Donny,
Actually I can record 18 tracks at one time (as opposed to 8 as George says) albeit only 8 live inputs.....meaning you could take 8 things, mics, instruments, whatever plug them all in and go for it.

If on the other hand as your question suggests, you only have 2 inputs, or the recorders ability is only to be able to record 2 tracks live then that is all you can do so.....you could have 2 mics or the 2 outputs from you board plugged in or a guitar and a mic or.....and when you're done recording first pass, you will have only 2 tracks recorded. You can then go back and overdub using the same 2 inputs and record on to tracks 3 & 4, then go back and overdub on to tracks 5&6....now comes where you have to be careful....because some 8 track machines need tracks 7 & 8 for mix down and are the tracks that feed the stereo output. So in essence what that means is that you can only really record 6 tracks total (on this 8 track machine).

A way around that so that you can add more tracks is to bounce them. What that means is you would take tracks 1,2,3,4, and send them internally to tracks 5 & 6. That now leaves tracks 1,2,3,4 open to record something else, because all that you had on those 4 tracks are now on tracks 5 & 6.

The second part of your Q.....is overdubbing. Let's say you did your accmp. on tracks 1 & 2. Now you want to put in vocals, so you plug in your mic and record on track 3 (that's overdubbing) and you then sing backup on the chorus track 4 (again you're overdubbing). With a machine that is only capable of recording 2 tracks live, this is the way you would have to do it.

OK, so what does having the ability to record say 8 tracks live buy me? It means....that on tracks 1 & 2, I can send say the drums out of the main L & R of the Tyros to tracks 1 & 2. Then on the other 2 Tyros outputs, I can send the bass out one and the rest of the accmp. tracks out the other and record those on tracks 3 & 4.....next I can take my mic, plug it into my TC elec. processor and send those 2 outputs to tracks 5 & 6.....then I can take the mono out of my Roland xv 3080 (with the Tyros as the controller) and send one of the patches to track seven and last, I could take the mono out of my Triton Rack and send one of the sound patches to track 8.....hit the record button and at the end I would have 8 seperate recorded tracks in one shot.

Whereas if it was only a two live input recorder, it would have taken me 6 passes to record the same thing.

There are many other things the big bucks buys you....sampling, 130 virtual tracks, motorized faders etc.
jam on,
Terry

Hope that makes sense.

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