Last month my daughter wrote a radio play and had a bunch of her friends over so that we could record it. With great flourish, I set up my long-unused Tascam 244 4-track, cleaned the heads and they started. I didn't have official head cleaning fluid so I used CD wipe stuff. NOT a good plan. Five minutes into the show, background squealing became UNbearably loud and the tape drive appeared to be not threading the tapes right. So much for impressing everyone with technology--I stopped them, got out my Radio Shack recording walkman, and recorded the whole thing with that instead. Turned out pretty good after I edited it on my computer with Cool Edit--a great program for producing and enhancing basic raw recording. Not only could I wipe the background noise to near zero, it actually boosted the levels without noticeable distortion!

So, wasn't a horror story after all, except when I get the bill for fixing the 244. But its definite, if you don't use your headphones and give a quick playback check when you're starting to live record, you will have forgotten something crucial--as Larry demonstrated.

W-O