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Pellon and thoughts on baking

I hate it when a message I meant to post privately gets bounced and then posted by the listmom...oh well, my stupidity for not checking the TO and CC fields. It was my fault and it's good to get the information out there.

pellon (a thin stiff white fabric found in craft and fabric stores) (as found on the Web)...

To be totally fair, Jim Lindner is a much more experienced person than I in dealing with tape problems, although I'll confess to being resourceful and obtaining good results. We philosophically disagree on the superiority of the two processes:

Lindner is horrified at the thought of baking. He tries to avoid it at all costs.

I, on the other hand, am greatly concerned about wiping tapes until all the goo is off because I see the stuff on the wipes as containing oxide in now-scrambled orientations that used to contain the signal I'm trying to get off the tape.

In one double-blind test, Lindner found that about 60% of the listeners (not much above the 50% random chance) (if I correctly recall his telling me on the noisy floor of the recent NAB show) found some deficiencies in the low frequencies of baked tapes as compared with wiped tapes. Now, I don't know how you can do double-blind tests of this with precisely the same material without copying and the copying process itself (especially at 15 and even more so at 30 ips) introduces substantial low frequency anomalies due to "head bump" phenomena. So I am not sure if Lindner's reported double blind test is hearing the restoration process or some anomaly in the copying process.

As to baking, there have been some reports of a 1dB loss of the highest frequencies. I have baked one set of tapes twice and on the second baking reproduced them on a superior machine as opposed to the one after the first baking. The tapes sounded better after the second baking on the superior machine, so the machine difference is more than the difference in baking--an IMPORTANT point to remember.

My comparison of machines was between a ReVox A77 and a Sony APR5003V. In my mind, the APR is one of the five best machines ever made, the others being the Studer A820, the Ampex ATR-100, the Ampex MR-70 (if you want tube), and the Nagra T. The ReVox A77 was a competent low-end machine that worked as well as many other machines in its price range. If you've got high-end tapes, they deserved to be digitized from a high-end machine.

More than you asked...but it's all related!

Cheers,

Richard


At 10:54 AM 05/11/2001 -0400, harry_rice@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
Richard:

What are Pellon wipes?

Harry Rice
Berea College
_______________________________________________________________________________
Subject: Fwd: BOUNCE arsclist@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:    Non-member    sub
From:    <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> at berlink
Date:    5/11/2001  9:20 AM


>Date: Thu, 10 May 2001 12:36:56 -0700
>To: Language Laboratories and Archives <language-labs@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
>From: "Richard L. Hess" <richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: Re: arsclist sticky shed
>Cc: ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>Hi, Barbara,
>
>There are resources on my Web page at http://www.richardhess.com/tape/
>I think at least some of these people deal with sticky shed syndrome.
>VidiPax does it by wiping with Pellon wipes, most of the rest of us bake.
>I've had good results with a whole heap'o'tapes but it's never guaranteed
>and while we all take the utmost care we cannot be held liable for loss of
>the master--I think that's pretty standard.
>
>If it's only one reel I could look at it for you. If it's much more than
>that, I don't have the time. $100 hour is close to the going rate (I think
>VidiPax charges $95). That's per hour of studio time not per running hour
>of program. My general estimate is that it takes from 4-10x depending on
>what needs to be done and how good you want it. The 6x is typically
>finessing individual dropouts--you've got to find them which means
>listening and watching.
>
>What is the tape format, what is the tape brand,  how long is it? What's on
>it? what do you want to do with the content?
>
>I see you're from the language labs. If it's just word and it's a
>continuous tape (no splices) it might not even take 4x. If it is music with
>lots of splices for CD re-release, It generally approaches the 10x figure.
>
>I've done reel tapes as early as 1947 with some Bing Crosby excerpts on
>them (no sticky shed, but lots of problems) but most of my current work is
>centered on folk music from the 70's and 80's when sticky-shed was at its
>worst.
>
>Good luck finding someone to do it!
>
>Cheers,
>
>Richard
>
>
>At 01:12 PM 05/10/2001 -0500, Language Laboratories and Archives wrote:
> >Hi, We just had a case of sticky shed, and the company we dealt with many
> >years ago is no longer in business. Who are you all working with?
> >
> >Barbara Need
> >UChicago--Language Labs
> >-
> >For subscription instructions, see the ARSC home page
> >http://www.arsc-audio.org/arsclist.html
> >Copyright of individual posting is owned by the author of the posting and
> >permission to re-transmit or publish a post must be secured
> >from the author of the post.

-
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Copyright of individual posting is owned by the author of the posting and
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