4 Track cassette recorders?
 

I have been looking for a reasonably priced recorder, and stumbled across 4 track cassette recorders. Some of the Tascams I saw for $250, offered 4 xlr inputs, faders, and the ability to record four channels at once. Nifty, I thought. Has most of the features my $1,000 Korg D12 had, except the hard drive.

My question is, does anyone know if they make a 4 track cassette recorder with 4 inputs, that runs on batteries? It would be nice to have a truly portable recorder.

So you are saying that you've found the device but it is running
on AC power only? Are you sure it doesn't also have a DC low
voltage input to which you could hook up a battery for example?

I'm saying they look like what I would like to use, but none of them mention having DC power. I'd like to know if there are DC powered 4 Track cassette recorders available.

Two digital recorders, not cassette, that I found at www.bswusa.com are the:

Korg PXR4 - 4 track recorder, $299 and runs on "AA" batteries.

The Tascam Pocketstudio5 - 4 track recorder is $399.00 and also runs on "AA" batteries.

Both of these seem to only have one or two inputs, so are probably not what you're looking for, but might lead you in the right direction. I'm recommending neither product or the vendor. I just happened to have one of their catalogs on my desk when I saw your post and remembered seeing similar products there.

I am leaning towards the cassettes for one reason- They will hold at least as much as my 1 hour Mini DV tape. The smaller digitals all seem to use flash media, which really doesn't hold much. When you get to the larger digital recorders, you get plenty of record time, but you need to be close to a wall plug because they don't use batteries. My Korg was a gem that would hold like 18 hours of audio. But the first time the breaker trips, you lose it. I'd rather carry a seperate bag with nothing but batteries.

For 4 mono channels running at 48 khz 16 bit you'd need around
1.3 GB of storage space for 60 minutes.

That's more than you'll find on a lot of smart media. Most cassettes will hold an hour. My D12 had a 40 gig HDD, and would record 8 tracks. But I'd settle for an hour.

You know that the cassette sound quality is not as good as a modern MD recorder, right?

Yeah, but it still has to be better than anything my cam picks up. And the reason I haven't been looking at MDs, is there is usually only one 1/8" input, and they don't hold much.

Certainly the amateur MD's have only 1/8" input but they can have both line and microphone inputs. I don't find that to be too limiting.

How much do you want to hold? Admittedly they won't do more than 2 tracks AFAIK, but they will hold up to 3 hours or so at a lower quality. That quality is still better (I think) than cassette.

What camera do you have that it is of less quality than a cassette recorder?

I have the GL1. I am used to using a HDD recorder, as the quality was top shelf, it had a built in mixer, and several inputs for more than 1 source. I want the same features, only truly portable. If I can get an hour of audio, I'd be happy, as I would have to switch video tapes at that point anyways.

At the top quality, MD recorders give one hour of stereo recording. According to Jay Rose, the quality is better than any of the prosumer camcorders and sometimes better than a Sony DSR-570.

As long as you don't require 4 tracks, the MD recorder will sound a lot better than Cassette. I have a $500 Marantz stereo portable cassette recorder, quite a good machine. At its best, it isn't as good as my $350 Sony MD recorder. And certainly a lot larger.

If I could stand a larger unit, I'd get one of the portable MD recorders with XLR & better controls. But the 'good' ones cannot be slipped in the pocket of the groom.