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Vintage Tape (Audio), Cassette, Wire and Magnetic Disc Recorders and Players Open-reel tape recorders, cassette recorders, 8-track players etc.

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Old 1st Nov 2022, 3:40 pm   #81
Neil Purling
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Default Re: What's good about tape?

A serial on Channel 4 in the UK. 'The Secret Life of Machines'. One episode was devoted to the tape recorder. They used sticky tape and iron oxide powder to demonstrate what recording tape was made of. They also visited the Science Museum to look at one of those German military tape machines or 'Tonschreiber'. It looked like it ran quite fast and had a big 10" reels. I assume they had static heads.

I wondered why nobody thought of making a high-end audio recorder with the spinning head drum technology and standard VHS tapes.

What do you do for blank tapes nowadays? Domestic recorders had an oddball max spool size, 5 3/4". I had to make do with ex film studio bulk erased 5" spools from manufacturers such as Ampex, Zonal and BASF. They had been used only twice! Record & then playback to make the optical soundtrack. I used to buy new tape direct from Zonal by mail order.

Does anyone know why tape was back-coated? I only ever had one spool of tape that went 'bad'. It used to squeal coming off the spool no matter how it was wound or what spool was used. I suspect it was the beginning of that 'sticky' degradation. It was from the UK off-shoot of Radio Shack, Tandy. Brand was Concertape.

The deck I used to have was a National, made by Matsushita. model RS-755S.
https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/panaso...r_rs_755s.html
Inevitably I had a drive belt snap & solved the issue with a belt from a scrap Eumig P8 projector that was like a steel spring in a loop. It never slipped!

I never bothered to notice whether Zonal or Ampex made cassettes.
I have no idea where you would get good quality blank cassettes from now.
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Old 1st Nov 2022, 4:41 pm   #82
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Default Re: What's good about tape?

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Originally Posted by Neil Purling View Post
I wondered why nobody thought of making a high-end audio recorder with the spinning head drum technology and standard VHS tapes.
Technics did, in 1981, with the amazing SV-P100 digital recorder. Techmoan did an excellent video describing the technology and trying it out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVDCxTtn4OQ

Apart from the SV-P100, a standard digital audio recording format for many years was actually Betamax video tape with the recorder connected to a Sony PCM-F1 unit which handled the conversions of analogue audio to digital to video and back again.

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Old 1st Nov 2022, 6:30 pm   #83
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Neil Purling View Post
... 'Tonschreiber'. It looked like it ran quite fast and had a big 10" reels. I assume they had static heads.

I wondered why nobody thought of making a high-end audio recorder with the spinning head drum technology and standard VHS tapes.
The Tonschreiber did have a rotating head drum, but it was to alter pitch on playback - the idea was that telemetry was sent at high speed to render detection more difficult, recorded and then replayed with the correct pitch.

The VHS and particularly the Beta PCM machines were very popular among recording engineers for a few years, offering the basic performance of the Sony 1610/1630 setup for about a tenth of its price. Editing was next to impossible, but as a mobile recorder it was wonderful!
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Old 1st Nov 2022, 6:51 pm   #84
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Default Re: What's good about tape?

Some of the more expensive VHS home video recorders had 'HiFi' audio recording, using the rotating video heads to record analogue audio as well as video. The result was significantly higher sound quality, especially when using Long Play mode. A linear audio track was also recorded, so tapes were backwards-compatible with non-hifi VHS machines.

There were a few hi-fi Betamax video recorders too. As mentioned, Sony also marketed the SL-F1 and PCM-F1 combination which recorded audio digitally to Betamax tape. Often used for mastering CDs in the early days. There were some Video8 recorders with digital audio. Some hi-fi video recorders had an audio-only recording mode specifically to take advantage of their higher sound quality. I remember a VHS hifi machine being used in a community radio station for recording the broadcast output (required by law in case of complaints) and to play pre-recorded music through the night (8 hours on a long-play tape).

None of these replaced the audio cassette, of course. Cassettes stayed popular for so many years because they had the right balance of price, quality, portability, convenience and simplicity. Nowadays the balance has changed in favour of digital media but amazingly cassettes still haven't gone away completely.
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Old 1st Nov 2022, 7:30 pm   #85
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Default Re: What's good about tape?

Audio recordings on VHS?? Yes I remember someone who did a thing that provided a blank video signal but which included NICAM audio embedded in the frames.

He was rather proud of this but it seemed horrible complexity to me.
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Old 1st Nov 2022, 8:44 pm   #86
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Default Re: What's good about tape?

I bought a hi-fi Philips VHS machine in the late 80s from Dixons for a £100 I believe. It had LED VU meters and left/right level controls for hi-fi recording. It made very good quality audio recordings at half speed and I used it connected to the hi-fi as well as the TV. I used it until my very young son broke it! New Hi-if recorders were still available at that time but less provision was made for their use as audio recorders.

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Old 1st Nov 2022, 9:41 pm   #87
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Audio recordings on VHS??
As Hamid says, there were video recorders which recorded HiFi sound. I bought one around 1988. Could have been a Hitachi. You could have HiFi sound with the video but it could equally well be used just to record audio. The HiFi sound was somehow modulated on top of the video in addition to the normal sound track. Can't remember the details now although the recorder came with a brochure which explained how wonderful it all was.
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Old 1st Nov 2022, 11:05 pm   #88
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Default Re: What's good about tape?

I remember someone mentioning 20 years ago online about audio recording on VHS.
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Old 2nd Nov 2022, 12:23 am   #89
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As sound for picture, the hi fi track was a great improvement on the linear track but didn't cut it as a sound carrier in isolation - the head switching noise was only 40dB below peaks and the system used dbX to make the s/n ratio usable.
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Old 2nd Nov 2022, 1:33 am   #90
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Default Re: What's good about tape?

The Alesis ADAT was a revolutionary product when it came out. 8 digital tracks on an S-VHS cassette and you could link them for more tracks. SNR was above 90dB. Along with the newer generation of budget mixing consoles, such as the Mackie 8-Buss with its uber-quiet path, home studios were able to make records that are prized by audiophiles to this day. You will see contempt online from gear snobs for aforementioned ADAT and Mackie, but trust me, in the right hands they could fool the listener into thinking the artist had been recorded at a mega-bucks studio. Anyone who denies how revolutionary they were is seriously wrong.

NB - great though it was, I fail to see any benefit to using an ADAT today. Unlike analogue tape, which has just the right balance of fun and service-ability to continue to be a relevant format.
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Old 2nd Nov 2022, 1:41 am   #91
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Re: dbx. I recently came across a Paul White review from the 80s, of a Tascam 8-track 1/4 machine. He stated that the irony with dbx is that a machine needed to be so well designed for there not to be audible artefact when using dbx, that the machine wouldn't need it in the 1st place -)
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Old 2nd Nov 2022, 2:17 am   #92
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My now defunct top of the domestic range Panasonic S-VHS video recorder had a volume control with a bar display volume indicator and a mic input. I used it one Christmas to record Stephen Fry reading the first Harry Potter book that the BBC broadcast on Christmas Day, subsequently copying it onto several audio cassettes for the children. It all fitted comfortably on a single VHS cassette at half speed. The recorder did need a video signal to be present in order to record sound, and I used to use one of the test patterns from an analogue video processing box.
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Old 2nd Nov 2022, 2:33 am   #93
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Originally Posted by knobtwiddler View Post
Re: dbx. I recently came across a Paul White review from the 80s, of a Tascam 8-track 1/4 machine. He stated that the irony with dbx is that a machine needed to be so well designed for there not to be audible artefact when using dbx, that the machine wouldn't need it in the 1st place -)
Yes DBX artefacts could be audible in decks with too high a baseline noise such as HiFi VHS or a basic cassette. The baseline hiss could audibly pump up and down with the programme. In decks with better s/n, the modulated tape hiss wasnt audible, or as audible. But DBX still reaped good benefits in the quiet passages.

Dolby worked better in this respect. The key was at the recording stage where the programme was raised high enough to mask the expected tape noise in that passband. In the decoded Dolby you could still hear tape noise which seemed to be constant, not modulating up and down but actually it was modulating. Ray Dolby just did his design work well, exploiting the principle of noise masking.

In spite of their problems, there's no substitute IMO for "double ended" NR like Dolby and DBX. It's an interesting exercise to make a good tape recording today made with and without NR, then with the latest single ended digital tool, denoise the non NR version. Compare and contrast with the analog NR version.

Last edited by TIMTAPE; 2nd Nov 2022 at 3:02 am.
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Old 4th Nov 2022, 9:12 pm   #94
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Default Re: What's good about tape?

I have had some philips compact cassettes in storage for quite a while, and they've been subject to some significant temperature changes!

Had a Goon Show tape snap today just where the magnetic tape is bonded to the plain end tape. It can probably be fixed, just need to drill out the heat welds, refix the end to the spool, then install both spools into a screwed together cassette. Wish me luck.

Interestingly (and despite the heatwave) the sound quality is still very good.

I would be interested to know if it's possible to join magnetic tape end to end, as i have another tape which snapped half way through as a result of becoming stuck to a recording head (high temperature definitely to blame on this occasion.)

Dave
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Old 4th Nov 2022, 9:36 pm   #95
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Default Re: What's good about tape?

Yes a "cassette tape splicing block" or kit helps splice the sometimes fiddly cassette tape.
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Old 5th Nov 2022, 12:51 am   #96
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Default Re: What's good about tape?

I always felt that the rapid stop at the end of the tape when fast winding was a bit rough on the tape. Never had one snap, though, fortunately. I’m comfortable with splicing 1/4” tape, but 1/8” is something else…

Dave, can you unravel the leader tape and pull it outside the cassette housing, then re-splice the join, without having to open the cassette itself?

Back in the day, I seem to recall that you could buy a “repair cassette”, an empty cassette housing held together by screws, so you could theoretically extract the (good) tape from a (damaged) cassette and put it into the new cassette. Never tried it myself.
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Old 5th Nov 2022, 1:28 am   #97
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Default Re: What's good about tape?

I think you can buy empty cassette shells from cassette suppliers ( companies still exist that sell custom wound tapes, duplicate etc).

Or you can grab an no longer needed cassette that is screwed together and use that.

I think one purpose leader tape performs is eliminating stress on the magnetic tape when it reaches the 'rapid stop'.
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Old 5th Nov 2022, 1:43 am   #98
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Some 40 years ago I bought a Bib cassette repair kit fromn"Proops" in the Edgware Road: splicing block, geared hand winder, spare empty cassette, and spool of splicing tape. The splicing tape is still good!. I have never had to use the empty casserte, which in fact contains a length of leader connecting the two cores that you could extract and splice the faulty cassette's tape between.
The Philips welded cassettes I had were just welded around the join, and it was always possible to prise the two halves apart using a sharp stout knife, and re-attach them using linen adhesive tape (duct tape).
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Old 5th Nov 2022, 2:03 am   #99
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...I think one purpose leader tape performs is eliminating stress on the magnetic tape when it reaches the 'rapid stop'.
Yes! The leader is considerably stronger than the tape and is designed to absorbs all or most of the stress of the rapid stop as you say, including stress on the splice itself.

It's still tough on the leader and its attachment to the hub though. I like decks whose "fast wind" isnt too fast for that reason, and for the smoother tape "pack" the somewhat slower wind produces. Tandberg made some cassette models which electronically controlled fast wind speed. As the tape approached the end, the driving reel motor actually slowed down to compensate.

Many later model VCR's did the same but I think that was partly to compensate for the very fast wind (jet wind?) on later models. Without the slowing down after the "jet wind", I guess the system wouldnt have been quick enough to stop the wind before the inevitable crash stop, possibly damaging tape, machine or both.

The "jet wind" was merely a convenience for consumers. It didnt do any favours to tapes as it often resulted in a very ragged "tape pack" on the spool or hub. A too fast wind effectively made many tape packs wider, with "popped tape strands" standing proud above others. It could lead to jammed cassettes but also damage to tapes if the "proud" tape sections were crushed and creased if the reel was stored with the flanges pressing against the wider tape sections. Poor and erratic sound on the Left channel of a stereo cassette (at the edge of the tape) was often symptomatic of a crushed or folded tape edge.

Last edited by TIMTAPE; 5th Nov 2022 at 2:20 am.
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Old 5th Nov 2022, 2:19 am   #100
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Default Re: What's good about tape?

Nak, Sony and Technics also made decks that 'softened' the FF or RW as differential between reels was compared. Notice the delicacy of end stop on this Sony: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIRZaH3khjg
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