Reel to Reel Suggestions for Playing 3 3/4 and 1 7/8

We are encountering more and more low-speed audio reels that we need to digitize, but we don't currently have any decks that can play these back. Any suggestions?

 

Wow, they made reel to reels that played at 1-7/8 IPS? I didn't know that.

 

I'm sure it sounds as bad as you would imagine.

 

Revox made decks that played at those speeds!!!

 

Not very many, very special order too. SLS models only. Tandberg made such machines, Akai did, and Sony.

 

Yeah, we had a Sony for a while that played 1 7/8 ips tapes. It also liked eating tapes so we eventually moved on. Any consumer Teac model (and lots of others) can play 3 3/4 tapes. We have to slow down our 1 7/8 tapes in the computer. The worst are tapes made on little portables without capstans. The speed varies from slow to fast continually as they are played on a standard machine. I have to vari-speed those by hand/ear. Good times.

 

Can you play them back too fast (does the tape fit the machine) and then just digitally slow it back to the right speed? You can do that for free with Audacity / sox and they are mature tools.

 

Surely there is someone in CA with these capabilities. And, once found someone I would buy a Tascam DA 3000 Under $1K) and convert them to 24/192 with that or a DR-68o MK II that is about half the cost and also does 8 tracks at 2496 and 2 tracks at 24192 for archiving purposes. Either of these would easily allow you to save all that is on the rolls once you found a away to play them back.

I had seen some of the older DR-680 that do the same for under $500 at B&H Photo, but I would check stock. If you only need 2 channels and 2496 is enough resolution I would look at the near pocket size Sony PCM-M10 ($249) or the Tascam DR-40 at $179 from Sweetwater Sound that has balanced in.

To me, that would be a fun project to be a part of.

 

We have capability to handle quite a few formats, and we'll be adding this one to our palette. We record/convert up to 4 tracks at once with a pair of Benchmark ADC1's.

I'm leaning toward trying to find a Teac or Tascam for this purpose. I really like our 2 and 4 track decks from them - utter workhorses. It would be cool to have at least one Revox though.

RE: Sony

We also had issues with a Sony 4 track deck we were using, and having opened it up and replaced the belts I can say that I was less than impressed by it's useless complexity, cluttered/pointless layout and crazy belt routing.

I haven't tried slowing the tapes down in software - I'm guessing with pitch adjustment? If we have trouble finding a decent deck I may resort to that.

Thanks guys!

 

Just record at double the sample rate, and then re-assign the sample rate (without converting) it inside of your software. For example if you record at 88.2kHz, you can re-assign your sample rate to 44.1kHz and your sound will slow by 50% without needing to do any additional processing. Likewise if you recorded at 192kHz and re-assigned to 48kHz, you will have slowed the sound by 75%. Easy peasy. The only catch is that the playback EQ will be incorrect. Although since there is no standard EQ for 1 7/8 ips, that's not such a big deal. With 3.75 ips this frequency response skewing is more noticable.

 

That's a great idea. The only issue is that this is an archives project, and our target resolution for non-derivivative files is 24bits/96khz. If only there were another solution that was as simple.

 

My Roberts 800X plays 1-7/8 ips. Other AKAI/Roberts models do as well. My friend and I are making/selling new cams for these decks if you need to bring one back to life.

 

It won't be pitch adjustment - you need to slow the speed down as well. Otherwise the pitch will be fine but things will be going way too fast. Speed/pitch adjustments are pretty standard things, I don't have Audacity in front of me right now but I'm sure it has this capability. I know sox does.

 

Audacity does indeed have tempo control, as well as speed and pitch control. Tempo control does not change the pitch, the other two do.

 

I have a Sony that plays 3 3/4 and 7 1/2 and 1 7/8 but the slow speed didn't want to play. I used Audacity and changed the pitch (in effects) to -51.50. I tuned it by ear and it worked great. Most recordings at this speed were the small 3 inch reels or 5 inch reels and most were Mono recordings.