Quick, rough video showing my setup for recording tapes for the Intellivision Keyboard Component. The particular tape in this video is a white Blank Data Storage Tape (preformatted for the Keyboard Component). Apologies for the mess in the room.
Setup is:
- Tascam's Portastudio 424 - A 4-track cassette tape player/recorder/mixer that allows for either simultaneous 4 track playback or simultaneous 4 track recording. This particular model has an excellent block diagram in the manual.
- ESI's Maya44 USB+ - A USB sound 'card' that allows for simultaneous 4 channel playback and simultaneous 4 channel recording. On Windows, you have to install their ASIO drivers to access this functionality.
- Reaper v5.941 on Windows 10 - Digital Audio Workstation software that allows for simultaneous 4 channel playback and/or simultaneous 4 channel recording.
The audio cables are in order of white, red, red, white or black, red, red, black. This is deliberate. Tascam labels the tape tracks as 1, 2, 3, and 4 which map to standard cassette tracks Side A Left, Side A Right, Side B Right, and Side B Left, respectively. In Reaper, tracks 1 through 4 are displayed on the screen in order from top to bottom.
While recording from this tape, at the beginning you can see tracks 3 and 4 light up before tracks 1 and 2 on both the Portastudio 424's meters and the Maya44 USB+'s red indicator LEDs. After getting past the initial tones on the tape, only track 2 is active since this contains the read-only digital data on the tape.
