Reply-to: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxx>
At 08:32 PM 9/18/2006, steven c wrote:
Thus the problem would appear to be to decide whether the tape should
be baked...or frozen...
Well, you never bake acetate tapes.
Freezing tapes is also problematic, but hopefully we'll know more
about that in a year or so.
Theoretically, freezing acetate tapes (WHICH IS NOT RECOMMENDED AT
THIS POINT) is the only known way to preserver them, but freezing
tape is supposed to do irreparable damage to the tapes.
I believe this is what is known as a Catch-22. So, we need to find
out how bad the freezing really is for acetate and polyester tapes.
Moisture is the big culprit in all the degradation, as far as I know,
with heat being second. In fact, within reason, heat is a non-issue
with polyester-based polyester-polyurethane binders. It's moisture
that kills. Of course, there is more available moisture at higher temperatures.
Richard
Richard L. Hess email: richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Aurora, Ontario, Canada (905) 713 6733 1-877-TAPE-FIX
Detailed contact information: http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm
Quality tape transfers -- even from hard-to-play tapes.