Below these is a master level control for adjusting the line output, speaker, and headphone volume levels. Under the Pause button is an LED indicating whether power is on, plus four further metering LEDs showing the output signal level. Underneath the tape mechanism are six standard transport buttons, including the all-important Record, which can only operate when a tape with unbroken write-protect tabs is loaded. It also lacks a varispeed control, which I always felt was one of the best things tape offered to the creative musician.Īt the top of the front panel is a counter and reset button, although the CR4 has no 'zero return' facility. The CR4 can't internally bounce tracks, it cannot apply effects or processing to recorded material, and it has very limited monitoring facilities. True, the four tracks can be panned and mixed to make a stereo signal, but that's about it. For example, if a guitar lead is plugged into one of the inputs, an amp simulation can be applied, as can an effect, and the resulting signal can be output into a separate recorder.Ībsent from the CR4, however, are any real mixing facilities. It can also act as a modelling preamp or DI device. Used in combination, the speakers and modelling effects allow the CR4 to be used as a practice amp for guitarists, bassists, and vocalists. The extra features it brings to the table are the pair of built-in speakers and Korg's own Ampworks modelling processor and multi-effects. What Do You Get?Īlthough Korg have called the CR4 a four-track cassette recorder, in offers both more and less than that title suggests. Compact cassettes are still a very cheap recording medium, they can be bought just about anywhere, they're easy to use, pretty reliable, and very robust - shake a cassette as hard as you like, for example, but it's still unlikely to lose data or become corrupted! Even the most technically minded musicians covet immediacy when they are in creative flow, so being able to plug in and record without worrying about data integrity or software routing issues is still very attractive. So why would you choose to buy a cassette multitracker these days? Well, it wouldn't be your first choice for making release-quality recordings, because of tape's inherently high level of noise, but for creating rough demos, or for the purpose of jotting down musical ideas in a simple and immediate way, such machines do have their place. Yet despite the growth and development of the digital recorder market over the last decade, cassette-based multitrack machines have soldiered on surprisingly well, and, as Korg have demonstrated with the release of the CR4, some of the big names in the industry are still prepared to spend time and money developing new cassette-based products. Indeed, digital has made high-quality recording a possibility for the home studio owner in a way that the compact cassette could never do. The first multitrack owned by many of us of a certain age was a cassette four-track, but when digital recorders came along, bringing with them digital editing, mix recall, automation, and noise-free recording, it seemed as though tape had had its day. Korg, one of the main manufacturers of digital workstations, have just released another multitracker, but this time it's cassette-based.
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