Tascam Digital Portastudio 2488 User Guide

6 – Disk management and file import/export
 TASCAM 2488 User’s Guide 69
The 2488 will appear as a removable disk on 
your computer system.
3Drag and drop the Standard MIDI file(s) from 
your computer’s disk to the 2488. 
4You can now disconnect the 2488 from the 
computer (see “Using USB for backup and 
restore” on page 73).
5Press EXIT to dismiss the popup message on 
the 2488.
The 2488 restarts.
6Now you can load the files from the FAT parti-
tion to the MIDI playback unit. From the 
MIDI 
PLAYER...

6 – Disk management and file import/export
70 TASCAM 2488 User’s Guide
The 2488 will appear as a removable disk on 
your computer system.
6Copy the wave file from the FAT partition to 
the computer.
7You can now disconnect the 2488 from the 
computer (see “Using USB for backup and 
restore” on page 73).
8Press EXIT to dismiss the popup message on 
the 2488.
The 2488 restarts.
NOTE
You can repeat steps 1 through 3 as many times as you 
like (provided there is space on the disk), followed by 
steps 5...

6 – Disk management and file import/export
 TASCAM 2488 User’s Guide 71
2Select the virtual track to be exported and 
press 
ENTER.
3Select the resolution of the resulting file (16 or 
24 bits). The resolution of the exported data 
affects the size of the file. 
4Press ENTER to copy the virtual track con-
tents to disc, or 
EXIT to cancel the process.  

72 TASCAM 2488 User’s Guide
7 – Backup and restore
Backup
You can use the 2488 disc drive to back up your work 
to disc. You can either use CD-R media (cheaper, but 
you can only use it once) or CD-RW media (slightly 
more expensive, but you can erase and reuse it a 
number of times).
NOTE
The operations all deal with songs on the currently-
selected partition. If the song you want is on another 
partition, you must select another disk partition as the 
active partition before proceeding (see “Selecting...

7 – Backup and restore
 TASCAM 2488 User’s Guide 73
1Put the first (or only, if there is only one) disc 
of the backup set into the CD-RW drive.
2With the transport stopped, press the MENU 
key.
From the 
DATA BACKUP menu, select CD RESTORE. 
The 2488 reads the title of the song from the 
disc and asks you if you want to continue.
3Press YES to continue, NO to eject the disc and 
cancel the operation.
4If you go ahead with the restore, the 2488 cop-
ies the data from the disc to the active disk...

7 – Backup and restore
74 TASCAM 2488 User’s Guide
Backing up
If you do not understand the 2488’s disk arrange-
ment, you should read “Disk management and file 
import/export” on page 65 before proceeding.
Backup to a computer connected via USB is a two-
stage process. The first stage is copying the song data 
from the native partition to the FAT partition, and the 
second stage is copying from the FAT partition to the 
computer.
To backup:
1With the transport stopped, press the MENU 
key. Note that you...

7 – Backup and restore
 TASCAM 2488 User’s Guide 75
list of songs on the FAT partition, and their 
size.7Use the wheel to select the song to restore and 
then press 
ENTER. The HD indicator flashes as 
the song is copied from the FAT partition to 
the native partition.
8When the copy is finished, the song is auto-
matically loaded and becomes your current 
working song. You can then use the song man-
agement features to load another song, if you 
want (“First steps in recording (song manage-
ment)” on...

76 TASCAM 2488 User’s Guide
8 – MIDI
The MIDI module inside the 2488 is a GM-compati-
ble MIDI tone generator (TG) which can be used 
either to play Standard MIDI Files (SMFs) or drum patterns as a backing for the audio tracks recorded on 
the 2488.
The instruments in the tone generator can be mixed 
(volume, pan position, etc.)
Internal module mode
To change between the MIDI file playback mode and 
pattern playback mode:
1From the SYNC/MIDI menu, select and press MIDI 
PLAYER
.
2Use the wheel to select...

8 – MIDI
 TASCAM 2488 User’s Guide 77
Editing the MIDI instruments
Although it is not possible to edit the notes in the 
SMF, it is possible to edit the initial settings for the 
tone generator.
1Press the shifted TG SELECT (GM EDIT) key.
The numbers of parts which are playing are 
shown in the outline font (parts 1, 2, 3 and 4 in 
this illustration). Part numbers are initially set 
to incoming MIDI channels.
2Use the cursor keys to navigate to the field you 
want to change, and the wheel to change the...

8 – MIDI
78 TASCAM 2488 User’s Guide
Te m p o  m a p
Creating a tempo map is essential for working with 
beats and bars rather than minutes and seconds. If 
there is no tempo assigned to a song, the 2488 will 
have no way of “thinking” in bars and beats 
(see“Markers” on page 42 for details of how this is 
used), if it is not playing an SMF or patterns. 
1From the SYNC/MIDI menu item, select TEMPO MAP 
and press 
ENTER.You can input up to 9999 tempo changes in 
one song. Tempos can be set between 20.0...