Audio Cassette 'for superior recording'

[Aliweasel]

Hello,

I've found a few old cassette tapes in our studio. They're un-used as far as I can tell but they have some interesting claims: It brags about it's 'Low Noise' and how suitable it is for 'Music, Voice and Computer Data'. It also has (in capitals) NORMAL BIAS and underneath: 120us (the 'u' is the 'micro' abreviation) Equilisation (sic.).

I was wondering whether these tapes were as good as they claim to be or whether they're just some cheap tat that never got used back in the day? Can anyone enlighten me on what 120 micro-second Equilisation (sic.) is/means and how it affects the sound? Also, what is 'normal' bias? I've heard of AC and DC bias and understand what they do but which is normal?

Thanks for any insights you can give me.

[Hugh Robjohns]

I was wondering whether these tapes were as good as they claim to be or whether they're just some cheap tat that never got used back in the day?

The latter.

Can anyone enlighten me on what 120 micro-second Equilisation (sic.) is/means and how it affects the sound?

Standard tapes used ferric-oxide coatings and required a record/replay equalisation curve defines by the 120us time-constant (sometimes referre to as Normal or Type I).

Chrome or Colbalt oxide-based tapes were better (wider bandwidth, more top end and lower noise) but more expensive. These required a different rec/rep EQ defined as 70us (Type II) and more bias.

A combination multi-later tape was available for a while, called FerriChrome (Type III), but was superceded by the high-end Metal tapes (Type IV) -- but they both used the same 70uS rec/rep equalisation

Also, what is 'normal' bias? I've heard of AC and DC bias and understand what they do but which is normal?

It refers to the bias level. Ferric tapes were 'normal' Chome tapes needed a high level and metal, higher still.

Hugh

[ef37a]

Waddayamean cheap tat!

EVERY cassette back then was "super" something. Low noise, high output, high energy (w.e.t.f.THAT was!).

H! Some could even break glass!
Dave.

[Swissguy]

haha i LOVE these old cassettes. i am 41 now and i soooo much miss these good old times *sigh*
i remember when i was a boy 10 or 11 i got this cassette recorder, altought it had just one speaker it was stereo (headphones) and 3 cassettes. i remember her telling how expensive this bundle was. SFr. 99.00 (around £50 today) for the recorder and 14.99 for each tape. i remember they where silver or glassy with silver little "wheels" inside and 90minute tapes.
my eyes where sparkling like stars back then haha...
later as a teenager in the 80ies we used these "modern" thing called "walkman" ... i still have cassettes from "thomson twins, herbie hancock, paul hardcastle etc..."

[James Percival]

Don't knock cassettes completely.

I'm fortunate to have been passed some tapes of radiophonic work by Delia Derbyshire last broadcast in the 70s and not released since. The pieces were taped off FM using a chrome cassette and a decent deck, with no Dolby. I dubbed them using a Nakamichi deck at 88/24, used the best spectral noise removal I could get my hands on and did some very conservative EQ tweaks (mainly removing a nasty 14kHz+ whine). This brought the quality to such a (relatively) good level that I'm tempted to believe that any wow/flutter unevenness is present in the master reels (from '64 and '65, mono, and probably recorded on custom-made Phillips 1/2" reel-to-reel from the days when noise reduction was just a twinkle in Ray Dolby's eye!)

They sound almost as good as commercial CD reissues of early Radiophonic Workshop output... but better, because the pieces themselves are extended compositions (35-45 minutes), not just jangly, cheap-and-cheerful jingles!

[Aliweasel]

Thanks again Hugh for your comprehensive answers to my questions. The follow up would have been: 'Is there any point in passing mixes through this tape at some point to add that elusive 'analogue' sound?', but I guess that this would probably be a waste of time. However, for every job there is a solution and, who knows, maybe one day I'll find a job for 'passing a mix through a cassette'... and now I have that cassette!

[The Elf]

The follow up would have been: 'Is there any point in passing mixes through this tape at some point to add that elusive 'analogue' sound?'

Ah, you mean that lovely old sound of hiss, hum, wow, flutter, phasing, distortion, HF roll-off, LF saturation, oxide-shed and the gorgeous effect of tape being wrapped and stretched lovingly around a capstan before snapping.

Lordy, how I miss those days...

...not!

[dmills]

Indeed, it is amazing what people forget, tape (in all its forms) is a complete pain in the arse.

I for one do not miss the miserable stuff, to get it to work even halfway right you have to spend more time maintaining the bleeding deck in alignment then you do recording on the smegging thing.

Cassette tape is also a pretty horrid consumer format at best (It runs too slowly given the replay head gap to have any sort of sane HF response in most cases, and is so damn narrow that the SNR will always be poor at best).

Depending on the age of those cassettes (and how they were stored) you might also find they are suffering from binder hydrolisation (AKA Sticky Shed), which occurs in some brands of tape when the binder absorbs water vapour which causes the lubricated backing to come off all over the guts of the transport!

For me, if I was in the bouncing to tape for effect game, I would be looking for (at a minimum) a half track, 30IPS 1/4 inch deck ideally with a dolby encode/decode box. Anything else is just going to do more damage then good IMHO.

Regards, Dan.

[Howdy Doody Time]

I, on the other hand, love it!

It smells great when everything warms up. It feels great watching that great fat ribbon lashing past, and it makes the whole process of recording seem much more 'real'. It's expensive, it takes a lot of tlc, you have to take delivery of big heavy boxes, you have to store them in a cool dry place, you have to manhandle big heavy reels onto a big industrial gadget, in short it feels like a real job down at 'mill.

[ROLO46]

I loved tape too
From my WM DC6 Pro Walkman to my Nagra IV tc Stereo.
Just to see the wheels go round was reassuring.
Recording data just isn't so rewarding,perfect as it seems.
Its too detatched as a process.
Roger

[Martin Walker]

I'm with The Elf and Dan - tape machines were a pain in the butt to keep clean, aligned, and fault-free.

I don't want to smell it, hear it, or watch it going round and round.

To me capturing the performance perfectly with no fuss is exactly what digital does best

Martin

[Tomás Mulcahy]

Have to agree with Elf, Dan, and Martin. Less engineering, more music!

If I want the sound, I'll use Massey Tapehead, or Cranesong Phoenix when I have access to that HD3 rig.

[Jez Corbett]

Thanks again Hugh for your comprehensive answers to my questions. The follow up would have been: 'Is there any point in passing mixes through this tape at some point to add that elusive 'analogue' sound?', but I guess that this would probably be a waste of time. However, for every job there is a solution and, who knows, maybe one day I'll find a job for 'passing a mix through a cassette'... and now I have that cassette!

One thing that can be fun, and that may yeild interesting results, would be to pass certain sounds for certain parts on to cassette. For example, if you are using sampled/electronic drum sounds, try putting the individual drum sounds onto cassette and back first (perhaps experimenting with overdriving the tape a bit), then tidy them up a bit and see how they sound!

[Dr Whom]

it all has it's ups and down i spose, quality reel based tape recording doesnt sound like digital to my ears, and also i think the tape days forced people to make descisions during recording, whereas now you can add 150 tracks and then try to prune it into something worthwhile at the end, lol so everything almost becomes a 'remix'

cassette tapes at the lower end were portable and exchangable and robust for the cost, enuff dynamic range to listen and appreciate the songs but not so high that everything BUT the song & musical creativity became the focus.

Deejays would take cassette's out and play them at clubs if the track was good, and you could record ideas anywhere.

i still have an original cassette master of Black Allen playing a didgerido session in his shack in Australia. Trust me, that is some session, and you aint gonna complain about the 'quality' - Phil Perris who was a mate of mine at the time recorded it with Allen back home - here's phil btw, best player i ever heard

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVgTkoINN-g

even today a quarter inch tascam porta is still probably the easiest cheapest & quickest way to get an idea down at 3am, plus again it forces the user to go for a robust songwriting idea rather than being sidetracked by a zillion clever options & too many tracks.

also the cassette gave ordinary people the ability to transport and play their music anywhere and spread bands and artists to each other more that lending vinyl cos it was truly portable - before, any portable content you could listen to was totaly controlled by radio jocks cos it was only the tranny radio.

it was a great time imo, ghetto blasters and all that anyways that era of low cost narrow format tape sowed the foundations of mags like SoS

hehe remember the Vestax 8 track cassette machine? lol (or was it 6 tracks? cant remember now)

god, i feel like an oldy reminiscing about the war, lol

[ef37a]

Ok Doc,

That's ONE view "pure 2 track grunge creativity"!

But I recall that it was the "pop" boys that pushed for more and more tracks? What was the end point, two sync'd 32 trackers?

Multitrack made noise so enter MrDolby. Engineers were always trying to push the tape quality envelope, high output/low noise/print. Hardware was constantly being improved servo control of speed and tension to reduce w&f, techniques like pre-distortion (Nagra). Sophisticated tape location systems....

No Doc, digital was where most of these guys WANTED to be!

And SoS grew out of cassette!!!!

It started with Tape Recorder Magazine where if you did not have a full track Wright&Wear deck you were fekkin' NOBODY!

Maybe you are not as old as you feel?

Dave.

[Dr Whom]

oh sorry, i meant that the cassette and narrow format MT founded the roots of sos for a broad home userbase, not specialist nutter boffin types as rare in the Uk as albino badgers

so that was the start of the home studio revolution i reckon anyways, once the Everyman could have a go at it. thats when mags were required to answer lots of aspiring recordists, if even those with a basic Porta and a guitar.
So I guess i'm calling HSR the roots of SoS

um the 'pop boys' i think were forced by labels to commit larger midi songs to tape. Thats how it used to be. You'd be like "But it's MIDI! The songs are all midi data! we dont need to print to tape!", and the labels were like "Everyone uses 2 inch tape and you will too!" That used to drive me bonkers, but i guess they wanted a storable print to 'own' of what was otherwise just meaningless data on a disk.

so i guess the pop boys ended up needing more tracks cos you needed like 12 tracks just for the percussion sounds to live on and a few more to print fx moves etc

well you say digital, but I still like the tape thing. if i was rich i'd definately have a full on 30ips tape studio - with NO Dobly thanks & good stereo tape mastering too

yup, digital is inarguably easier for home use and score to picture etc agreed, but that's what i'd aspire to given the dosh, and i can pretty much guarantee i'd be working while the miriad of digital studios around me went bust (crash! oops there goes yet another one), tape endures i think and people still want it. But yes, i'd have it all patched so i could track thru the tape heads to digital if i wanted or bounce from the deck to digital etc, best of both worlds. you could offer tape for drums and digital for the rest etc, mix and match! print and remix dubs etc for an authentic sound and the rest.

hell if i had more space (not about money) i'd have an old brennel or MX patched into my home rig just for the sound. but I cant even have my synths permenantly out & setup for working cos there's just not enuff space.

anyways, cor blimey. I do distinctly remember Paul White saying that with judicious use you can turn ouT recordings comparable and indistinguishable from digital with a B16

hehe heh remember his old B16 setup? - I miss stuff like using a patched Studiomaster midi mute rack unit to mute tracks on start, then opening them up as via a sequencer as they came on... or using a stereo gate with a long decay to mute the multi to stereo master feed at start, which'd then open up as the first note played, then bypassing it so it didnt mess with the fade out, then switching it back in at the end of the fade out so it softly closed down the tape

you got a totaly silent start that way, not 8, 16 or 24 channels of tape hiss before the first note, hehe.

[The Elf]

oh sorry, i meant that the cassette and narrow format MT founded the roots of sos for a broad home userbase, not specialist nutter boffin types as rare in the Uk as albino badgers

Rare? There's a family of them living at the foot of my bed. I think... I'll ask the nurse again.

tape endures i think and people still want it.

Only in the same way that the Model T Ford endures. There will always be the enthusiast, bless him! I get the feeling that the people who want it most are the ones who weren't having to put up with it the first time around!

But all power to you, dude - I'd chip in a fiver to see you build that studio!

[Richard Graham]

The Doc is bang on with H&SR (HSR as was) being the roots of SOS. Where would we be without Paul White!

And he is right about cassette multitrackers. In the early 80's that's all many musicians could afford, or wanted: it was a bit like a PC-based setup with a mic and a simple 2-in 2-out would be today, except much easier to configure to use (and much less powerful).

If you wanted to make a 'proper' recording, you went to a commercial or hobbyist 'proper' studio with a desk (SECK), a load of mikes, and an 8-Track (Fostex A8 or M80 1/4 inch), or Tascam 1/2 inch if it was posh.

The B16 was a 'big-boys toy', as were Studiomaster desks etc.

Those days had a lot to recommend them, mainly the discipine of limited resources and also the aesthetic of 'being in the studio' with the big desk, reels of tape going round etc.

I'd part company with Dr Whom over using tape now. Give me 24-tracks of digital recorded direct to a PC or HDR, and a copy of Reaper, any day. For 4-track/sketchpad needs I have the Zoom H4 and I haven't touched my old Yamaha 4-track in years. But each to his own.

[ef37a]

Well I don't know then Richard.

I have a copy of Studio Sound Oct 1995 in front of .IMHO the lineage is unmistakeable!

Dave.

[Richard Graham]

Well I don't know then Richard.

I have a copy of Studio Sound Oct 1995 in front of .IMHO the lineage is unmistakeable!

Dave.

We're going back a bit further than that Dave... early 80s!

[starman9]

...cor blimey. I do distinctly remember Paul White saying that with judicious use you can turn ouT recordings comparable and indistinguishable from digital with a B16

In some respects I've never matched the results I used to achieve many moons ago on a B16 and Studiomaster mixer! While results weren't always as clean then, there was an indefinable sense of life in the sound that seems absent in my all digital setup...

Maybe this is less to do with analog vs digital and more to do with the creative process that tape demanded (I mean, HAVING to capture a performance)... Or maybe the fact I mix entirely in the box could be a factor... Or maybe I'm getting old!

[Richard Graham]

...cor blimey. I do distinctly remember Paul White saying that with judicious use you can turn ouT recordings comparable and indistinguishable from digital with a B16

In some respects I've never matched the results I used to achieve many moons ago on a B16 and Studiomaster mixer! While results weren't always as clean then, there was an indefinable sense of life in the sound that seems absent in my all digital setup...

Maybe this is less to do with analog vs digital and more to do with the creative process that tape demanded (I mean, HAVING to capture a performance)... Or maybe the fact I mix entirely in the box could be a factor... Or maybe I'm getting old!

Capturing the performance is what it's all about for me... but it's hard trying to explain to people that you can't fix a performance just by correcting the 'mistakes' and doing umpteeen overdubs. If the vibe's not there to begin with, you can't bring it back.

Having said that, you can do it just as well with a multi-input interface and Reaper (for instance) as with tape.

[comradec]

I remember going into Mad Harry's (a pound-shop style discount store) back in the 1980s and seeing packs of 10 or more compact cassettes on sale for about a quid. They always had packaging that described them as offering 'superior recording' or some similar such nonsense.

At the time I would normally have used TDK metal or chrome cassettes for any recording work. The cheapo ones sounded dreadful; too bad even to use for recording a lecture.

[ef37a]

"Having said that, you can do it just as well with a multi-input interface and Reaper (for instance) as with tape."

And that Richard is surely the nub of the whole issue?

For the first time In the History of Recording, you can forget the "process". Just set proper levels at 24/44.1 and go for it!
Dave.

[ef37a]

Ha!
Re super cheap cassettes. I well remember visiting a customer who was complaining that their new mini rack would not record.
Confident the problem would be the usually clogged head or even 'tectab out, I steamed in cocky like!

To my amazement the super cheap "no brand" tapes she had bought would not record at ALL! Not a peep!

I proved it to the customer because I always carried a spare Maxell or similar good quality test cassette in the car.
Dave.