Re: arsclist Transfer of multiple copies, was: Full 3-D mapping of groove?

["Richard L. Hess" <ArcLists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 03:17 PM 12/26/2002 -0500, Steven Smolian wrote:
> If you are working from a full track mono and are willing to give up a bit
> of signal to noise, you could use a two-track stereo head.  This assumes the
> gap is wide enough to allow independent reading of the separated sections
> with sufficient data to effect the appropriate adjustment..
>
> Steve Smolian

I think this conversation has morphed...but I'd like to suggest that for 
whatever reasons--not yet fully understood by me--the full-track 
reproduction of high-speed full-track tapes provides a richer, warmer, 
cleaner transfer that is not strictly attributable to the S/N degradation 
caused by the head...at least it sounds more and different from what one 
would expect. Remember, the NAB two-track head is 1/3 the width (per track) 
of the full-track head. Summing two mono channels is inferior sounding to a 
full-track mono head.

My mentor and friend, Don Ososke noted this 20 years ago when he 
transferred some of Mullin's tapes. He urged me to consider this and I 
did--and went back and retransferred about half of the 51 reels from the 
Mullin/Palmer collection.

With that said, low speed full-track tapes often reproduce better with 
two-track heads--using only one channel (the better of the two). This is 
because azimuth drift (again for a variety of reasons) manifests itself in 
annoying ways on low-speed tapes with relatively wide tracks.

I am specifically being ambiguous as to the dividing line between low speed 
and high speed tapes because the line itself is ambiguous. I will say that 
I've never found a full-track 3.75 in/s tape that played better on a 
full-track head than it did on a two-track head (one channel only). I will 
also say that I always use full-track heads for full-track recordings at 15 
in/s and above. The Mullin tapes were 30 in/s. The area that is especially 
gray is 7.5 in/s. I usually use the full-track head with success, but it is 
often a tossup and tradeoff.

Happy transferring and Happy New Year!

Richard

PS, you may find the AES Journal article about the Mullin/Palmer tapes 
linked from my tape page
http://www.richardhess.com/tape/



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