This is the beautiful little cassette multitrack recorder upon which I tracked all of my songs back in the '90s in all their lo-fi splendor. I was able to achieve a maximum of 11 tracks by bouncing tracks down when more empty tracks were needed. Much care (maintenance) and attention to the little details when mixing was important because once the separate tracks were mixed and recorded to a free track, there was no going back. Some musicians/engineers used the 'tape to tape' method, recording complete mixes to a stereo cassette deck, VCR or a DAT machine and then dubbing it all back onto one or two tracks of the multitrack recorder. I never did it that way though. It felt too much like cheating to me, and besides - my music never required more than 7 or so tracks anyway.
The tape hiss could get pretty out of hand if submixes weren't 'hyped' a little with a slight boost of 5 and/or 10 kHz while bouncing down. Generally, I never minded a little hiss as long as it wasn't too distracting. I used to call it 'air', hehe. Really though, it acted like glue for all of the high-end content in the signal. Mixing vocals was so much easier then than it is now, imo. No de-essing was ever needed.
What I've missed most since getting into digital 'in-the-box' mixing is the sense of 'forward motion' which one experiences when mixing down to a finite amount of tracks. Recording on a four-track machine meant that every detail had to be planned out and taken into consideration before tracking anything. I usually always started with drums first (no guide tracks!), which tells you how well I'd have to know the song before laying any parts down. 'Begin with the end in mind' would have been my mantra if I'd heard of Stephen Covey back then.
Anyway, I'm emulating that workflow again in-the-box and having a blast doing it. It's challenging and exciting to plan out a mix knowing that once each bounce is completed, it is committed to 'tape', in a manner of speaking. The mixes are more intimate, dramatic, punchy-sounding and less soupy and masked than my digital full-stereo mixes have been. Drums are in mono again, which is the way they were always meant to be recorded, imo.
Using this method, my songs may never sound 'modern' by today's wishy-washy, dynamics-crushing standard, but they will contain the unique vibe which vastly superior music of the past always gave to the listener.
Maybe one day I'll take the plunge and start mixing in eight-track! :)
