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Re: [ARSCLIST] ARSCLIST Digest - NAB vs. DIN recordings
At 04:24 PM 2007-03-26, Tommy Sjöberg wrote:
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.
WOW! This is fascinating. I guess the problem is
worldwide--or perhaps worse in Europe than in North America. THANKS!
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.
If you get full-track tapes again, I must say I
find it worth it to mount a full-track head
assembly in order to play the tapes. I have
several (including one NeoPilot) for the A810. I
also have one for the APR-5000, and what's
interesting there is I've relieved the guides so
that we do not get any binding with 6.5 mm
Magnetophonband. While I'd expect less of a
difference between full-track and DIN
(Butterfly), I heard a huge difference between
NAB and Full track. It's odd, it's not just a
noise floor issue, but almost a "texture" issue.
Things sound smoother with the full-track head. I
think the difference is based on micro-dropouts
or "grain" of the tape. It's especially noticeable with the older tapes.
Cheers,
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.