Apparently you can bake a tape with SSS many times. You can bake a tape in 1995 and say you got three plays out of it. In 2001 you baked the tape again to make that Dr. Hook complete box set. And in 2016 you baked the tape again because the label wants nice and loud smashed albums from Dr. Hook. And in 2020 you baked the tapes again to make your own flat transfers. You did them straight to a Pro HB CD recorder. At 48 khz too. These baking sessions are years apart. What you can't do ladies and gents is bake a 2 inch tape on Monday. Get two plays out of it and then bake it again on Friday. And then the week after that. The tape would fall apart or worse.
Thank you John, I have purchased a "cheap" electric oven and thermometer for baking. It has passed two test runs (without tapes) at 140F +/- 5 degrees. I'm guessing a convection oven would do a better job? I believe this one should be ok, and that the lid jogged slightly allows for some ventilation. Everything I have is on 1/4 inch tape, mostly 1/4 track (recorded in one direction) or two track. (send me a sympathy card) Yes, Noise is a problem! My older tapes from the seventies still play fine, such as "Audiotape", Scotch 150 Highlander, Scotch 206, Maxell 35-180B. And... cheap "red tape" pre-recorded such as Jeff Beck, "Truth"... they still produce great fidelity.. My inline tapes from the 50's, purchased from eBay when they could be found, they sound awesome!
Yes, and why have not consumer recorders offered a spooling feature, or slower rewind time? I have purchased quite a few pre-recorded tapes from eBay back in the 2000's, an alarming number of them damaged by fast rewind/ tape stretching. (not to mention dropouts, magnetic damage from magnetized heads, and other mutilations) So, I stopped buying them. Even buying cheap, a 5:1 rejection ratio gets to be very expensive. My first Sony TC-255 was two head, idler wheel FF and REW, s l o w e r REW speed, and never a damaged tape. I can not make the same claim for my Pioneer RT-909 which I hated from the beginning. (The older model RT-1020 and two track RT-1050 the better sounding decks IMO) However, slow spooling could be obtained by jogging the FF and REW buttons alternately, which became my standard practice.
Jogging the FF and REW buttons is the professional habit, known as "Feathering The Brakes". Every open reel owner should know how. I learned it early on as a young broadcast operator/engineer assistant. Who babysat tape based broadcast automation. Gates stepper system, had 14" Scully 270 reproducers with those Maytag spooling motors, dangerously fast tape spooling. Lock down the hubs, feather the brakes. If Scully didn't teach you careful, then Magnecord on the AM side did. Equally speedy spooling, you're the logic control.
Good old Scotch 205 and 206 tape. No Stephens tape machine worked to spec without it. Digital NR has come along way since No Nosie Solutions back in the 1980's. The NR software in Pro Tools HD 12 is very good. I of course have never used digital NR on a remastered project. (John lies here.) Used properly it won't effect the top end. People are so used to hearing noise on old recordings that when it disappears people freak out and claim that the NR stole some of the music. Ì
Your being awfully brave today eh’ John ...But I have to agree, if you know when to apply, how to apply, and have a good: modern, digital NR the results can be very good.
I had learned to feather back in 1987. But with a Sony 1969 portable quarter inch full track RTR it was hard because I still had to have my hand on the take up reel in fast forward. It was an ancient thing. And those were huge mechanical buttons. You needed a good amount of force to press them. And no tape counter. 10 C cell batteries. I love cassette. Pop it in and press PLAY.
Ampex/Quantegy such as 406/407, 456/457, 499, and consumer/audiophile grade back coated tapes such as Grand Master and 20-20+. Scotch/3M: 206/207, 226/227, 262 (though not all 262 is backcoated and therefore isn't affected), 808, and 986 as well as audiophile tapes such as "Classic" and "Master-XS". Did I leave any out? All those latter Queen Two inch tapes had to be baked. After 1975 Tomas Roy Baker used 2 Stephens 40 track tape machines synchronized together for 78 tracks. (Not 80, two are lost to sync pulses.) You had to use Scotch 205 / 206 tapes with a Stephens machine. Well you didn't have to but them your 2 inch 40 would be as noisy as an Ampex 300-4 from 1964.
Look at the new Tascam 12 and 16 track digital recorders. They will blow your mind. Full mixer sections, flexible routing options. The 12 track is at $500 USD.
Although digital has certainly come a long way, analog to me still has more presence, depth, movement, and “authenticity” as it relates to the character and wholeness of the sound. A bell sounding like a real bell. Not an idealized super clear bell. Digital admittedly often has sharper clarity, a “cleaner” sound, and no doubt is easier to mix and duplicate. But I’ll always take a little tape hiss in between songs to get what I perceive as the benefits of analog. An analog multitrack recorder that could produce the sound George Martin and the Beatles got with the album Please Please Me would be more than satisfactory for me. Since it’s my favorite sounding album of all time. Recording “live” makes a difference when you don’t have, or want, dozens of tracks to work with. It also undoubtedly helped that the Beatles had rehearsed and played the songs live on Please Please Me for an extended period of time before they actually recorded the album. This has been a very informative thread.
I'm thinking about buying a Tascam DSD stereo recorder to do needle drops from my LP's without the need of using my laptop. Imay use the laptop to cut an LP's side recording into tracks with Tascam Hi Res Editor that can do this without converting back to PCM. What I don't want to do are pure DSD recordings from my LP's without any further processing,no click and pops removal. Any advice?
I would not have said this 10 years ago but it is true now. If you get a good audiophile 24/192 high definition recorder it will sound just as good as DSD. Trying to record, edit and process in pure DSD is a lot of headache. My advice is to quit before you start. PCM is flexible....Pure DSD is not. But if you still want to record DSD Look into SOUND IT! software. Many of these Native DSD programs claim they keep the signal pure DSD but seldom deliver. But look into this one.
37 years ago I would have told you to go buy a Beta HI-FI and a box of 10 Beta tapes. Beta, VHS and Super VHS HI-FI was like having a Pro quarter inch half track RTR around but without the headache. The last HI-FI machine I used was an editing JVC Super VHS HI-FI deck. No switching noise and no artifacts from the DBX system. Just pure and perfect analog. Time for me to wake up from my dream now!
I found this article quite illuminating with regard to editing and processing. Q. Can I record, mix and master in DSD?
VHS HiFi. Plays best on the machine it was recorded on. And that dbx like compander can't be bypassed (there to cover the head switching cycle). And tracking is not reliable sans picture. Not archival either. Open reel is far better.
VHS HiFi is not PCM, and over 92% of VHS recorders were not well suited to PCM duty either. Beta and better yet, 3/4" U-Matic were much better machines for this job. And didn't have tracking and video AGC problems which made PCM use a problem.
Yes, I'd like to record native DSD, I think DSD 128 will be enough for my needle drops. And I don't intend to do any processing or edit, I'd do it the old way, record one track at a time. I thought Tascam Hi Res Editor could cut DSD files into several tracks so I could record a whole LP side and then cut it into undividual tracks,but no, it can do right the opposite,it can merge two DSD tracks into one and so on. I don't know of a program that can cut a whole DSD recording into several tracks natively so I'd do it the old way as I did with cassette tapes, record one track at a time. I'd like to get one of those DSD recorders that record to memory cards.
Allow me to step in here for a moment. I just tried my copy of Tascam Hi Res Editor out on this, and it can do DSD cuts... Open a DSD file in the editor, drag the separate in and out set point cursors (each with a big blue dot), or use the playback control to move the playback cursor to a desired location then use the "in" or "out" "set point" button to identify the cursor location. Once the in and out locations have been identified, do an "export" to a new file name and make sure to set the right export format, then click the export button. That will write out just that single cut. You don't have to bring in the entire recorded LP side to the Tascam Editor for each track cut you want to make, the original file persists in the editor following each export. Just move the in and out set point cursors to a new location within the original file and export to a new file name each time.
