Laptop as an efx processor interface?

[Joe Birch]

Hello,

I am new to your forum and am the proud new owner of a new born Tascam DP 24sd. I have spent a few months with it and I am still amazed with how far Portastudio technology has come. The price tag was also surprising. It got me back into the recording game after a long break. I spent many years writing songs and fronting bands locally in Southern California. I was in and out of studios during that time recording my songs.

Several years later, working a day job, living in NC, I am now handling all of my own tracks using live drums and instruments. I have just about everything I need to put out a new release. There have been some limitations that I have run into with the unit. This is of course to be expected for the price. I am now doing some test mixes after working through some tracking and have figured out how to resolve the mix/compression limitation issue using parallel compression and bouncing. I would now like to be able to shine up vocal takes that I don't want to re record or try to punch into using a similar method. So I would be running a send through a processor and bouncing this to another track to improve little pitch issues and sonic imperfections once I have maxed out what I can do with the mic, the room and the performance.

Here is what I wanted to run by you: Do you think that running a send to my audio interface connected to my computer would allow me to use a plug in like auto tune and other types of vocal effects? Would latency be an issue? It would be nice to have lots of plug ins available for bouncing any of the tracks I want to improve without having to export tracks to a DAW for mixing. I would also like to have options to do this for any of the other tracks.

I will start here and look forward to contributing and learning more about squeezing every advantage out of this little $500 recorder.

Best Regards,

Joe

 

[Joe Birch]

Sorry if this needs to be moved to another category. My only excuse is that I need more coffee and I am new here...

 

[Matt B]

I use the Audio Depot function to create WAV files and move them to my laptop. I have Reaper on the laptop with the effects it comes with, plus a few more. Process the track and use Audio Depot to place it back in the DP.

The main limitation to this is that I can't properly adjust the track in relation to the rest of the mix. I have gotten pretty good at hitting the "play" buttons of the DP and laptop, to get the track in pretty good synch.

My primary use is for vocal tracks - Izotope Ozone is an amazing product. Vocals are my weakness, so I am OK with the processing and then building the song around the vocals.

I also use Reaper for mastering.

I hope this helps!

Matt B

 

[Joe Birch]

Thanks for the feedback Matt B! This was my back up plan if I cant find a way to avoid moving wave files back and forth. Do you need much in the way of processing power on your laptop to get what you need done? I am on a Lenovo with an intel core i3 8th gen, so I am not sure if I can run something like Reaper without issues which means that I may be spending money on a new computer and software to implement a strategy like this. On my way to work and will check back in later!

Joe

 

[Matt B]

Running Reaper, two plug-ins, and all of the resident stuff used about 5% of my processor on my old and tired laptop. Running 24 channels with effects? Somewhere it gets to be an issue. Rendering a single track? Not at all. You could probably do that with your phone!

More educated members can chime in here!

Matt B

 

[-mjk-]

Welcome to the TASCAM Forums @Joe Birch. The biggest problem you're going to have running a PC with the DAW and plug-ins, is latency between the two devices. If you're gonna use a DAW for anything, use the Audio Depot and export the entire file from the beginning to the end to import to the DAW. If you're working with the entire song length, when you reimport it back into the DP machine it will line up. And as @Matt B pointed out, lining the tracks up without having MIDI control is rather difficult if you try to record to the DAW. I have an older DP-32 (with MIDI), and I cut tracks that I import to Reaper, and mix with a console with full automation. I'm quite familiar with track bouncing and submixing using both the DP machine and Reaper with the console. So feel free to ask more questions!

 

[Matt B]

What he said!

Clarification - my "lining up the tracks" is hitting "play" on the DP and "play" on my laptop about half second apart. In no way is is lined up accurately, but it does present the vocal in a trial mix to see if it the vocal processing that is applied will fit to the ears within the song.

 

[Joe Birch]

Thank you both for responding! Sounds like I'm going to be buying Reaper. Matt, do you not do a quick stereo mix to move over with your vocal so that you don't have to keep trying to line those up?

 

[Phil Tipping]

Hi Joe and welcome. Agree with comments so far. Re. lining up tracks, normal export & import via AudioDepot will line up perfectly, but in other situations such as using real-time record at either end, I try and insert a marker sync pulse before transferring anything.
You can use the copy/paste track edit functions at the dp end to insert a blip or drum hit etc. into exactly the same point in time in all the tracks. Similarly, if you're starting off with tracks on a DAW, use the DAW's edit functions.
As long as you retain these blips every time you transfer files either way, you can line them up pretty accurately, either using the track edit move/paste functions at the dp end, or sliding the audio at the DAW end. Would also recommend using a low-level blip otherwise if you have a lot of tracks, all the blips will play at the same time and you'll get quite a shock. When I first tried this technique, I used a 0dB blip on 24 tracks and it was, as they say, a trouser-flapping moment

 

[Joe Birch]

Hi Phil! I have very much appreciated the work you did on the Tascam DP Youtube content! It has saved me a lot of time. I downloaded the 60 day trial of Reaper and have exported the tracks from one of my songs into a project. I was able to get around some. I am now watching Reaper DAW 101 on Hope Pole Studios channel. It looks like I still have plenty to digest. Thanks to all for stopping by to share your experience on the subject!

 

[Matt B]

Thank you both for responding! Sounds like I'm going to be buying Reaper. Matt, do you not do a quick stereo mix to move over with your vocal so that you don't have to keep trying to line those up?

I have never done that. Sometimes I will do a quick "push all of the faders up" mix to listen to while I adjust the vocals. I have never recorded or moved that to Reaper.

At that point, it is all about vocals. I will later make adjustments to the other instruments to accommodate the vocal track. For my simple purposes, exact synchronization is not important at this point - all about tones. Two tries with the play buttons and I am close enough for the current purpose.

Matt B

 

[-mjk-]

@Matt B you may want to have a read of my latest production technique about making a specific project to handle a lot of overdub tracks. I'm also getting ready to lay down somewhere between 12 and 15 background vocal tracks, And although possible, it's definitely a pain in the neck to use virtual tracks because you can't hear them all on the control surface at the same time.

 

[Joe Birch]

I went out and picked up an HP Pavilion desktop to support the DAW for mixing idea MJK and Matt gave me. It is an Intel Core i5+8400 processor with 16GB Intel Optane memory and 8GB of DDR4 System memory and a 1TB Hard Drive. I dont know what most of that is, but it was reasonably priced and letting me load it down without it blinking an eye...lol! Thank you guys for turning me on to Reaper. I am getting around in this program with no problems. I will be buying it after the free trial is up.

 

[-mjk-]

@Joe Birch Reaper is without a doubt in many people's opinion, the best DAW there is. After I installed it and started using it for mixing, I started watching all the YouTube tutorials. however, I realized that since I am using it to mix out-of-the-box with the console, I don't need to know all of those features because I'm not using plug-ins, automation envelopes, or any of those things. Reaper for me is a multitrack playback machine, and I also record mixdowns on a separate stereo track all within Reaper. Since this conversation is becoming a bit off the topic of Tascam, please feel free to DM me with any questions. The computer you bought is going to work just fine with Reaper. Enjoy!

 

[Joe Birch]

Thanks again for your help! I have a flexible set of recording tools now to get what I need done. The Tascam DP 24 sd will continue to be what I use for tracking and rough mixes. It is a great price point for people who need more than a couple of recording tracks at a time. It is nice to be able to mic a drumset up and print to 8 tracks at a time. Using the DAW will just round things out after the tracks are down.

 

[-mjk-]

@Joe Birch that's what I do. I cut my tracks in the DP-32, import them to Reaper and mix with the console. To be honest, I'm getting better results than I used to get in the 80s and 90s with 24 tracks on 2" tape.

 

[Joe Birch]

It is amazing how far technology has come. It can't hurt to have a lot of experience.

 

[Brian Mac V]

+1 for Reaper. Holding breath for V6.0, but I did that for 2,3,4,5 also. Excellent piece of kit, I'm sure you wouldn't have had any problems on a 10 year old XP machine. But about sending and returning - Regardless of your PC specs and your Audio Interface specs, you will never ever get past the 5/6 ms round trip latency barrier. 'Better products', like RME, actually buffers internally if you try to go lower. But do check out Reaper's MTC, it might come in handy some day!

 

[Joe Birch]

I just bought it. You cant beat $60 for what it offers! It turned out to be a better option to use the Tascam to track (I like the physical sliders and dials for tone and efx sending) and Reaper to mix and master. I picked up Izotope Music Production 3 to go along with it and now I have everything I need. YouTube sure helped with getting me up to speed quickly on everything.

 

[-mjk-]

@Joe Birch that's just what I do, mixing with the X32. All tracks cut on the DP-32.