Yeah it's not just the prices dropping but the size of these things getting so small. To go from the size of a large shoe box to the size of a tiny piece of dentyne chewing gum is pretty dramatic shrinkage
If so, not done by me ;-) Consider, in 1980 a datatstorage IBM 3380 with 2,5 GByte went for 142.000 $. That's 57 $ per MByte and it wasn't as "miniaturized" as the HDD above. So it doesn't seem like a fake to me. My last HDD purchase was 75 Euro for 2 TByte. NOBODY would have believed that in 1983 either. See also this and this.
Well, what year is it from though? "A few years" after 1956, or 24 years after 1956? (By no means am I *at all* saying you faked it up, just for the record!) The ad certainly looks more '80s than, say, 1959 or 1960.
Ah....now THAT makes sense, Christian! Thanks for clarifying. You're totally right about the pricing situation, too. It's hard to believe how much things have changed for the better!
I shelled out a bunch of bucks to go with DA-88 and had nothing but problems with it. Turns out the first generation of them had a lot of problems. Even so Tascam charged me a bundle to get the machine up after it crapped out to the point of being no functional. But I have known others that gave it high praise and a couple of high production studios that used them. I had no problems with tape reliability, my problem was with the heads needing constant attention and the carriage in them crapping out. I always assumed the units were a poor design, it never occurred to me that the format just wasn't a sane one to do the job. I was much happier when I went to Adat. Far more reliable , and unlike the Adats they wouldn't corrupt data time code stripes.
Heard a lot of great comments about the Adats. With the DA88's, if it wasnt the tape directly I would guess it was indirectly caused by them, but in reverse. The tape was very narrow and in my mind, based on using them for video production, far to narrow to be used either industrially or with so many tracks crammed on so little width. My guess is the heads probably went out of alignment quite easily. I used Sonys top of the line HI8 tape, which was supposedly meant for heavy use and sold for around $26 each, and you got very few passes with it before it started disintegrating. Sony had to have known this. In theory it was great, and the cameras certainly were, but I was far happier when DV came out, which was only a few short years later. Am still using it today...dont trust my video to those little memory cards so many cameras use now.
I suspect that the whole "miniaturization" of the transport for the DA-88 vis-a-vis the not-shunk-down-so-much ADAT was a factor in the DA-88s propensity to have problems.
I never had problems with losing anything with the tapes, and still have a slew of them with material on them. I did a couple of my own projects, playing all the instruments myself which meant passing the tapes numerous times. Never lost a thing with the tapes. But I had to clean the heads constantly. They didn't appear to be picking up oxide from the tapes, it appeared they got stuff from the air as if the machine wasn't ventilated properly. Which, there was a page of instructions on the net on how to reverse the fan and attach a filter. And I had a hell of a time with them dropping SMPTE time code. They tracked well and had no problem finding the embeded time codes on the tape, but to stripe a track with time code and then try to read it back to drive external devices was a hassle. The only tapes I did have trouble were some tapes called DIC. I am glad to know there are others who had problems with them. I had a lot of guys look at me like I had 3 nostrils when I would tell them mine sucked.
I was searching through various corners of the internet on info about Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab. And, I almost laughed/felt like going into a deep stage of depression when I saw this... I would've never thought that MoFi would've made such a thing. If ANYONE has ever heard these, how does this even compare to the UltraDisc II that was released a few years later? Does anyone know what else has been released on Beta and VHS audio (PCM) by MoFi?
Some good info about a good example of the types of machines these tapes were created for, the Technics SV-P100, here: stereonomono: Technics SV-P100 ยป
That is my tape I posted on Discogs. I've not seen the other titles MFSL offered but I'd love to get them all. A_L
These PCM processors (Sony's PCM F-1 was the most popular and common) were aimed at advanced amateurs, broadcast facilities, and at professional 2 channel work. Usually Sony Beta or U Matic machines were most commonly used with the PCM processors. Some VHS machines pre HQ worked fine. Mainly used in the 1978-1983 era.
Off topic but... I remember hearing about tapers who would record FM broadcasts onto VHS because it captured a more broader sound and not needing to flip tapes causing cuts in the recording.
As few as 25 titles, that must make some of those albums the rarest consumer format for a given title. Does anyone have rough sold prices for when these do come up for sale? When MFSL were making the "dubs" would they have a single VHS/Beta production master that they would use to make the others, or would they have to periodically have to create another one from the analog master tapes since video tracks were prone to degrading after a certain number of uses?
