My journey with DP-008 to the DP24-SD

[Mitch Gallant]

I haven't posted much here in the past few years but I thought I'd give a summary of my experiences with the DP-008 through to my current DP24-SD using modest equipment.
I was gifted a DP008 in 12/2009 and I'd never used a digital multitrack device at that point. So there was a learning curve for me. I'm a big believer in learning a few basics and just using the device as quickly as possible guided by me ears and a bit of patience. So after a few years of not using it much, I started recording vocals for a few singers and adding my acoustic/electric guitar/bass parts ... really just 6 to 8 tracks max.
In 2015, I started a Beatles recording project with a singer I had performed with live as a duet for a few years. The intent was to record our favourite Beatles songs with our vocals (maybe 4 tracks for all the harmonies) and all the instruments (that I played to my ability). Much of that was done on the basic DP-008 .. using the build-in reverb for vocals, and recording the guitar parts via mic'd amps. What was initially supposed to be just 25 songs ballooned into FAB50% (we recorded about half of the Beatles songbook!). In 2018, having the backtracks recorded for ~ 110 songs, I decided to attempt a "FabFem" project with vocals covered by all women singers (of various skill levels). This worked out nicely. At that time I wanted to improve some of the tracks and add more so I purchased a DP24-SD and since then, I've used it extensively, using again just the basic features (no bouncing, no Dynamic effects, just Send reverb on vocals). Since then I think I've home recorded over 250 full songs with various singers in the Ottawa area and instrumentals. I love this DP-24SD. Recently (past year), I'm starting to experiment with using external Send2 effects and bouncing which I think I understand and can use (based on viewing the excellent articles here, particularly Mark and Phil's articles and videos).
Currently, for my live duo, we use mixed-down backtracks of the DP-24SD songs, without vocals and a guitar track muted. This has worked out very well (with lots of rehearsal for audible synching to the backtracks in live performance). For this, I use a Tascam DR-40 recorder to play back these backtracks through our PA system.
I'm thinking of 2026 and pondering the Tascam 12 or 16 and have read the several excellent comments on the pros/cons. I've only dabbled with DAW recently (Reaper with a Focusrite 2i2 interface) and understand the learning curve.

At any rate, I'd like to share some recorded results from the DP24-SD over the past several years.
My own instrumental covers:
https://www.jensign.com/SansVoix/
and vocal covers:

Missy Fleury Singles (320 kbps MP3)

 

[-mjk-]

Great post. You've gained a ton of experience by this point so whatever you want to do, I think you can make it work. It's a bit of a shame about the DP series being discontinued though because once you talk about doing something live, having a laptop in the chain introduces another level of complexity and failure points. I prefer to use hardware solutions in live shows as much as possible. Reaper is the most capable DAW currently in existence (until something else is) and you can automate virtually anything with it, so that's the way to go. If you could do your production in the studio and then use a Model series for track playback (without a computer) you might have a solid setup and be able to use the mixer for your mics. The 8 channel mixer in the DP series is one limitation for using them as live mixers.

 

[Mitch Gallant]

Thank you. My experience with the DP-24SD has been really using just the very basic features and only the internal S1 effects. For vocals, I just use the DP internal reverb and that seems completely adequate to my ears. I've never used the Insert effects (compression, guitar effects etc). For guitars (acoustic) I directly line-in from my Martin and again use internal S1 reverb. Electric guitars are mic'd with an AudioTechnica AT3035 mic. Here I use small Fender tube amps reverb (favourite is the baby Princeton which I use also for gigging in smaller venues/clubs) combined with the DP24 internal reverb to suit my ears. Vocals use either an older AT3035 or better Senn mics (if the singer provides them). Vocal tracks to date use NO compression or level limiting (would like to get a good quality COMPACT hardware vocal compressor .. any suggestions?). Vocal tracks are exported to a rather old Win10 PC with WaveLab Pro used to do volume levelling and manual pitch corrections (no autotune!). My ears are busy. Then reimport the tracks and mixdown. listen ... adjust mix etc. In terms of final Mastering of the mix on the DP, I either use the mix as is (softer songs) or use one of my favourite presets as-is for heavier pop/rock songs.

2 Questions ... sort of :
I have only recently looked carefully at the DP-24SD block diagram and followed Phil's excellent tutorial videos with frequent references to that diagram, mainly to help understand Send1 and associated internal effects vs Send2 external effects.
In the Input strip of the diagram, the "Stereo Assign" switch seems to show assignment to either the Stereo buss OR a track (input assign). But is it not possible to assign an Input to both the Stereo buss and a track simultaneously?

DP24 Bounce mode using the Internal Send1 effects is easy.
And also using external Send2 effects in multitrack mode (using just an external mono-in --> mono-out reverb unit) works well to either (1) record the wet effect via external-return into an unused input that has been assigned to a new track (as in Mark's nice summary post) or (2) simply assign the external-return input to the stereo buss (and NOT assigning to a track) and use the effect in mixdown.
Those two methods work well.
However, the problem I have is using the Send2 effect with an already recorded track, with Send2 enabled for it with suitable level, and I'd like to use the Bounce mode to get the wet effect recorded to a new track (effectively like the first method above in explicit multitrack record mode). Is that possible? If so, I'd love to see a Phil type block diagram with yellow lines showing how the dry effect gets to the bounce buss and is recorded.
I read quite a few posts on this type of issue here (and elsewhere).