Silly question about Metal tapes.

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by Kiko1974, Aug 23, 2019.

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  1. Kiko1974

    Kiko1974 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    I'm curious about this: Metal tape (Type IV for cassette tapes) were used on cassette decks, video recorders like home Video 8 system, DAT and I read somewhere they were also used on DASH professional decks. But were they also used on analogue R2R professional recorders either stereo or multitrack?
     
  2. McLover

    McLover Senior Member

    No, and they didn't need to be. Metal is for cassettes in audio, which are a consumer grade thing unless it's church sermons, radio news, or recording a drug deal.
     
  3. TarnishedEars

    TarnishedEars Forum Resident

    Location:
    The Seattle area
    Metal tape never existed for analog R2R. There was some talk in the audio press that metal R2R tapes might be coming in the late 70s, but the whole concept never went anywhere.

    The closest thing which ever happened in the R2R domain was co-called "EE" tape. EE tapes entered the scene in the early 80s, but these were the equivalent of Type II (Chrome equivalent) Cassette tapes, NOT metal tapes
     
    Last edited: Aug 23, 2019
  4. fogalu

    fogalu There is only one Beethoven

    Location:
    Killarney, Ireland
    I had three very good cassette recorder back in the 90s (I still have two of them) and the recordings I made on metal tape are very good indeed. No sermons or drug deals (I can't think which is worse) but some fine live music and experimental tapes.
    I know, theoretically, that cassettes were very much inferior to vinyl or even CD but my old metal tapes really sound good - even after being transferred to that "obsolete" CD medium.
    (I think ordinary ferric tape would do for drug deal recordings.) ;)
     
    Last edited: Aug 23, 2019
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  5. Boltman92124

    Boltman92124 Go Padres!!

    Location:
    San Diego
    So are you still doing some recording with your decks? Where are you buying blanks tapes by chance?
     
  6. Kiko1974

    Kiko1974 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    And were these EE tapes widely used? If the difference they made was like on cassette tapes I'm sure R2R's got quite an increase on sound quality.
     
  7. TarnishedEars

    TarnishedEars Forum Resident

    Location:
    The Seattle area
    No. Only two or three manufacturers (Teac, Akai and ?) bothered to make "EE capable" machines, and only Maxell, TDK and BASF ever made EE tapes.

    The marketing claim was that EE tape made recoding R2R at 3.75 ips perform just as well as running at 7.5ips. But my own experience recording on these tapes did not fully support this assertion.
     
    Last edited: Aug 23, 2019
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  8. Kiko1974

    Kiko1974 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    So ALL analogue recordings were done on ferric oxide tape, surprising...
     
  9. TarnishedEars

    TarnishedEars Forum Resident

    Location:
    The Seattle area
    Mostly, but not all ferric oxides are equal! There is a surprising amount of chemistry which goes into making higher-end ferric oxide tape formulations.

    The primary exception is that there were some conventionally-biased ferric-cobalt formulations in the consumer tape realm (Such as Maxell UDXL, and XL1). But I'm not aware that this has ever been true in the Professional domain.
     
  10. fogalu

    fogalu There is only one Beethoven

    Location:
    Killarney, Ireland
    I haven't done any recordings on tape for the past twenty years!
    I occasionally play back some old cassettes and I have a few unopened chrome tapes but I don't use them anymore. The two decks I have are a Sony and a three-head JVC. They were pretty good back in the early 90s and, as I've said, any tapes I recorded back then sound good today.
    Vinyl quality was so bad in the late 80s that I bought cassettes instead of records for a while until CD came along.
    The cassettes weren't quite as good (especially when it came to wow and flutter) but at least they had no surface noise - and Dolby took care of the hiss.
     
    Last edited: Aug 23, 2019
  11. bluesky

    bluesky Senior Member

    Location:
    south florida, usa
    I never liked metal cassette's sound qualities. :shrug:
     
  12. Curiosity

    Curiosity Just A Boy

    Location:
    United Kingdom
    Metal tape was fine but your recorder, specifically the record head and electronics really had to be up to it to offer the quality it was capable of and a good number sported Metal Position hype logos but really weren't.
    Two examples, a otherwise good Pioneer radio cassette recorder sported metal bias on record with Dolby B with non defeatable auto record level :hurlleft: and my own Technics three head deck that with no amount of calibrating could sound right on TDK MA or Maxell MX, sounding much better on Maxell XLII or TDK AR super ferrics.
    In so far as open reel tape went there was no real need for it as professionals record at 15 IPS which gives a very wide response and the majority of regular hifi people using open reel tape in the 70's and 80's recorded at 7 1/2 IPS which on a decent tape such as XLI was more than adequate, heck UD wasn't bad at all and cheap at the time.
    You could coax decent results at 3 3/4 with something like Agfa PEM36 on my Tandberg with crossfield biasing but it was really a case of "Why bother" as by that point those into lower tape costs and convenience had moved to cassette and using a better formulation doesn't improve on wow and flutter anyway.
     
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  13. bluesky

    bluesky Senior Member

    Location:
    south florida, usa
    Maxell XLII was best.
     
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  14. macster

    macster Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Diego, Ca. USA
    Ebay mostly. Why are you looking for some?

    M~
     
  15. Kiko1974

    Kiko1974 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    I had a Sony 3 Head deck with Dolby B, C and S along with HX-Pro in the early 1990's and I got great sound quality with TDK metal tapes, the reference was if I'm not mistaken MA-R, it had a methacrylate shell (or it looked like it) with an aluminium frame, it weighted a lot. With Dolby S and HX-Pro on and a good bias adjust it sounded outstanding, with that TDK tape I had the feeling that I was getting the most out of my deck. Downside is that it was very expensive, it was in the old Pesetas time before the Euro, not inflation converted a 60 minutes MA-R cost around 10 Euros. I almost always used BASF Chrome Maxima II which sounded very similar to the TDK MA-R despite not being a Metal tape and some ocasional That's "Metal For High Position" that was also very good but I prefered how the BASF recorded low frequencies.
    For me the advantages of Metal tape in addition of its great sound quality was their very low print copy effect and how inmune it seemed to sound drop outs because of use.
    In early 1994 I sold it to get the biggest flop and mistake I've made on my Hi Fi years: a Philips DCC 900 (top of the line) deck.
     
  16. PopularChuck

    PopularChuck Senior Member

    Location:
    Bay Area
    Metallica and Iron Maiden had the best metal tapes.


    Or is that not what you meant?
     
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