"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Iain Churches wrote:
The answer then is to use decent tape and cut down on the labour
involved in checking copies.

No. The answer is to do it properly. And that's what we did:-)
Every single copy was monitored, and the op (not his/her trainee)
had to sign a QC card which went into the tape box.

Which in your rarefied world would mean every single commercial recording
was perfect in every way. ;-)

What a strange assumption!

It simply means that the copy was a close as
technically possible to the original. Tape duplication
was an important part of studio activity. We had
ten rooms.

It was also a useful place for trainees to learn about
SATs, tape machine alignment, setting the phase
(with the goniometer of course:-) and Dolby
set up. Every master had an "aligngment run" at the
start. Track ID, then 1kHz (level). 15kHz for
azimuth (goniometer:-)). Then bands from 10kH
down to 50Hz for setup, top, mid and lf.

The op recorded a similar set of tones at the head of the
copy tape, using the built-in generator in the console.
That was standard practice in every major record company
in the UK, and so can hardly be described as rarefied.

Iain