On Wed, 05 Oct 2005 12:17:41 +0100, James Perrett wrote:


On Tue, 04 Oct 2005 13:02:03 GMT, AZ Nomad wrote:

On Tue, 04 Oct 2005 12:52:54 +0100, James Perrett
wrote:

Of course, if we are talking about Beatles tapes then none of this
applies
as all their tapes date from before the mid 70's and should be playable
with no problems (apart from maybe the odd disintegrating splice).

Is "playable" good enough? How does the quality compare to playing a
record
made from when the tapes were new?


Making them playable is the first stage in the process. Matching the
playback machine to the tape by aligning the heads and setting the EQ is
the next stage. Once you've made the adjustments then the tape will sound
almost exactly as it did when the vinyl was mastered. I say almost because
there is a slight self erasure of high frequencies which takes place just
after recording but this would have affected the tape at the original disc
cutting session unless the record was cut just a few minutes after the
recording. There is certainly no increase in noise with age unless the
tape has been stored in poor conditions.

Of course, you might prefer the sound of the vinyl because the cutting
engineer may well have tweaked the eq or added a little compression during
the cut. If you know what was changed then you can apply the same changes
yourself when listening to the master tape (or a flat transfer to CD).

Personally, I don't. My problem with CDs from ancient master tapes is the
result of several CDs I own that have a S/N similar to a Type I pre-recorded
cassette with no noise reduction.