Buying an Otari MX5050! Hooray

[King Arthur]

Hi there

I recently discovered a store selling two otari reel decks, a mx 5050 bII 2 and a mx 5050 mkIII 8. I'm trying to build a good recording setup for my music and tape is the only way I'm going to do it. Currently I have the mk 5050 mkIII 8 getting looked over by a service man but sadly I't doesn't come with any reel nabs and he doesn't have any tape to test the play back (although on first inspection he liked the look of the heads)... As soon as he gives me a report on its condition I will post the findings. My main reason for this thread is to ask what difference in recording would the 1/2" tape on a mkIII 8 be compared to 1/4" on a BII 2. Any type of advice I welcome..

[ironbut]

Hi Stinkey,
Welcome to the forum. To start with, please read the forum rules. We use our real names here and the rules will explain an easy way to insert it into your signature.

Regarding the machines, recording and playback quality depends a great deal on the square inches (so to speak) of tape that is imprinted with the signal.
Tape width/format and tape speed determine how much tape is imprinted per unit of time. To find a common denominator between the 1/2" 8 track and 1/4" 1/2 track (two track) well can see that if they were both 1/4 inch than the 1/2" machine breaks down to 4 tracks. That's twice the number of tracks than the Bll 2 on the same width of tape.

So, if you don't need those extra 6 tracks, you'll get better sound and much lower tape costs with the Bll 2.
Take a look at the price of tape here;

http://usrecordingmedia-store.stores.yahoo.net/

If you do need the 8 tracks and you wish to mix down to tape, you'll need both machines.
If this is a budding project studio that you're planning, you may want to start out digitally and find out what you need rather than letting the hardware dictate what you can do (although that sounds an awful lot like the way I've done a lot of things).

For general information about the bits and pieces that fit together to make magnetic recordings, check out the "Beginners Guide" and "Reel to Reel Links" located in stickies above the General Forum.

[King Arthur]

Thanks for the tips. What I was intending on doing was recording to tape and then playing each track back recording it onto the computer to fine tune and mix etc on pro tools..

[ofajen]

Hi there

I recently discovered a store selling two otari reel decks, a mx 5050 bII 2 and a mx 5050 mkIII 8. I'm trying to build a good recording setup for my music and tape is the only way I'm going to do it. Currently I have the mk 5050 mkIII 8 getting looked over by a service man but sadly I't doesn't come with any reel nabs and he doesn't have any tape to test the play back (although on first inspection he liked the look of the heads)... As soon as he gives me a report on its condition I will post the findings. My main reason for this thread is to ask what difference in recording would the 1/2" tape on a mkIII 8 be compared to 1/4" on a BII 2. Any type of advice I welcome..

I believe all those machines will be 15/7.5 ips, so both should be able to give flat response up to 20K and perhaps beyond at 15 ips (my mkIII is only down about 1 dB at 25K).  The BII 2 will be able to do both NAB and IEC eq, while the mkIII-8 will probably be IEC only, as that is far more common.  The mkIII-8 channel cards don't switch EQ, so you just have to pull the back/top cover and see which kind they are. 

The 2-track does have wider tracks, but in practice it is a reasonable combo for tracking and mixing, since you can reduce noise from the 8-track via track muting, gating/expansion, careful fader control or the dreaded noise reduction (ick).

Since you are wanting to do a bunch of tracks to tape and then port to PT, the 8-track would probably be more convenient, since you can track stuff in sync and then port over together to PT.  The 2-track would not be very handy for that, unless two tracks is enough.

Cheers,

Otto