Tascam Digital Portastudio 2488 User Guide

1 – Setting up and introduction
 TASCAM 2488 User’s Guide 19
Lead line
Now we can use track 2 to record the lead guitar line. 
We’ll add an effect to the lead guitar to make it sound 
a little more interesting.
If you don’t want to play through the whole song, 
you can use the procedures described in “Auto punch 
operations” on page 46.NOTE
You can also perform audio edits, cutting, copying and 
pasting between tracks, etc. to correct small mistakes. 
These operations are explained in “About track edit-...

1 – Setting up and introduction
20 TASCAM 2488 User’s Guide
Congratulations! 
By now you should be familiar with the basic con-
cepts of the 2488: how the inputs and channels work 
together; how the mixer controls are accessed and operated, how recording and playback take place, 
and a little about the location and effect facilities pro-
vided by the 2488.
6Press the RHSL key to enter 
rehearsal mode. When this mode is 
active, you do not actually record 
when the 
RECORD key and PLAY 
keys are pressed...

 TASCAM 2488 User’s Guide 21
2 – Mixer
Inputs and assignments
The 2488 has eight inputs, marked from A through H, 
and twenty-four mixer channels.
Inputs 
A through D are fitted with dual XLR-1/4 
balanced inputs and can be supplied with +48 V 
phantom power for condenser microphones.
WARNING
Never connect or disconnect microphones to or from 
inputs 
A through D with the phantom power turned 
on.
Never use unbalanced dynamic microphones with 
microphone inputs 
A through D with phantom power 
turned on....

2 – Mixer
22 TASCAM 2488 User’s Guide
Saving and loading assignments (QUCK ROUTING)
There are three “slots” that can be used to save com-
monly used routing assignments. These slots 
accessed through the 
QUICK ROUTING key:
1Press the QUICK ROUTING key to bring up the 
screen shown here.
2Use the wheel or “up” and “down” cursor 
keys to select the slot to be loaded or to which 
the current routing assignments will be saved.
3Use the “left” and “right” cursor keys to select 
LOAD or SAVE.
4Press ENTER....

2 – Mixer
 TASCAM 2488 User’s Guide 23
EQ
Set the three-band equalization for each channel 
using the same screen as the digital pad/gain (see 
above)
On the 2488 channels, you can adjust the gain (the 
amount that the signal is cut and boosted) by ±12 dB, 
and the frequency (high or low) affected by the 
equalization in three bands. The frequencies are (in 
Hz):
Low (
L) 32 — 1.6k 
Mid (M) 32 — 18k 
High (H) 1.7k — 18k
Note that the frequencies are set in discrete steps; it is 
not possible to set the...

2 – Mixer
24 TASCAM 2488 User’s Guide
The fader/pan screen
Press the channel’s SELECT key, followed by the 
FA D E R / PA N key (this order can be reversed) to bring 
up this screen:Here, you can make phase and pan settings and view 
the fader settings for four channels at a time (linked 
channels still count as two channels here).
Phase
Use this to correct miswired microphones, etc. Out-
of-phase sources can result in unnatural EQ and a 
“hole in the middle” stereo effect.The phase symbol (∅)shows the...

2 – Mixer
 TASCAM 2488 User’s Guide 25
2In this screen, the physical faders are repre-
sented with side-pointing triangles beside 
them representing the virtual fader positions.Above each on-screen fader whose position 
does not correspond to that of the internal vir-
tual fader, there is an arrow pointing either up 
or down, depending on whether the physical 
fader must be moved up or down to null it.
A fader which is nulled (faders 15+16 in the 
screen above) has no triangle above it.
Mute
The MUTE...

2 – Mixer
26 TASCAM 2488 User’s Guide
EQ
Like the ordinary channels, the stereo bus has three-
band equalization, with sweepable center frequen-
cies, and variable Q for the midrange.
To access this, 
1Press the STEREO key.
2Press the EQ key:
3Use the cursor keys and wheel to select and 
adjust the EQ parameters for the stereo bus.
Dynamics
The stereo bus has a stereo dynamics processor 
(compressor or expander) available.
1Press and hold the SHIFT key.
2Press the STEREO key.
3Use the cursor keys and...

2 – Mixer
 TASCAM 2488 User’s Guide 27
Fader
Like the channel faders, the position of the STEREO 
fader can differ from the internal setting if it has been 
changed as the result of a MIDI command or a scene 
recall.
Press the 
STEREO key alone to bring up the stereo 
bus fader screen:In this case, the 
LVL value corresponds to the physical 
fader level, and 
INT gives the internal virtual fader 
value (as marked by the triangular symbol beside the 
on-screen fader). In both cases, 
0 is full cut, 127 is...

2 – Mixer
28 TASCAM 2488 User’s Guide
Mono monitoring
Typically monitoring is carried out in stereo, echoing 
the stereo bus. However, there may be times when 
you want to check what the mix sounds like in mono.1Press the shifted  MONITOR SOURCE key. 
While the monitoring is in mono, the appro-
priate monitor selection indicator flashes.
Use the 
MONITOR SOURCE key to turn off 
mono monitoring.
Record source monitoring
Record source monitoring is a feature of the 2488. It 
allows monitoring of the input...