Date:Sat, 23 Feb 2008 17:50:46 -0800
Reply-To:Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List
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From:Rod Stephens <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:Re: Tape Problems was Re: [ARSCLIST] Collection for sale
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Hi Tom and Steve,
I have an extensive r2r collection, and I have to agree with Steve when
he says,
> It's a real shame since the few that were produced following the
> items you've listed, reveal a texture (particularly with orchestral
> recording) to the sound that's absent on most lp's.
As you have mentioned about the various practices of producing LPs, they
were not always the gold standard of sound. I remember many of the RCA
disks having terrible sound when the company experimented with
DynaGroove and other "improvements", not to mention the varying vinyl
formulas from other labels. So, I think the same is true of the r2r
issues; some were better than others, but they didn't have the problem
of vinyl developing pops and clicks and attracting dirt through built up
static charges. As far as them being fragil, I've find that they all
seem to play as well as when I first purchased them. Of course, the
earlier ones such as 1/2 tracks were of better S/N, and reflected the
better attention that began the tape revolution. Unfortunately, as is
a norm in our commercial society, the quality went down as the bottom
line was increased (i.e. CDs. etc.).
As far as quality, one should mention the Barclay-Crocker tapes are
currently selling for about $75 a piece, so they certainly did things
right if people wanted (and currently want) to pay for it. I'm sure at
the beginning, companies were trying to produce the highest quality in
order to get this new HiFi format off the ground.
Food for thought.
Rod Stephens
Tom Fine wrote:
> Hi Steve:
>
> If it's Mercury and it was put out on CD, the CD will sound better.
> Same true for the RCA's, either the 1990's CD's or the recent SACD's.
> The 2T were a whole league better than 1/4T but still not great. Their
> biggest drawback was hiss, somewhat uneven frequency repsonse of the
> 1956 era tape and duplication setups and the fact that 1 mil tape of
> 1956 era was just not great and is nearly dead 50 years later. Also
> the usual problem of dupes being many generations away from the
> master, although those early 2T's were usually duped from 7.5IPS dupe
> masters made from the cutting masters due to high pricing and low
> numbers manufactured vs. LP records.
>
> I actually know a guy who likes to play with his tape deck, and what I
> am about to describe is literally play but it's harmless. He has an
> extensive collection of the 2-tracks, Mercury and RCA and others. The
> tapes are obviously very fragile at this stage. So, for the ones
> reissued on CD, he recorded new tapes on his Technics 2T and put them
> in the original boxes and stored the now-fragile originals in new
> non-acidic white boxes. So he can play the tapes, actually hear better
> quality sound by most objective standards, and still feel like he's
> back in the day. For the titles that were never issued on CD's, we
> made dubs (that's how I met this guy -- we both have Technics decks).
> Now, those dubs sound slightly worse by most objective standards due
> to tape-generation degradation, but he can play them anytime he feels
> like it without playing a very fragile old tape. Some would say he
> might have done better to transfer into the computer and apply NR
> tools but he'd hear none of that, even though he's not a CD-o-phobe. I
> suppose I have my own play-amusements (or just middle aged eyesight)
> when I drop a dollar for the sleeve of some album I have on CD. The
> wrecked vinyl in that dollar-rack record will never get played by me
> but the sleeve will be enjoyed every time I sit back and listen to the
> CD.
>
> -- Tom Fine
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "carlstephen koto"
> <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Saturday, February 23, 2008 12:36 PM
> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Collection for sale
>
>
>> Tom, I agree completely regarding the dismal sound found on most
>> factory produced r2r tapes. It's a real shame since the few that
>> were produced following the items you've listed, reveal a texture
>> (particularly with orchestral recording) to the sound that's absent
>> on most lp's. I've got a number of Mercury 1/2 tracks and a few RCAs
>> that are spectacular. Some of the Verve 1/4 track jazz titles are
>> really something to hear also. BTW I almost never buy tapes from
>> online auctions. That's a sure formula for disappointment!
>> Steve
>> On Feb 23, 2008, at 3:43 AM, Tom Fine wrote:
>>
>>> The craziest thing in all of this is, mass-duped tapes generally
>>> are TERRIBLE, I mean awful. If you understand anything about how
>>> they were made, you'd understand why they generally sound terrible.
>>> A few specifics:
>>>
>>> 1. 4x to 8x and later 16x duplication speeds. Generally on Ampex
>>> 3200-type transports, which were hardly stable at 60IPS or later
>>> 120IPS.
>>>
>>> 2. duper masters generally made by low-skill personnel from many-
>>> generations-removed copies sent to the duper plants. The duper
>>> plants would get a 15IPS safety (second generation from master,
>>> which could be a generation or more from the session tapes,
>>> particularly in the multi-track era), it would be a safety that
>>> close to the master if they were lucky because one common practice
>>> was the keep the safety at a studio and run series of duper masters
>>> from it for popular titles. Then this 15IPS tape would be reduced
>>> and combined to make a 4-track usually 7.5IPS dupe master. If
>>> someone decided to make a 15IPS dupe master that meant the duper's
>>> playback transport would be running twice as fast as the record
>>> transports, adding still more variables to the system. This all got
>>> even worse with 8-track carts and 3.75IPS duped reels. Those
>>> formats are such dog-doo, I won't even discuss them.
>>>
>>> 3. the tape stock used by dupers varied and was usually lousy. By
>>> the mid to late 60's, Ampex in Illinois was the biggest duper. I
>>> think even then RCA and CBS did their own duping (generally with
>>> better results). Ampex used their own tape, which is notoriously
>>> bad. They never perfected slitting so the tape "country lanes" and
>>> at high speed duping that leads to severe azimuth instability.
>>> Plus, the Ampex tape is notorious for warping, so most of those 40+
>>> year-old tapes on eBay are badly curled or warped and full of left-
>>> channel dropouts. Any acetate tape will warp with the way most of
>>> these were stored by consumers, so I probably shouldn't single out
>>> Ampex.
>>>
>>> 4. Azimuth varies widely from tape to tape and even on parts of the
>>> same reel (and sometimes different sides of the same reel since
>>> some dupers used different record heads for each side of a quarter-
>>> track reel -- the heads were offset and would run at the same time
>>> but early 3200 systems didn't accomodate 4 tracks on one record
>>> head). Unless you check azimuth with a scope for each side of each
>>> tape (sometimes difficult since of course there are no alignment
>>> tones on these tapes), you're only somewhere in the neighborhood
>>> (and often outside the ballpark).
>>>
>>> 5. maintenance of the duper equipment varied from day to day, line
>>> to line and worker to worker. Sometimes there's hum in a channel.
>>> Sometimes level is all wrong. Sometimes channels are reversed. And
>>> remember that this junk sold at a premium to LPs.
>>>
>>> 6. finally, the hiss and wow/flutter level on most duped tapes I've
>>> heard is unacceptable. Unless you like digital artifacts better
>>> than hiss, there is no digifilter that satisfactorally cleans this
>>> up. I don't even think something like Plangent that locks to bias
>>> would help since the wow and flutter could date back any generation
>>> between the studio tapes and the duped tape and the bias recovered
>>> would only be the duper bias on the final duped tape.
>>>
>>> Meanwhile, in contrast, a properly done LP was mastered right from
>>> the master tape and if it was mastered and pressed properly, it is
>>> much closer to the source than a duped reel. Also, I should mention
>>> that some dupers were better than others. Ampex was particularly
>>> bad in my experience. So was Bel-Canto. And early 2-track duped
>>> tapes are a whole other matter and often sound better than the
>>> early stereo LPs, if you can find one that's not completely worn
>>> out from age nowadays.
>>>
>>> -- Tom Fine
>>>
>>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "carlstephen koto"
>>> <[log in to unmask]>
>>> To: <[log in to unmask]>
>>> Sent: Saturday, February 23, 2008 1:11 AM
>>> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Collection for sale
>>>
>>>
>>>> Speaking of crazy,.. I collect reel to reel tapes (in a minor
>>>> way) and an auction of one came to my attention a couple of weeks
>>>> ago. It was a Japanese 7" 7.5 ips 1/4 track issue of Pink Floyd's
>>>> "Adam Heart Mother". The reason this auction attracted the
>>>> interest of several tape collectors was that it had already
>>>> reached a bid of over $400 with two days left. By the next day,
>>>> it was over $700. At that point, I speculated that it would go
>>>> for over $1k. I guess that's why I usually lose bidding wars. The
>>>> final price was over $1800! We were flabbergasted. Luckily, I
>>>> suggested some reasons why a single 7" tape could be worth that
>>>> much to someone when one of the regular posters let us know that
>>>> he'd bid $1600 on the tape.
>>>> BTW reel to reel tapes have had a dramatic upswing in prices the
>>>> last year or so. But nothing like that!
>>>> Steve Koto
>>>> On Feb 22, 2008, at 7:55 PM, Roger and Allison Kulp wrote:
>>>>
>>
>
