TEAC A3340 expertise required for digitizing project

[David MacNeill]

I have a stack of large reels of 48 year-old tape filled with four-track recordings done with a TEAC A3340. These were done when I was a young man in a home recording studio in 1976-1977 and were my first experiences in a recording studio. I have been tasked by the widow and the brother of my deceased friend who owned the studio and who wrote and performed all the songs, and these recordings are extremely precious to his family and his numerous friends, including me.

We have procured a fully restored and professionally serviced A3340 for the project. It is my job to digitize the contents of these reels at the highest possible resolution, then mix them into an album.

I will also require a four-channel interface that will be used only for the duration of the project. Any suggestions? Can I rent such an interface from Guitar Center in Sacramento where I will be doing the work? The PC I will be using is very high spec and will have a large capacity PCI Express drive available for the capture. I will also need to install a Windows DAW, about which I know very little as I am a Mac person. Would Reaper do the job, or is there another professional-grade DAW option that is available for cheap or free? It would only have to work for a few days, so a timed trial DAW with no other functional limitations would work. It must be capable of recording at 192kHz at 32-bits preferably or 24-bits if that's all the DAW can handle.

Once I have all the four-track sessions, I will output the stems as AIFFs or WAVs and upload them to iCloud Drive so I can work with them at home in Boise using my UA-centric home studio. There I will chop the recordings into songs and get to work mixing and mastering, restoring and denoising the tracks as much as I possibly can using Izotope RX

PS: I have done this kind of thing before with several 8-track ½" reels and well as two-track tape masters, but for this I contracted the work to an outfit in New Jersey so all the digitizing was done for me, leaving me to extract the songs from the multitrack stems in my studio. It all went extremely well and we released our "lost" album from my band recorded in 1983 just before we broke up, and it is now available on Bandcamp as well as all the streaming services.

Internal Affairs 1983: The Lost Record

 

[Eric Dahlberg]

Would Reaper do the job, or is there another professional-grade DAW option that is available for cheap or free? It would only have to work for a few days, so a timed trial DAW with no other functional limitations would work. It must be capable of recording at 192kHz at 32-bits preferably or 24-bits if that's all the DAW can handle.

Reaper will be excellent for this. If you start using it and find that you hate it, you could do a 1 month subscription for Studio One+. That'll give you the full version of Studio One Professional for $19.99.

 

[chrisso]

I would also recommend 96Khz, 24 bit. I have found 192khz, 32 bit to be crushing to the performance of the computer without any real quality benefit. Also, everyone I work with uses WAVs.

 

[David MacNeill]

I found a simple four-channel interface from Behringer that looks promising for only $179.

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/UMC404HD--behringer-u-phoria-umc404hd-usb-audio-interface

 

[Neotrope]

Wow..... that takes me back .... I had A3340S and used to record my first, early electronic music ... anecdotal photo of me from 1982 ...

 

[flandybob]

The Behringer stuff is decent for the price, but given the context I would not go cheap on the conversion side. Not sure how much time you have but I would go RME (fireface UCX has 4 line inputs), drivers are rock solid on windows machines and what you input is what you get.

Maybe you can use it return it within the 30 day money back with sweetwater, or rent from a store.

otherwise I would look at Presonus / Focusrite stuff. I would also prioritize boxes where you have line inputs that are not combined with preamps, typically you cannot bypass the preamp.

you only get to do this once!

 

[Eric Dahlberg]

Yes. The Behringer driver is the thing I'd be most worried about. The last thing you'll want is a glitch that you don't catch until you get to the mixing stage.

 

[David MacNeill]

The RME stuff is WAY too expensive for a one-shot project. The Uphoria has line switches on the four combo inputs so it should be adequate. Remember, the quality of the recordings will be fairly low, so the tiny advantages of pristine capture quality is probably meaningless. And the tapes may simply shed oxides all over the desk and be useless, so there's that. I can't talk the brother into letting me ship the reels back East to get them baked and digitized properly, so we'll just have to risk it.

I can't find an interface with four dedicated line inputs on Sweetwater. The Volt 476 is obviously tempting but there is no line-in switch/mode that I can see. I can see the Uphoria being useful to my cowriter as he sometimes plays drums on our demos and could submix them into his Volt, so that money would not be wasted. The Behringer Windows USB driver would not be a problem for my cowriter as he is on a Mac like me, and if the Windows version is crap, I'd just return it and get something more expensive from a more respectable brand. Or I could just buy the Behringer and another similar unit like the MOTU M4 and return the one that I don't like? I will only be in Sacramento for five days so it will all have to be there when I arrive.

MOTU M4

 

[David MacNeill]

Actually the MOTU M6 looks even more useful as a an (eventual) drum submixer:

MOTU M6

 

[flandybob]

I’d go motu even if you can’t bypass the preamp over the Behringer any day of the week

but for a 5 days job I’d definitely get advantage of the sweetwater return policy

 

[Neotrope]

the motu probably best choice, but for $20 less you can also look at this

TASCAM US-4x4HR USB Audio Interface

4-in/4-out USB-C Audio Interface with 4 x XLR Inputs, 4 x 1/4" Inputs, MIDI, and Software Bundle - Mac/PC/iOS

www.sweetwater.com

 

[David MacNeill]

I am leaning toward MOTU as the made my very first recording interface and it was great.

Any love for M-Audio? They have an 8-channel for $329:

M-Audio AIR 192x14

 

[David MacNeill]

I’d go motu even if you can’t bypass the preamp over the Behringer any day of the week

but for a 5 days job I’d definitely get advantage of the sweetwater return policy

Trying to avoid the use-and-return thing if I can. I would rather find another use for it or sell it locally. Karma, you know.

 

[flandybob]

Trying to avoid the use-and-return thing if I can. I would rather find another use for it or sell it locally. Karma, you know.

I understand