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


On Wed, 14 Sep 2005 20:56:33 +0300, Iain M Churches
wrote:


"AZ Nomad" wrote in message
...

Master tapes suck when they're 40 years old.

If you are referring to the oxide shedding problems due to
poor binding on some analogue tape, this was confined
to BASF and AGFA. I am pretty sure that Abbey Road
would have used EMI tape for quarter inch and probably
Ampex for multitrack, which in those days was 4
tracks on 1".


BASF and Agfa are actually less of a problem than Ampex tapes which went
through a very bad period from the mid 70's to the mid 80's. A very large
percentage of Ampex tapes from that period have to be baked before they
can be played whereas I see very few BASF and Agfa tapes that are
unplayable.

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?

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).

Cheers.

James.

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.