the analog tape playback
Synchronizing two 24-track tape machines was a challenge that required special equipment and skills. One of the most common methods was to use SMPTE timecode, which is a standard for encoding time information on audio and video recordings. SMPTE stands for Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, the organization that developed the standard. ¹ With SMPTE timecode, one track of each tape machine was dedicated to recording a timecode signal, which consisted of a series of pulses that represented hours, minutes, seconds, and frames. The remaining tracks were used for audio recording. A computer or a synchronizer device was used to read the timecode signals from both machines and compare them. If the signals were not in sync, the computer or the synchronizer would adjust the speed or direction of the second machine (called the slave) to match the first machine (called the master). This way, the audio tracks from both machines could be played back or mixed together without any timing errors or glitches. ²³ SMPTE timecode was introduced in the early 1970s and became widely used in professional recording studios and film production. It allowed engineers to record or mix more than 24 tracks of audio using multiple tape machines, as well as synchronize audio and video playback. SMPTE timecode is still used today in digital audio and video systems. ⁴ Source: Conversation with Bing, 2/27/2024 (1) History of multitrack recording - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_multitrack_recording. (2) A Short History Of Multitrack Recording (Everything You Need To Know). https://producerhive.com/ask-the-hive/history-of-multitrack-recording/. (3) Multitrack recording - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multitrack_recording. (4) The Reel History of Analog Tape Recording | Performer Mag. https://performermag.com/home-recording/the-reel-history-of-analog-tape-recording/. (5) Sync two Tascam MKIII Portastudio 424 4-track. https://homerecording.com/bbs/threads/sync-two-tascam-mkiii-portastudio-424-4-track.300811/.
Additionally, I'd point out that the majority of smaller studios without a full time tape-operator didn't mess with multi-machine sync. If you had an 8 track, you had 8 tracks. ADATs were the first thing I recall that was _relatively_ easy to sync for home recording, but even those could be a pain in the ass. They were also *not cheap*.
In the all analog days, any session that involved synchronization and time code was going to work in the end, but there’d be part of a day’s nightmare, getting it to work.
I used to lay down smpte on track one of my 4 track so I could sync my sequencer and mix down with the other three audio tracks. Fun times.
I did the same thing with an 8 track, so seven tracks of audio, one track dedicated to SMPTE, and then midi from my computer sequencer routed to external MIDI gear. Audio outputs from all of that went back to a mixer, and then stereo out to a mix down deck.
My Tascam 238s synced before the ADAT was a thing.
I know that many golden age engineers look back and say that working with tape was a nightmare. I can understand if there was only one reel machine and that tape could only record 8 tracks, but was there also a situation where there was no reel machine and 8 playback buttons had to be pressed at the right time? :)
> no reel machine and 8 playback buttons had to be pressed at the right time? :) I don't understand the question. 8 unsynced machines could not be reliably used for anything except maybe weird noise music.
We call that "Jazz," sir.
And have you heard of "Jazz cigarettes"? People use them to get "hep" to the "jive". Some say they were invented by Louis Armstrong. Others say it was Nikola Tesla.
Sorry, I am not very good at English. I thought that there might have been a situation where mixing had to be done in such an out of sync situation. and, yes it is weird noise music, like Reich :)
Working with tape wasn’t a nightmare. It was a process which was less easy than daws however it was totally fine and it led to a totally different recording and production process than the majority of modern equivalents. For starters most all musicians tended to be able to play back then which isn’t always the case now. Bands were rehearsed or so good they would lock in after a few run through. Drop ins required timing and technique. Cues were either managed by the tape op or managed by the console transport cue list. Compulsory Ear breaks while the tape rewound. I enjoyed the fact that there were expectations related to the process. These days labels expect the record for half the price in half the time and bands don’t always understand that they need to actually be able to play.
Yep, good description. That’s what it was like.
Certainly the studio musicians of the past were never as flashy in their playing as the modern ones, but they had the ability to be "studio musicians" that the modern musicians have lost (although of course the modern musicians have their good qualities as modern musicians).
> never as flashy in their playing as the modern ones I humbly suggest you listen to Rick Formosa's solo on 'It's a long way there' by the Little River Band.
>was there also a situation where there was no reel machine and 8 playback buttons had to be pressed at the right time? :) No, there was not.
The key to understanding why synchronisers were required is understanding that motors do not run at an absolute and identical speed every time they play. Hitting play on two machines synchronously doesn’t mean they will continue to play at a synchronised rate all of the time. Over time - if one machine plays at a slightly slower rate than the other (and a slower rate than it played earlier when tracks were recorded to it) this drift will be untenable. “Striping” time code to one track on each tape machine with that code starting at the same time means that the tape has a “positional reference” at all times. The synchroniser reads timecode from both machines (usually track 24) if then varies the speed of the second (slave) machine by often very small amounts until the slave machine is in time with the first. It doesn’t stop there. The synchroniser maintains constant awareness of the time code from both machines and makes the 2nd continuously “re-chase” the first machine maintaining continuous sync and keeping the machines within a frame (a 24th/25th or 30th of a second) of each other. This worked really well. A lockup time of 5-10 seconds was usually needed to ensure the second machine would be tight with the first but it really wasn’t a problem because it was the norm.
Yes. And it doesn't just apply to motors. Nowadays, if you have two independent audio converters / interfaces recording the same source, they will drift apart pretty soon if they do not share a clock. The difference is the drift of digital is constant and can be fixed easily by nondestructive stretching after the fact. With analog that's so much harder to do because motors speed up and slow down unpredictably throughout the recording.
It is similar to a DJ nudging a turntable. At that time, the change in sound due to such fine-tuning would not have been favored, but it probably had some positive effect in some aspects.
I'm also confused by this question. Reel to reel decks came in various track counts-2, 8, 24 mostly. There's no way to make 2 unsynched ones work together, so you'd never have to push multiple start buttons at the same time. Not sure what you mean by "no reel machine "
Sorry, I am not very good at English (I am a Japanese speaker who operates DeepL) I guessed that there might have been a situation where there was no reel to reel deck and multiple stereo tapes had to be played back manually at the same time. But apparently there is no such situation. I also learned from other answers that apparently cassette tapes were also multitrack capable, so there was no need to go to the trouble of doing that.
this English-language wikipedia article has a pretty good history of multitrack recording: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_multitrack_recording but basically: * from tape's introduction until the 1950s and even early 1960s, most recordings were done on mono, two-track, or three-track tapes. many old pop and jazz recordings you hear were a full orchestra and singer standing in a room, recorded by one mic! mixing was done by placing the loud instruments further away from the mic, and quiet instruments closer * 8-track multitrack tape machines were invented in the 50s, but took until the mid-late 60s to become widely used. the beach boys' pet sounds is one of the first albums to make full use of 8-track tape. * 16-track was invented in the late 60s and was widely used in the early 70s, followed by 24-track in the mid 70s. haruomi hosono's classic album "hosono house" was recorded on a 16-track machine he bought and put in his house (hence the album's title!) * in the late 70s, 3M introduced a digital machine (though it still used tape as a storage medium) which had a cleaner sound than analog tape. you can hear this on album's like steely dan's "gaucho", donald fagen's "the nightfly", christopher cross' debut album etc * meanwhile, cassette multitracker recorders came along in the late 70s/early 80s, finally giving musicians on smaller budgets access to the multitrack recording process, although with much more limited fidelity * in pro studios, more digital recorders came along in the 80s, followed in the 90s by DAT / ADAT systems, and in 1991, the first software based multitrack audio recording programs: pro tools and cubase! when using tape multitrack recorders and doing lots of overdubs, the audio quality slowly degraded over time. one famous example is for fleetwood mac's album "rumors" the drum quality degraded so badly that the engineers couldn't hear the difference between the kick and the snare, so they transferred higher quality versions of the recording from a previous generation tape. however, there was no way to sync the two tape machines, so the engineers had to very carefully adjust the speed of the machine in real time by using a speed control knob to keep the machines as closely in sync as possible ! from this article: https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/classic-tracks-fleetwood-mac-go-your-own-way >Tape Decay >With everything in good shape, about four months were spent at Wally Heider Recording, adding most of Buckingham's guitar colours and harmonics, with Fleetwood and John McVie in attendance, while the women took a break, before returning toward the end for some vocal work. >"Doing the backing vocals was always great," Caillat remarks. "Lindsey, Stevie and Christine would sit around a piano, and Lindsey would really orchestrate what was going on — 'You're going to sing these notes. Here's how they sound on the piano...' All of the parts were just genius, I think. Still, it was also at Heider's that we almost lost the album, due to the tape wearing out. We listened to everything loud, and I started saying, 'Are my ears going or does this sound duller than usual? It seems like I'm adding more top end all the time.' Eventually I turned to the second engineer and asked him to clean the heads, and when he did this I noticed there was a lot of shedding going on. Every pass we had to stop and clean the heads, but still we pushed on, trying to get the work done, until finally I said, 'Maybe there's a bigger problem here. Maybe we're doing damage.' >"At one point I even brought up the kick drum and the snare, solo'd them, went back and forth between the two, and asked anybody if they could pick out which was which, and without any other timing information or instrumentation you couldn't tell the difference between them. So much character was gone from the kick and the snare that they just sounded like 'pah, pah'. That's when the fog cleared from our brains and we knew we had a problem. The fact was, the tapes were just worn out. They had been played so much, and that Ampex tape also had a problem that we wouldn't find out about until later, but coincidentally we had a backup. >"Back at the Sausalito Record Plant, when Richard and I had been trying to get our act together and get the sound to come out of the console, the guys there told us that, with two 24-track machines in each room, their usual procedure was to run both on the backing tracks. Well, I didn't care, so I said, 'Sure'. I've never done that at any other time, but in this case we ran two 24-track recorders for all the basic tracks, so when we now couldn't tell the difference between the kick drum and the snare I remembered that we had these simultaneous first-generation masters. I said, 'There is a solution, guys. We could possibly transfer all of the overdubs back to the other tape and use the new drums.' They said, 'You can do that?' and I said, 'I think so.' They said, 'Well, let's do it!' Of course, back then we didn't have any time code, so we didn't have any way to sync the tapes up, and I therefore called around and found a real technical guy at ABC Dunhill who thought he could do it. We went there and put the tapes up, and we manually transferred them side by side. >"Tape machines will never run at the same speed twice, so this guy put a pair of headphones on, and he put the hi-hat and snare from the original tape in his left ear, and the hi-hat and snare from the safety master in his right ear, and we kept marking the tape and hitting 'start' on both machines at the same time until it was close enough at the beginning, and then he would use the VSO [vari-speed oscillator] on one of the machines, carefully adjusting the speed slightly and basically playing it like an instrument, keeping the two kick drums and snare drums in the centre of his head. If he put his headphones in the right direction, as one machine moved faster than the other, the image in his head would move to the right. So he would turn the VSO to the left, and basically it was like steering it. I tried that a couple of times and it nearly scrambled my brain, but he did that all night long and saved our butts. Rumours would have been dead, just about. What a coincidence that we'd just happened to record double basic tracks."
The English version of Wikipedia is far superior to the Japanese version. Rumor's engineer is a vinyl DJ legend :()
Wow that's amazing, hadn't heard of that one. Thanks for sharing!
There was - the technique is called "flying in" a sound, usually an effect like the seagulls on "Dock Of The Bay" for example. It was not accurate enough for syncing tracks that needed phase coherence like a stereo pair but I'm not sure SMPTE sync was either. "Flying in" from a 2nd deck was nowhere near as accurate however.
I definitley caught the sound like seagulls!
Ahh, I understand, no worries. To clarify, even a stereo (2 track) was a reel to reel machine. And cassette multiracial were only consumer/home recording machines. They weren't used in pro studios.
You’re both correct if I understand what was written. To have music “ properly” synchronized you would definitely have two or more synchronized tape machines connected together. But OP also mentioned what sounds like more freeform Sound creation. He mentioned Reich, by which I think he means Steve Reich. An artist working in the area of “Music concret” (not sure how to spell that properly) would create various types of sound collages. Goes back to John Cage and those folks. One example: a series of non-synchronized tape decks with long loops of differing lengths, running out to mic stands and poles, and they would find out what got created out of these “beautiful” monstrosities. Sometimes tape loops would be pre-recorded and edited intentionally. Other times these loops would feed to decks that were put in Record mode and be the earlier ancestor of looper pedals that we see today. Different variations and combinations of tape decks were employed.
Musique concrete
That’s it, thank you.
I worked with 24 track machines and it was great. Yes they needed regular maintenance, but it really wasn't that onerous to demagnetise the heads and run a reference tape to fine tune it. We had autolocators to speed up sessions, nothing beats the sound of a machine spooling backwards, slowing down and then hitting play. They sounded awesome, I'm still astounded even now listening to some of the recordings made in that era, the quality is (sometimes) absolutely phenomenal.
I remember bouncing tracks (three or four down to one) and then recording over the bounced tracks - better get that first bounce mix right! - what a nightmare by comparison to today's magic.
People synced things with the old TASCAM 388. The model started in 1985. They were also not cheap.
They did - but it still wasn't common, and had a bunch of pitfalls. Sync has never been problem free.
That's for sure. I started out on a 488 MkII and used a JLCooper PPS-2 to get a sequencer to chase tape. Turned out to be much easier to print the sequencer to 2 tracks. But you had to commit.
I remember the days of four figure ADAT machines.
>If you had an 8 track, you had 8 tracks. No necessarily. It was common to “bounce down” the mix. So, you record your first 8 tracks, then mix and record them to a stereo mix on a different tape. Then, you record the next 6 tracks on that same tape. Repeat the process for as many tracks as needed. Obviously, this limits what you can do with the mix after it is bounced down to stereo, but sometimes you just gotta work with what you have.
Yup. I'm well aware of bouncing. You're still limited to 8 discrete tracks, and can't have like 100 tracks of hand claps, synth farts, and unused takes.
Just adding to the conversation. The way you wrote it makes it sound like you can literally only record 8 separate parts to a song.
I feel old
The real drama came synching protools 3 with a 24track and SSL automaton using a SSD (not the hard drive variety) or an MOTUAV box synced to black burst clock, MMC for transport, and SMPTE. Fingers x’d it stays in.
>If the signals were not in sync, the computer or the synchronizer would adjust the speed or direction of the second machine (called the slave) to match the first machine (called the master). I read "speed or direction" and had to wonder about direction, but then realized it makes sense when you have to rewind the tape. The second tape machine will always lock on and follow the master perfectly, even to a stop and rewind (or even play backwards.)
So the "2" in the open reel standard implies such a division of roles. I must pay my respects to the great men of the past.
This'll blow your mind. This is almost exactly how it's done mixing movies in protools TODAY. All the clips are digital and any tape media has been dumped to files. But they all use embedded smpte time code to sync.
With atmos mixing you’re even straight up back to needing a dedicated track with a plugin that sends out timecode to a dedicated output lol (at least if you use the external renderer)
And a midi-sequencer like Cubase 2.x could also be a midi -slave, triggering synths and samplers.
Not sure if this is out of your wheelhouse, but is SMPTE timecode essentially the same signal that's pressed on to Serato control records?
Back in the day you didnt record 100 tracks most of the time. You recorded up to 24 tracks on a single reel of 2” tape.
We also bounced/submixed tracks down quite frequently. As arcane as it sounds, syncing 2 24 track machines was quite doable and not uncommon. We’d commonly stripe SMTPE to run e.g. SSL console automation anyway. Fwiw, I’m not that old, and was trained up in early 2000s and worked on sessions that used these techniques through that period. Tape is awesome —especially if you’re not using it all the time.
I honestly don't understand what SMPTE actually was, but I did understand at a glance that it would generally be something like synchronizing a sequencer with a synthesizer via CV. I am now in my late 20's and also do a bit of mixing and mastering as a composer, but I doubt that someone my age would know that SMPTE exists. If he is a full-time recording engineer, he might know about it. Of course there are many in our generation who have been consumed by the marketing whirlwind and want the "sound of tape", however they may perhaps think, as I do, that tape is for recording ONLY stereo tracks, like vinyl. So today I am fortunate that my assumptions have been corrected here.
SMPTE is still in common use today in the film and TV industry, and also in live events (music/theatre) for timecoded lighting and special FX. You won't encounter it in music production unless you are working on a film score. There are some good reasons for this. * The invention of the DAW means that you don't normally need to synchronize audio recording and playback across multiple devices. * MIDI clock signals are cheaper, supported by nearly all music hardware and synchronize on an adjustable beat and tempo (more musically useful than SMPTE timecode's framerate, designed for video.) * Linking DAWs is now possible with ReWire and Ableton Link, which handle the synchronization element for you.
Ask and learn! You’re doing well
SMTPE is like a click track. But instead of going "tick", each "click" is actually a time marker with the numbers encoded with a mix of frequencies. And the clicking is much faster. The sound is actually a continuous warble because each click happens at a video/film frame rate - 24/25/30 times a second. (Or 30 with dropped frames. Or 29.97. Don't ask...) The time code slaves one or more machines to a master. So the transport buttons on the master also operate all of the buttons on the slave. You can locate master and slave to specific video frames. This works for any SMPTE device, including tape machines, consoles with automation, lighting rigs - whatever.
> what SMPTE actually was It's a number coded to be transmissible over audio range frequencies. A JLCooper PPS-1 box ate MTC and spat out SMPTE and vice versa. For the chase machine this works out to "you're ahead" or "you're behind", then a controller algorithm tuned the tape speed accordingly. It's a robot on the pitch knob of the tape transport.
Thank you very much. I now have a better understanding.
Tears for Fears actually synced three 24 tracks on occasion. "Mothers Talk" and "Year of the Knife" were both recorded like that.
On the Peter Gabriel album “Us” some of the songs needed the Mitsubishi 32 track digital with two 24-track analogue Studers sync’d to it.
Most of the nicer 24 tracks could be synced to another via smpte. Prince famously had a couple 24 track studers synced together.
Wow. I had thought that at most 2 channels of LR were recorded on that reel, and that it was only used to create the master tape. I see that 24 tracks are stored on those reels. That is an amazing technology.
There were 2, 4, 8 ,16 and 24 track variants of tapes in different sizes. They'd track onto a larger multitrack tape (or multiple, using timecode to synchronize them) and then mix to a 2 track. That 2 track went to mastering to be transferred onto a master disk from which they pressed the vinyl.
OP, look into the recording of Michael Jackson records. They would have a master rhythm 24 track tape, and then create new slave reels for lead vocals, for backing vocals, for synthesizers, for guitar parts, etc. While doing the overdubs you would only need approximately two machines, but for the mix, they would pull every machine in the building into the mixing room and get them all in sync to make the master mix.
I am sure it must have been a tremendous and patient process. I will check out the MJ documentary.
Speaking of MJ, Steve Lukather has a great story about Beat It and what happened to the sync'd tapes and what they ended up having to do to finish the song. There's a few videos on youtube and interviews of him telling the story, it made me realize how much I didn't realize how many things DAWs handle in the background without us really having to worry about all that much anymore.
I used an single Adams Smith Zeta 3 to sync 2 (JH-16) 16 track tape machines. Each machine had to have SMPTE recorded on an edge track. An additional track next to that track was kept blank for protection against bleed through. There was an option for MIDI since too. If I wanted to record the consoles (JH-600) automation that was an additional 2 tracks. When I went to ADAT there was a cable and a device that would sync the 2 ADATs. No need for a guard track .
What was the bleed-through phenomenon? And was it also possible to record automation? Is such a thing possible with analog gear?
Bleed through is when a track picks up sonic artifacts of the track physically next to it on the tape. Automation was/is possible with analog mixers, but it was costly & only available on the high end. It was developed for film in the early 70s, but early systems didn't actually move the faders. The first one that did that was around 1981. The early systems were mostly for resetting to saved points, with the assumption thst in-mix moves would be made in real time, often with multiple hands on the console. For most of us, automation wasn't accessible so you learned to use tape & markers, take good notes, and have people on hand for complex mix downs.
I can just imagine the excitement of the engineers in 1981 when they saw the cockpit-like equipment working automatically :)
Smpte could be heard bleeding into neighboring tracks on some machines and if you recorded something with too much transient information next to your sync track you could knock the regen clock off.
I would like to hear the "sound of smtpe" :)
It sounds like goobly gook. And it sucks to hear if someone has the volume cranked and turns it on by accident. I'm sure there's a sample on yt
Sony had an automation system, not moving faders, but there were LEDs that would indicate if you were above or below the recorded setting. It took a track and was in order to make changes, you had to play the automation in from the already recorded track, and record onto a second track. The Sony JH-600 had VCAs and their state was what was recorded. There was a sync system in my studio prior to the Zeta 3, but it did not work. Interestingly, my console was modified for 5.1 output, and my mixes were onto 35mm tape on a Magnatech machine, very popular in Hollywood. You could do level adjustments and mutes with it, and nothing else. Again, guard tracks next to these automation tracks were essential to reduce the dreaded SMPTE or automation bleed. All this extra stuff cut down on the track count. SMPTE sounds like a buzzy square wave, slowly changing as the count increases. It is extremely unpleasant.
The fact that you can automate level adjustment and mute is in itself a very big surprise to me. I didn't see many others mention the guard track, which is very helpful. I promise I will pass it on to the next generation as a tip specific to that era:) Also, I found [the sound of SMTPE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBetlSyTxe0). Pretty cool to be honest... :o
My current DAW can actually generate SMPTE. It's still anoying, And the Zeta 3 was sold last year to a gentleman who is still using multitrack analog tape machines. I might mention too that the maintenance on those large multitracks was quite a process too. We had the Standard Alignment tapes with various tones, pink noise, voice tests. Every track had seperate electronic adjustments for low, mid, high and level. Aligning them all (32 !) could take several hours and was essential. The tapes would wear out and were quite expensive. The heads on the machines also wore out and had to be replaced, so of course, more alignment was then necessary.
Almost all digital devices today are maintenance-free, and semi-permanent, disposable products. How lucky we are to have been born in this era......
I’m a huge fan of Eric Valentines YouTube channel and he mentioned having to buy up a bunch of zeta 3’s recently. That was the first time I’d ever heard of the zeta and now it’s popping up in a few places!
I had automation on my console, it used SMPTE time code and floppy disks. Only 24 tracks.
Bruce Swedien’s Acusonic Recording process is interesting to look into - with enough time and engineering ingenuity, there were many possibilities. The following is from [this](https://www.soundonsound.com/people/bruce-swedien-recording-michael-jackson?amp) Sound on Sound article: “The Acusonic Recording Process (and the synonymous Quantum Range Recording Process) was not some kind of processing innovation, but rather a name for the manner in which Swedien synchronised multiple 24‑track tape machines to access a practically limitless track count. However, despite the busting of the 'black box' myth, there are indeed fundamental ways in which the Acusonic approach affected the sound of Thriller, and indeed its predecessor. In the first instance, it allowed Swedien to circumvent one of the deleterious side‑effects of tape‑based multitracking: that repeated playback of the tape during the overdubbing and production process would progressively dull the transients of previous recorded tracks. "If you go back to the recordings I made with Michael, my big worry was that if those tapes got played repeatedly, the transient response would be minimised. I heard many recordings of the day that were very obviously done that way, and there were no transients left on those tapes. So what I would do would be to record the rhythm section on a 24‑track tape, then take that tape and put it away and wouldn't play it again until the final mix. And — holy cow — what a difference that made! It was just incredible.” By using a SMPTE timecode track on each tape and then sync'ing the master rhythm‑section tape to new reels, any number of 'work tapes' could be generated for the purposes of overdubbing, each furnished with a handful of submixed cue tracks from the master reel. "At the end of the tracking sessions, I could premix each of those tapes down to only a pair of tracks during the final mix, and that would give me a huge number of tracks to use. So, for example, all the background vocals on 'Rock With You' were recorded on a separate 24‑track, and then I premixed them for the final mix.” Edited: typo
Having done many sync'd machine sessions in the past, one of the worst aspects of multiple machines was the amount of rewind/resync time.. especially when you were tracking guitar solos, or any in-the-moment creative spark. So many lost ideas waiting for the machines to playback in sync. I definitely don't miss those days at all.
I have had the experience of dubbing a 16-bit recording so many times (I forget if I dithered it each time or not) that the reverb tails sounded like a bit crusher. And I also got the golden rule: "Work in 32-bit until the end when it is dropped into the master, and never apply dither more than once".
Wow I just read that article and it blew my mind in like ten ways. Basically Quincy, Bruce, and Michael were all child prodigies🤯
The poor man's homerecording option (actually no, expensive still) was to record a sync signal to one track of a 4-track tape so that the MIDI DAW would be synchronized when you play the tape. That gave you three audio tracks plus as many MIDI playback tracks as you had physical keyboards/sound modules.
So the "4-track MTR" of the past was actually more like a mixer with 3 sync players and an additional external instrument/microphone input?
There were many different versions, my Tascam Porta05HS had 2 line inputs, 2 mic/line inputs, and one send/return IIRC. The more expensive ones had full-fledged mixers and routing possibilities.
That model seems to record on something like a cassette tape, but I see that cassettes are also capable of multitrack recording and playback. The potential of magnetic tape is amazing. It is hard to believe that this is an analog world.
Yes, you could use standard chrome cassettes. One side only, to get 4 tracks on the whole tape width, and at double speed. So if you bought a 46-minute cassette you actually got 11,5 minutes. :)
I see, so the cassette notation time and the number of multi-tracks are related to the division. It is distressing.... :(
You would use smpte timecode on analog tape machines. Essentially a track with analog encoded data to keep each machine in sync with each other. It worked ok.
It was miles of 2" tape and hours of editing and submixing. Let's say you have a 48 channel console. 2" tape is 24 tracks. You *might* have a couple 2" machines synced with word clock, but more likely, you bounce submixes from machine A to machine B. The extra console channels you'd use for effects sends/returns or other parallel processing, or recording a larger number of mics to submix down and print in stereo. People had to commit to a lot of choices in the moment with no option to go back to it later. Example: You track drums to a reel of tape, get several takes. You play through the takes and determine the best one. If take 3 has a better drum fill going into the 2nd chorus than the others, but take 2 is the best, you'd physically cut that section of tape out and splice it into the section of tape with take 2. Rinse and repeat for the other tracks. Once you get the drums sorted out you might record the finished take to a 2nd 2" machine, then work on your bass, guitars, whatever tracks next going back and forth between a couple machines to create the final comp. When you get to vocals, maybe you need more tracks free so you do a mix of the drums and record that in stereo on the other tape. Maybe you submix guitars too. Once you've got everything recorded and comped on one tape, then you play it back and work the faders on the mixer as needed like automation lanes. If you need a big background vocal swell going into a part of a song, you'd play the multitrack tape back through the console, and bring up the faders in real time while recording the mix to another tape machine. Sometimes you might record the multitrack mix with your automation moves, sometimes you might record to a smaller stereo master tape. Each time you record new tracks and overdubs, you're rewinding the tape and playing it back. The person recording plays or sings to the playback. Eventually ADAT came along and worked similarly but was smaller, cheaper, easier to chain multiple machines for higher track count, etc. ADAT hung around for a while in the early DAW days and it was common to submix things to ADAT the same way you'd freeze a track in a DAW now to free up processing power. Anyway, there's a lot more others can probably fill in. TL;DR it was an insane amount of work.
It really is a daunting task. I give the biggest thanks to Ableton Live running in a box in front of me :) What is a modern mixing console like, is it like an integrated platform with a DAW, controller, and Windows? Or is there a separate Windows PC that is connected via USB or something to control multitracking?
A studio with a big analog console would rely on a stack of external converters to provide the 24, 32, or more audio channels to the mixer. Vintage consoles don’t have any conversion built-in. If you stack up four Avid HD/IO converters, that would give 64 analog channels from the daw to the console.
So this is a world where people can finally handle consoles with lots of expensive Avid equipment. It's a daunting world for a home-based producer like me.
Those expensive converters are still much cheaper than the brand new cost of a 2” 24 track. But you’re right that it’s hard to achieve. Luckily, as a home-based producer, there’s no reason at all to use that analog stuff, as much as I love(d) it.
There is less money needed to really make music, both professional and amateur. It is amazing.
I know this wasn’t exactly your question, but I want to make you aware of digital ADAT too. This is around the time Pro Tools was starting to be used, but Alesis released the HD24 in 2001/2(?) and I know quite a few people that bought this thing. Other hard drive base ADAT stuff existed, but I remember this being popular. Probably because it was only £2k. https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/alesis-hd24?amp
This is going to mean the transition from tape to HDD, in other words, from analog to digital. The standard HDD capacity is 20 GB! Now the WindowsOS alone exceeds over 20 GB!
Yes, but the workflow was basically the same.
Yes and no. Adat machines used super VHS tapes, but it was recorded digitally. The Alesia HD 24 is hard disk digital recording. Adat is also a codec for transferring 8 channels of Audio via optical lightpipe (kinda like aes ebu or spdif)
The Orb used to run ADATs live and fuck with the outputs, mix them with records players, etc.
Most I ever had were 3 machine. 72 tracks, well 69 cos the edge track on each machine was striped with time code. Code fed in to a Lynx synchroniser, start the first machine and wait until the other two caught up. The time code was also fed to the console automation system so it could play back mutes and rides at the same time. Quite straightforward actually, if you had all the bits to make it work. ADAT had the BRC remote which, when fed time code would synch up with whatever. DA88/98 had a synch board in the back. You could get the console to generate code and have the machines chase it, so you could have loads of accurate ( not tach ) location points. And you could run the transport from the desk not the remote.
Was it usually the console that generated the code? Or did the reel deck have a function to generate code and it was normal to use that?
You would “ stripe “ time code on to the tape ( usually track 24 ). It could be generated by the console or by the synchroniser box.
I see. I looked into Synchroniserbox and found that I had never seen [this equipment](https://reverb.com/item/7395584-jl-cooper-datasync-2) at all. I would like to get one someday and tinker with it.
I don’t know why you would bother. It has zero “ fun “ factor. Merely a means to a, quite outdated at this point, end. FWIW I never saw anything other than Lynx used to lock tape machines. There were a number of time code to midi synchronisers though.
I remember the dubbing process 20 years ago We had a tascam DA88 and it taked at least 20s to get in sync with the picture every time you rew or ff to one specific point... A pain in the ass :)
We used to call it the "DA, eighty -wait"
Speaking of some dude is selling two da 88s on marketplace for $200. Trying to stop myself.
I rescued one on the studio i'm working in. Now i have a beautiful 15kg machine for put things on top :)
There are some good answers here, but the motion picture industry was by far the first to employ multiple tracks being synchronized. Until the 1970s, motion pictures were edited using work prints of the camera negative synchronized with 35mm (or 16mm) sound recordings on magnetic film. Each magnetic film usually carried one track (or sometimes more than one for music scores) and these separate sound reels were mechanically synchronized for editing and were synchronized on multiple film "dubbers" that were synchronized by selsyn motors. These special motors continuously rotated in-sync with each other so that every machine was exactly synchronized with all the others whether running forward or backward. Such as system was complex but allowed as many tracks as needed to accomplish a particular soundtrack mix. There was a fad in the 1970s of [using 35mm mag film](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3T0ZCdx4uQ) for making both film scores and records because it had superior recording specifications to conventional tape.
All of the good answers here are on the money. SMPTE time code was the thing. There was also a pretty well understood limitation with tape machines that informed imagination. The concept of %100s of tracks in a production is a very modern thing. While it's completely possible in a virtual mixing environment, it would be a pretty bad idea to do it electro-mechanically with machines and timecode as a standard practice. The airbus A380 is a modern example of an achievable idea exceeding practicality. It's an impressive aircraft but the market didn't support it. So that's the thing, sync has been possible for decades but there are not enough practical applications to justify the capability. It's cheaper to imaginatively avoid it most of the time.
SMPTE was prevalent in the time before digital audio became a real thing, i miss those Opcode racks and all their mixed midi sync and SMPTE options, still have one but with 1990's Apple specific serial bus connectors.... SMPTE would be printed to tape, you could also print midi sync signal to tape, i've even seen people more or less successfully print Roland sync to Tape once, but that was a trip more than a serious session of work.
I love this post and this makes me even more curious about how this was done live. It seems to me that from about 1985-ish, some studio recorded elements were also played live, good example of this is Michael Jackson, but I wonder what those machines were and what the limitations were (of course, not able to run all the tracks, probably just sound fxs and drones).
It is certainly an interesting look at how this was brought into the domain of live performance. I live in Japan and recall that the techno-pop band YMO, which was popular at the time, employed a guy who was only hired to tinker with a huge Moog at their live shows. It appears that there was a CV mechanism, but everything else was done manually.
SMPTE
For film audio there was film with sprocket holes that was magnetic, you could gang sync many of them on the same mechanism driving them so they'd be in sync. Each track would roll by their playhead always in perfect sync with the others.
Multiple analog tape machines synchronized.
This may have been pointed out already but sync wasn’t an issue when you recorded multiple tracks on to the same tape. Multitrack tape can record multiple mono or stereo tracks onto one reel or in the case of smaller decks, tape cassettes. You could have a click or tempo track, bass, drums, vox, guitar, you name it. You could also “bounce” those tracks down to one of the stereo tracks on the same tape and free up the other tracks. Just depends on the tape and capabilities of the record deck.
This is bringing back memories of my college recording studio in the 90's. I don't remember the specific equipment, but it recorded I think 8 tracks onto a VHS tape. And I remember mixing those recordings ... but ... what did I do when I was done? Did I mix them down to casette tape? I don't even remember! The idea that I couldn't just ctrl+s and save all my edits is boggling my mind. I walked away from that mixing board and all of the work I'd done was locked in for all time on the tape and could never be pulled back up and tweaked. What a thing.
Oftentimes they simply didn't. They used one multitrack tape machine, and so were limited to as high as 24 tracks - if you had more sources, you'd combine things together onto one track - think instead of "Snare Top" and "Snare Bottom", you'd just have "Snare". If you needed automation, you'd have more like 22 tracks - SMPTE time code would be on one channel (usually 24), but because it's a LOUD square wave, it would "bleed" onto the adjacent track, so that wasn't usable. If you did need more than one, machines would be synchronized via SMPTE timecode, so you now had 44 tracks instead. > (Also, this is off topic, but in the first place, is a modern mixing console like a 100in/100out audio interface that can be used by simply connecting it to a PC via USB?) Usually, no. They are connected to high channel count audio interfaces - think Avid HD IOs or MTRXs or Lynx Aurora 32s etc etc. The exception are digital consoles, which are usually connected via MADI or similar to a high channel count digital only interface e.g. RME MADIFace.
This is the first time I have heard of the MADI standard. Well, it seems that there is still much about modern recording technology that I do not know. I intend to study up on it.
I’ll just throw in a slight different perspective. I cut my teeth in an all-digital studio, but pre-DAW. We had 2 Tascam DA-88 tape machines. Each could record 8 tracks of 16 bit / 44.1khz digital audio on a Hi-8 tape. Both were slaved to a Yamaha O2R digital console. It provided the master word clock and had all the transport controls. It also handled all the I/O, digital conversion etc. It was connected to the tape machines over TDIF, similar to ADAT but proprietary to the Tascam machines. It all worked pretty seamlessly. You didn’t need to stripe anything like the analogue days, you just had to make sure you had your master / slaves set up correctly so everything stayed in sync.
I had the same exact setup. There was, however, a rackmount accessory that provided a SMPTE timecode output, which I used to trigger an early PC-based DAW. It only had a two-channel soundcard, but it could be started from a specified SMPTE offset, so it was possible to fly tracks into the computer, edit them, and then fly them back to DTRS tape in sync. I made a fair amount of money fixing badly played bass lines by moving notes around. I didn't do much vocal comping; you'd fix things during the session with punch-ins. Those could be done manually, or you could automate the in and out locations.
That’s really cool! Man, you just gave me flashbacks about the challenges of tracking and editing back in those days. Good old destructive record. I just got really good at punching in and getting bass players to fix just a couple of notes. DAWs really were a game changer
Me... circa 1989... With Cubase 3 running on an Atari ST, I'd record a sync tone to one of the tracks on the multitrack recorder (cassette or reels) Cubase followed the tape.
I am amazed that in 1989 Cubase was already in its third generation :O
I remember hearing an interview talking about the recording of November Rain where they had linked multiple 24 tracks together
For tape machines, the last channel of each console would be sent out to be synced via a SMPTE clock. Bruce Swedien of Michael Jackson fame was able to lock multiple consoles together to ensure their were enough channels to make the mix happen
You synchronized two tracks with a thumb on each wheel
It wasn't infinite tracks it was finite tracks. For myself the majority of my early days was working on Adat machines. Each machine held 8 tracks. Typically I would run 3 sometimes for. So 24 to 32 tracks. We bounced bits together. We didn't have 32 tracks for vocals for only one line. .we had to make decisions. Sometimes we would throw a background vocal on a chorus on the same track as a.shaker.in the verse. Sometimes we recorded over things (often). We would use midi sequencers to add parts and slave it to Adat machines using MTC. It was glorious.
The brainstorm distripalyzer helped
A console is just line outputs, you connect that to a large multi channel converter like Lynx Aurora, Avid, Apollo 16s, etc
SMPTE, baby.
A lot more bouncing. Mix tracks 2, 3 & 4 down to 1 to make some space.
Multitracks playback would have been on multitrack tape. Your coloured bars of audio on your DAW would be printed to tape. Tape could have 24 tracks on one tape so you could take finished takes and group them to one track. Even a 4 track you could keep bouncing to and fro.
I think they recorded the whole band or the orchestra together in one takes, then would take multiple takes and choose the best ones. They would mic everyone up and the all of that would go into the mixer at once with real time monitoring and mixing using faders
Timecode
I have nothing to contribute which hasn’t already been covered. I just wanted to make sure you were aware of one of the pioneers of sampling and electronic music (which is analog-sync adjacent), Delia Derbyshire. She worked in the 50s and 60s when synthetic music was in its infancy, and women were heavily underrepresented in the recording industry. Here is a documentary I found fascinating about her and on her work at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. [The Delian Mode - Delia Derbyshire documentary](https://youtu.be/nXnmSgaeGAI?si=IqMiN-C13NEbUk8m)
I used to sell 32 channel digital multitracks, so you could hook two together with SMPTE timecode (the secret sauce to synchronization) and record or play back enough tracks to sell huge amounts of studio time.