On one of the Bear Family Jerry Lee boxes they say all the masters were spooled onto one tape about the size of a wagon wheel and stored that way for years. Some of the music supposedly seeped through from one part of the tape to another. I can't remember it being noticable but they printed a warning anyway.
It only bothered me when I thought it was an alignment problem. Now that I have a little more understanding I just take it as part of the process. It's definitely not present on all records.
I find it a bit annoying. Is it the same as when it's an echo after the music? I think this is the way it is on Traffic: LOw Spark.
Yes, LPs. I never even knew that could happen. Is it when they're cut or pressed? I guess that explains why it only occurs on certain songs. Thanks for the link.
In reality, a record typically has one continuous groove, but think of it for a minute as if it's a bunch of grooves. During cutting, the record spins on the lathe, and the lead-in groove is being cut, and there's no music feeding it, so it's a "blank groove." All is well. Then, the music starts on the "next groove," but think of it this way: THAT groove (the one with music in it) shares a groove wall with the first groove, and the sound wave being cut into that groove SLIGHTLY ALTERS the wall of the FIRST groove, and your stylus picks up that alteration or deformation. This happens largely because the lacquer material used during the cutting process is relatively soft, so the actual shape is still susceptible to change as the NEXT groove is getting cut, since they share a groove wall. It's actually happening throughout the LP, but is most noticeable when there is a "blank" area involved, like in the rills and lead-in groove. One technical advantage of DMM (Direct Metal Mastering) is that the material used in the master disc is much harder, so the deformation in that shared wall is reduced/eliminated, and it does make an audible difference, which you can hear in a clip I uploaded here: https://www.box.com/s/0ddf00f6714d44e77b34 First few seconds: The LP opening in the 1984 Dutch EMI DMM pressing Second bit: The LP opening in the otherwise-identical UK EMI Non-DMM pressing Note the pre-echo in the second sample (or lack of it in the first). Matt
Tape bleed and record bleed are two very different phenomena that can give similar, undesirable results. Matt gives a great explanation and sample of record bleed. What about tape bleed? Magnetic audio tape often uses magnetized iron oxide (Fe2O3). The unstable, charged iron (Fe) and oxygen (O) ions can transfer to laterally placed strands of magnetic tape. Store a tape reel for a few decades and see what happens. How about during the opening organ chords on The Beatles' "You Like Me Too Much"mono mix from Help! as presented on the 2009 mono box? It's as if a different song is playing in the background during the first 4 seconds on the mono mix, but is absent from the 1965 and 1987 stereo versions. Listen for yourself. Is this from magnetic tape bleed-through? Or did they simply recycle a previously-used tape and not wipe it completely? My guess is on the recycled tape theory. Does it still bother me? Yes.
On "Yer Blues", I'm pretty sure you are hearing Lennon's guide vocal picked up by the room mics during the instrumental tracking. His overdubbed lead vocals don't have quite the same timing as the original, so you end up hearing the original at times in the background' whenever they are not synch'd up. You can't "fix it in the mix", without affecting drums or whatever instrument was being picked up by the mic picking up the scratch vocal. Another obvious example of this unintentional "ghost vocal" effect, so to speak, is in Led Zeppelin's "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You".
This echo can happen before or after the original signal, depending on how the tape was wound before being stored: tails out or heads out.
As an engineer, I was trained to store tape reels tails out. So if there's print-through, the "echoing" would sound normal.
using 1/4" 4 track home reel to reel, i have a different issue which is print through from the music on the other side of the tape. i've had some problems with that on older tapes but for the most part have been pretty lucky. on quieter sections, you might hear something faint in reverse.
It has an organic quality that doesn't bother me in the least. In fact, I rather like it. I like tape hiss, too. .
I think the worst I've ever heard is on the track "Jungle Boogie" by Kool and the Gang. Almost every cd reissue of that track fades to zero abruptly on the last note because the print through is so loud. I had the 45 way back when and I don't remember hearing all of that when I played the 45; then again, I had an extremely cheap stereo system then so maybe that was also on the 45 and I just never noticed it.
Drives me nuts. The 2009 remasters of Devo's Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! and Freedom of Choice both suffered from severe examples of tape print through. On Q?A!. most noticeably at the end of Sloppy (I Saw My Baby Gettin') where the final word is repeated a number of times. Ditto with Girl U Want on FOC where the final "She's just a girl" is also repeated numerous times after the song finishes. FOC also has example of pre-echo on It's Not Right and Planet Earth. Normally, I only hear these artifacts through headphones but on the examples above they're loud and clear through speakers. I noted that after someone replied to my Amazon review on this that the post echo on Girl U Want was on the original album, I went a played a few other pressings and sure enough it is on the vinyl but you really have to crank it up to hear it but on the original West German target CD, the track is abruptly faded as the song finishes. I assume that in compressing the DR on the remasters, some of these artifacts have been brought more to the fore.
Needle dropping Abba Greatest Hits Vol.2 and just noticed it on side 2,the quiet 1/2 second song start before the actual song, heard it on some other lp's as well, not sure how to search for it if it's been previously answered, thanks
Webster's Dictionary says that preecho is: : an echo in a sound recording (as a phonograph record) that is mechanically induced by a manufacturing fault and is heard before the sound causing it when the recording is played I learned the word preecho from these very forums
Pre-echo is a digital thing. If you're hearing it on vinyl, it's print-through. Some magnetism from the layer siting on top of the start of the tape transfers if it's wound the wrong way. edit - Burt beat me to it.
So the defect is in the transfer to stamper, is this correct? Or originated in the master? Edit: Easier question-So this will be found on all SD 16009 US Atlantic GF's pressed?
There are two distinct kinds of pre-echo that can occur on LPs. 1. Tape print through. This will usually be less than a second in duration. Simply put, think of the layers of tape that are spooled on a reel. One layer gets a bit of magnetism from the previous layer transferred to its own layer. That little bit can get transferred to the LP. 2. More common -- and most mis-labeled -- is "adjacent groove pre-echo" -- the deformation of one groove that takes place when the adjacent groove* gets cut very close to it. These are easy to spot because the duration will be exactly the same on every 33-1/3 RPM record: 1.8 seconds. If the delay is 1.8 seconds, it's adjacent groove pre-echo. If it's a shorter length, it's likely tape print-through. *In reality, of course, there is only one groove on a typical LP, but you know what I mean, i.e., the adjacent "cut" in the groove, one rotation away. It's a consequence of the CUTTING process. One of the positive aspects of DMM is that it uses very hard metal as opposed to softer lacquer, so one groove is not deformed by being "pushed" slightly when the next groove gets cut too close. The grooves are, for lack of a better word, "firmer" on metal than on lacquer.
