Posted by Bill Vermillion on 11/14/01 11:28

In article <a4irj156bapknhs4l838ec7tc5io6qf5dc@4ax.com>,
Marty <my gmail address> wrote:
>Somewhere around Fri, 30 Sep 2005 02:35:03 GMT, while reading
>alt.video.dvd.tech, I think I thought I saw this post from bv@wjv.com (Bill
>Vermillion):
>
>. . .
>>
>>>And, in my opinion, cassette tapes. Back in another lifetime,
>>>I worked for Dolby Labs (Licensing), and did a lot of testing
>>>of tapes and decks. I found TDK AD tapes to be very good, low
>>>distortion, low dropouts. Before that, I used to think Maxell was
>>>the best, but I changed my mind.
>>
>>And we used the use the Super Avalyn [SA] tapes for dubs of masters
>>for clients to listen to before continuing on.
>>
>>For standard cassettes we had a duplication house next to us load
>>cassettes with Agfa - which was also very good for standard run
>>tapes.
>>
>>The only weirdness we found was with the sound of the Nakamichi
>>that were used at times. And then we found the original Naks
>>used the original spec for EQ curves, while everyone else used a
>>modified curve as it was cheaper and easier to do.

>>Then we found out there was a Nak with a 'B' curve - that matched
>>the industry standard but not the sepcifications.

>When I worked for Dolby Licensing, I evaluated equipment that
>used Dolby's trademark to make sure it met the standards. We
>provided a very detailed report with lots of charts and graphs.
>If they didn't meet the standards, they had to fix it. So, if the
>Nakamichi had Dolby noise reduction, it had to use the same EQ as
>everyone else, and vice versa. For playback, there were absolute
>standards. But for recording, it depends on the tape, and the
>best results are only obtained by using the same tape they used
>to set it up. So, if they used Maxell tape, then TDK may not
>sound right. Different tapes had very different characteristics,
>and the best recorders eventually had automatic setups for the
>tape, where it would automatically adjust the bias, level, and EQ
>for that tape before recording (I had one of these, and it really
>makes a difference).

A lot of people don't understand that.

When I was CE at a studio but the big 2" r2r machines never had
anything such as automatic setups like the big Naks did.

We also found that besides the differences in bias/eq on suposedly
compatible tapes, we also found that each brand of tape had a sonic
ear-print. Ampex 456 was a bit harder and ideal for RnR. Scotch
256 was much nicer on horns. Agfa 486 hissed a bit more but was
really nice on strings. The legendary Scotch 250 was almost silky
smooth but I never had a tape that had print-through as much as
that did.

We started to align our recorders using minimum modulation noise as
the typical charts for -3db at 10KHz over-bias didn't quite mean
the best sounding tape. I'd look at the spec sheets for the tapes
[something that never seemed to be distributed widley], and you
could see the difference in frequency response vs bias, and
modulation noise vs bias. Modulation noise bothered me more than
anything else. And since the settings depend upon gap-width
it made more sense to set up so the tape sounded best, not what
looked best on the meters.

While were weren't a huge studio we were in the $50K/yr column for
all three major manufacturers - none of which exist anymore.

Knowing how reel-reel works seems to be totally lost on some place
and I've seen some places that align things every few months.

One time I re-aligned one machine three times in a day, as there
were three different sessions, on three different tape brands, and
with two different head stacks.

There are times I miss those days - but I dont miss the 30 hour
days, 10 day weeks, and 6 week months. [at least that's what it
seemed like].

Bill
--
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com

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