This patch is my tribute to the digital recorders of the early 2000s. If you grew up with recorders like this, the user interface should feel pretty familiar.
4-Track Recorder uses 5 mono samplers: 4 of them as regular tracks, and the 5th for bouncing/summing tracks 1-4 to a single track, which will free up tracks 1-4 for recording additional tracks.
Before you can start recording you will need to set up the files on each sampler. On page 2 you will find all 5 samplers on the 5 rows. Select/create a new file for each sampler. I recommend saving after this is done.
The 4 buttons on the top left are the track select buttons. The purple button is the currently selected track and the 3 white ones are the unselected tracks. Pressing the white button of an unselected track will change the selection.
On the 2nd row below the 4 track buttons there are pixels that will show the audio levels recorded on each track. This helps to identify what was recorded on each track. The currently selected track will also show the levels of the audio input.
On the 3rd row there are red push buttons that will erase the audio on each corresponding track, including the 5th bounce track on the right side.
*****ERASING A TRACK IS PERMANENT*****
Tread lightly with these buttons and pay attention to which track you are about to record to.
On the sampler module the most practical way to “erase” the track is to record new audio onto that track/sampler. Pressing the erase buttons will replace the previously recorded audio with a new (ideally silent) audio for the amount of time the erase button is pressed.
On the bottom row:
Green – Play/Stop
Red – Record enable
Pressing “record enable” will enable the currently selected track for recording. “Record enable” will begin flashing along with the button for the currently selected track. When record enable mode is on, press play to begin recording. Both the play button and record enable button will light up to indicate that it is actively recording.
The orange button is the “bounce enable” button. It works the same way as the “record enable” button, but it records tracks 1-4 onto the 5th bounce track. When “bounce enable” is on, press play to begin recording. After pressing play the “bounce enable” button will turn red, indicating that it is recording. Since there is no overdubbing on these samplers you only get 1 bounce. Attempting to bounce tracks more than once will overwrite and erase the existing bounce.
The bottom right buttons are for controlling the metronome.
TAP TEMPO – turns on tap tempo and deactivates the manually selected tempo.
TAP – for tapping in the tempo.
BPM – allows you to manually dial in the tempo.
CLICK LEVEL – adjusts the volume of the metronome.
CLICK ON-OFF – toggles the metronome on and off. The metronome will only be heard during playback or recording.
Blue button – REPEAT will loop the playback of all the tracks based on the longest recorded track.
Left stompswitch – mimics the play/stop button.
Middle stompswitch – mimics the record enable button.
Right stompswitch – cycles the currently selected track.
This configuration allows for most of the recording process to be operated with just the stompswitches.
Things to be aware of:
The patch isn’t perfect. If you are concerned about recording reliability and losing files I strongly suggest using another means of recording.
After some testing, I found occasionally files will become corrupt, which will cause the patch to freeze. I found the solution is to replace the sampler module files with new files. I noticed this is more likely to happen after recording longer files of 3+ minutes. In theory each sampler module should be good to record for about 10 minutes.
You can save multiple copies of this patch and rename the patch to record different songs. *****CHANGE THE AUDIO FILES ON THE DUPLICATE COPIES BEFORE RECORDING TO PREVENT ERASING THE FILES OF THE ORIGINAL PATCH*****
I made this patch after getting frustrated with the fundamental limitations of multitrack loopers. I encourage you to use this patch as a blank canvas for ideas that aren’t suitable for loopers (although technically this patch also kind of does crude looping for convenience).
Don’t forget you can insert sampler modules into other ZOIA patches to grab audio to import into 4-Track Recorder. I made a stripped down version of Z-Drum (zoia drum machine patch) that I’m about to upload with a built in sampler for making drum tracks to import. Again, be careful with file management as to not accidentally erase files.
CPU is tight. On my unit I’ve noticed occasional CPU clipping noises, but the noises are not recorded to the audio files. I wish I could have added more features, but CPU clipping kind of ruins the illusion of early 2000s recording.
If you find any bugs feel free to contact me @ryanholmbergmusic on instagram where I’m more likely to see it and I’ll see if there is enough CPU to do something about it.
