Post Bouncing Down Question(s)

[Slugworth]

Tascam DP-008ex. I just bounced down the following individual tracks 1-bass, 2 & 3 guitars, 4 & 5 keyboards to stereo tracks 1 and 2. I left drums on two separate tracks as I might re-record them.

Currently, 1 & 2 are stereo bounce down. 3 & 4 are drum tracks. Tracks 5/6/7 are vocal harmonies. Can I bounce down 3-7 to tracks 1 and 2, or will that cause an issue?

 

[-mjk-]

Bouncing is a record process. If you bounce to occupied tracks it will record over them.

 

[Slugworth]

That was my assumption too. My options then are to either bounce down the additional stereo tracks to 3 & 4 while keeping the stereo tracks on and 1 & 2 as they are OR bounce all tracks including 1 & 2 to tracks 3 & 4 to open up six useable tracks?

 

[-mjk-]

Does that model have virtual tracks?

 

[Slugworth]

I'm not sure, but I think that's only on the 24 and 32 track models. What are virtual tracks?

 

[Slugworth]

I just read through this https://tascam.com/us/product/dp-008ex/feature There is no mention of virtual tracks capabilities.

 

[-mjk-]

You are trying to get more tracks out of your machine, and that is fine, however, it is limited to 8 tracks, total. You don’t really really want to mix things together that don’t belong together, like vocals, and bass. Please read the following post and the one immediately after, and you’ll see that you can use your machine and mix down mode to make the perfect sub mix of whatever you need and then re import that back into the machine on two tracks.

https://www.tascamforums.com/posts/28928

 

[Slugworth]

Thanks. That link comes up with an error message and states it's been closed.

A previous song that I made a few weeks ago I exported 8 single tracks to my laptop prior to panning as needed for bouncing them down to stereo tracks on 1 and 2. They bounced down fine and then I used three of the six available tracks to complete the song. I don't recall having to re-import the individual tracks prior to bouncing them down.

When I save individual tracks (prior to mastering) to my laptop via USB connection I will cut and paste them into a dedicated folder on my laptop. This method does not remove the individual from the multi-track recorder. However, when I master a song and then cut and paste it to my laptop the master recording is removed from the multi-track recorder.

 

[-mjk-]

Please read the production tips sticky thread in the digital portastudio forum. It’s the first two posts in the thread. I fixed the link.

I talk about using mix down instead of bouncing.

 

[Slugworth]

Will do. Thanks.

 

[dctdct]

As correctly mentioned, the small devices like our DP-008EX don't have virtual tracks. But:
There is an enhanced capability on bouncing and mixing tracks which is not there in the big devices. You can re-use source track during mixdown: i.e. source tracks can be used on the fly as target tracks during the function (which is not possible on DP-24/32 level devices.
This helps sometimes to squeeze out 2 additional tracks.

 

[Slugworth]

Thanks. I bounced down a few songs already to the source tracks after saving individual tracks to my laptop. Pretty happy with how they turned out as far as instrument/tracks combining balance.