Re: [ARSCLIST] ARSCLIST Digest - NAB vs. DIN recordings

[Tommy Sjöberg <tommy.sjoberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Richard,
although my experience is not from North America 
but from Sweden, I thought you might be 
interested in what I found as regards Butterfly 
heads.

Between 2000 and 2003 I took part in a digitizing 
effort with Universal Music's archive here, and I 
quote from an article I prepared for IASA: "The 
Butterfly heads were predominantly CCIR (67%) 
while the full-track tapes were predominantly NAB 
(84%). The two-track recordings were more evenly 
distributed, with 47% CCIR and 51% NAB." (Eq that 
is)

This was from a selection of more than 4.300 
tapes, mostly 1/4", recorded at 15 ips. For the 
two-track recordings, I don't know if they were 
Ampex or NAB "standard", since we had no way to 
measure such small differences. We did play back 
the full-track tapes with Butterfly heads and 
avoided that head for the two-track tapes. Our 
machines were Studer A812's.

Greetings,

Tommy

--
Tommy Sjöberg
The Centre for Swedish Folk Music and Jazz Research
Stockholm, Sweden