Reel to Reel

[Vladimir]

Well pre B&W too, Tannoys for the classical work, JBL for the Rock'n'roll.

It figures people who recorded the Beatles to treat such epic equipment as pi$$. Very very sad.

 

[hg]

Thanks for the Heads Up. Only just started looking...

It's exciting, isn't it?

Seems nuts to me but I guess it takes all sorts.

About 10 years ago my previous department chucked 4 Nagras and 2 Revox machines that needed maintenance into a skip. Professional tape machines have no value these days as tools and so if you know of any institutions that used to use tape machines decades ago it might worth asking if they still have some gathering dust in the stores they can let you have for nothing or next to nothing.

 

[davedotco]

what's the sound quality like on these machines, generally speaking?

Got any 70's music on CDs as ADD, DAD, AAD? That's how the pro recording R2R machines sound. They are sweeter and I hear there is still practice in some studios to have the master recording pass through tape (DAD) to 'take the edge off' and have it the recognizable 'tape effect' of the golden days of rock, jazz, pop and blues.

Of course Dave and Andy would have the right answers in greater details. I'd appreciate if they could share.

Never heard of that, but then I have not been in a 'proper' working studio in more than 20 years.

It would probably add a little roll off at high frequencies and warm up the bottom end a little, bass quality on an analog recorder could be a little uneven for reasons I can't really remember. (Probably the geometry/gap width of the recording and playback heads, look it up someone, I'm doing three things at once as it is.....*secret*)

The big difference though would be the addition of an audible noise floor, which can, as we have discovered elsewhere, have a subjectively beneficial effect.

 

[davedotco]

Well pre B&W too, Tannoys for the classical work, JBL for the Rock'n'roll.

It figures people who recorded the Beatles to treat such epic equipment as pi$$. Very very sad.

It's just a tool in a professional environment, if a screwdriver had been handy they would probably have used that.

£30k machine back when that was real money, they were probably just waiting for Bauch to pick it up. They were quite happy with their 24 track models.

Reminds me of a serious brown trouser moment when given a lift by Mike Bauch in his Porsche 930.

 

[Vladimir]

Yeah. Spice it with a little bit of wow, flutter, noise and slightly dull the dynamics with tape compression and edge off the frequency extremes. That's the logic of it I reckon.

Here is an article. Fast forward to the Getting that Analog Tape Sound section. There are also plugins to create the 15ips analogue tape effect.

Although 30 IPS delivers better overall sound quality, most pros agree that lower frequencies sound better at 15 IPS. Indeed, in the modern era, when tape is most often being used for its sonic effect, slower speeds prevail.

Something similar is done in the film arts. If you want to have the Hollywood movie cinema effect to a digital high resolution recording, you make it at low frame rate (24fps) and it feels nicer. Maybe because we are used to the analogue film frame rate or maybe there is less information for the brain to process or maybe both.

 

[Infiniteloop]

If you are even remotely serious about a tape machine then, if you are actually going to use it, the B77 is what you want.

Or why not just go directly with this one and skip the future upgrades. Is it any good? Are those silvery bits cup holders?

Blimey £14K!

This was an itch, not an obsession.

- On the other hand.......

 

[Infiniteloop]

Thanks for the Heads Up. Only just started looking...

It's exciting, isn't it?

Seems nuts to me but I guess it takes all sorts.

About 10 years ago my previous department chucked 4 Nagras and 2 Revox machines that needed maintenance into a skip. Professional tape machines have no value these days as tools and so if you know of any institutions that used to use tape machines decades ago it might worth asking if they still have some gathering dust in the stores they can let you have for nothing or next to nothing.

Great tip. - Unfortunately I wouldn't know where to start.

I'm in the wrong industry for this I guess.

 

[andyjm]

what's the sound quality like on these machines, generally speaking?

Got any 70's music on CDs as ADD, DAD, AAD? That's how the pro recording R2R machines sound. They are sweeter and I hear there is still practice in some studios to have the master recording pass through tape (DAD) to 'take the edge off' and have it the recognizable 'tape effect' of the golden days of rock, jazz, pop and blues.

Of course Dave and Andy would have the right answers in greater details. I'd appreciate if they could share.

The Studer A80 was the workhorse machine when I was at the BBC in the early 80s. Its remote contol facility was very handy when syncing audio to video using timecode recored along with the audio track, and its audio quality was excellent. It had a very sophisticated tape management system - forgotten technology now. Tape has a very limited range of acceptable tension. Too tight and it stretched or snapped, to loose and the tape wouldn't spool properly or if tension was lost, end up in a tangle on the floor. Relatively easy to achieve when both spools held about the same amount of tape, but when one spool was full and the other empty, accelerating the spools as the machine entered fast forward or rewind required different amounts of torque to be applied to the two spools. The machine measured the tension in the tape and adjusted the amount of torque dynamically to maintain the correct tension. Impressive to watch a machine accelerate away and then slow to just the right point to achieve a timecode lock.

As far as I know, until Sony introducing the PCM1600 in the early 80s, there was no viable 16bit digital mastering facililty available. So any track you own recorded prior to this date would have been mastered onto a machine such as this.

Edit: Reliving 'all my yesterdays'. There is a youtube video of an A80 from a guy called Seblington - the first video that comes up if you search for Studer A80. I would post the link, but this retched forum still defeats me. Go toward the end of the clip, and he illustrates the tape tension system - the sensors can clearly be seen rotating to measure the tape tension. I had forgotten how damn fast these machines spooled.

 

[Vladimir]

Studer A80 Reel to reel master recorder