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Re: [ARSCLIST] Playback on contemporary machines (was Send me a kiss by wire, baby my heart's on fire!
I think the Nagra in general is overlooked by
restoration/preservationists. I used that machine as a field recorded on
film projects for years and every single aspect of that machine was
outstanding. They were overbuilt in every aspect and the sound quality
of each subsequent machine just got better and better. Another thing I
liked(and is rarely mentioned) was the fact that even though it was an
open loop transport it did not beat the tape up. Likewise, from a
machining standpoint except for the Studer it was the most perfectly
made transport on earth. I know that some direct to two track recordists
also sing the praises of the high end Stellavox
from a recording standpoint, but for sheer mechanical perfection and
beautiful audio I think the Nagra is a real gem.
AA
Steven Smolian wrote:
You know, the best tape transport I ever saw was the console Nagra.
Its wow and flutter was way under everyone else's. And the frequency
response was terrific.
It was over double the cost of its competitors. In the early 80s, I
think, I was offered a 2 tr as a dealer closeout for $ 17,500. I
passed (out.) Apart from the money issue, the matter of parts and
service and being locked into a Steve Temmer "name your own price"
exclusive parts distributorship put the chill on this fantasy.
I can't imagine this dandy device shows up frequently on eBay- or
anywhere else for that matter. I think I still have the literature in
my somewhere file.
Building a better perfect transport is only part of the problem.
Steve Smolian
----- Original Message ----- From: "Tom Fine"
<tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, July 28, 2008 7:40 AM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Playback on contemporary machines (was Send me
a kiss by wire, baby my heart's on fire!
I was thinking further about this. There's a big money opportunity in
here, if someone runs with this and finds it, buy me a steak dinner
sometime ;)!
For the commercial copyright owners, it seems to me that this concept
may offer an excellent and highly-accurate way to once and for all
migrate their tape libraries off of the deteriorating original media.
Even under archival storage, many tapes are nearing the end of their
functional lives, and some masters have been played enough times as
to be badly deteriorated already.
Here would be one system I could see as being viable and very
sensible for a large music company:
1. a super-precise tape transport with excellent-quality magnetic
heads is used to transfer the raw signal off the tape. The transfer
should probably be to both DSD (read on, there's sense to this) and
high-resolution PCM. Much testing should be done to make sure that
the digital system is as precise and accurate as is possible for the
formats (which, if the resolution is high enough, should
theoretically mean that just about every bit of meaningful
information should be transferred from the magnetic tape).
2. the standard operating MO from here would be to have these digital
files live in a very robust archive with as fail-safe as possible
replication, migration and backup. This is more in the realm of an IT
expert than a music company and I would suggest there is an
outsourcing model that makes some sense here.
3. for run-of-the-mill reissues (ie stuff with budget and time
constraints), the remastering could be done all DSP, probably all or
mostly automated. I would expect a middling but not terrible net
quality level here, and over-aggressive use of DSP extras like
dynamics control and hiss-reduction would probably degrade the net
result, but tasteful application of the usual mastering tools (which
would run up the budget since human hands and skills would be
required) could improve the average quality substantially.
4. here's where the DSD transfer could come in. Perhaps the record
company itself, or a specialty mastering house, would rig up an
interface between a DSD stream and a rack of different tape
electronics (it's a simple level and impedence matching thing -- and
the intial input stage can be bypassed on some tape electronics with
10 minutes of solder time). These "deluxe" remasters would be "played
back" to gain the desired euphonic results. Meanwhile, the tapes
would not have to be played again and the "warm analogue sound" from
the tape electronics could be gained in any combination or tweak
desired. The further benefit is no need to maintain a precise
mechanical transport, just more-simple electronics maintenance. But
the big win here is, the master tapes don't get played and
transported in their fragile condition. Assuming the transfer at the
source was done properly (ie azimuth was correct and the A>>D chain
was superb), this would be audibly identical to playing back the
actual tape using the heads used at the source.
5. indeed, there may be an audiophile market in selling the raw
digital transfer and letting the audiophile play it back thru the
tape electronics of his choice. Never before could a listener be so
close to the actual master tape. Again, the weak link here is that
the source transfer needs to be azimuth-perfect and the A>>D chain
needs to be superb.
6. a final benefit to the copyright owner is, he now has in his
archive an unprocessed, uncolored and un-EQ'd version of the source,
a digital "clone" of what is falling apart on the reel in the box.
As technology, especially DSP, improves, he can hope to achieve
better and better results even with the run-of-the-mill releases and
can get out of the expensive business of analog expertise as the
tapes crumble to dust.
More morning musings. I have no idea how much of this is already
being done and what is totally impractical about what I'm suggesting.
And, as I said before, I have no dog in the fight -- except as a
collector and fan desiring better reissues than are the norm.
-- Tom Fine
----- Original Message ----- From: "Tom Fine"
<tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, July 27, 2008 1:37 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Playback on contemporary machines (was Send
me a kiss by wire, baby my heart's on fire!
Along these lines ...
As DSP improves and higher-resolution and even DSD transfers become
the norm, I'm wondering if it's time to start thinking about
eliminating the analog electronics altogether for non-NR tapes. To
wit -- a tape head connected directly, with proper
impedence-matching, to a high-resolution A-D converter, perhaps with
one stage of gain between the head and the converter. The EQ curve
and level-normalling is then performed in the digital realm via DSP.
The main advantages I could see to this would be: 1) perhaps more
accurate EQ curve than can be achieved with analog components, but
this may or may not be the case at the present state of the arts.
2) elimination of all noises and distortions from analog components
-- now it's a whole can o' worms whether the DSP would just add
less-euphonic distortions of its own. 3) perhaps less cost due to
no need to maintain and/or repair old analog electronics (even the
solid-state stuff will wear out eventually). 4) the creation of a
market for digital-realm expertise in analog issues like EQ curves
and magnetic head interfaces, thus leading perhaps to some new and
innovative audio-cleanup/restoration tools and better
analog-to-digital interfaces.
I have no dog in this fight, just doing some Sunday musings on an
interesting topic.
One other point. As the world's fleet of tape machines get older, I
think more and more are falling permanently out of spec. I think
it's a great stretch to expect a 50-year-old Ampex 350 to sound
anything close to original unless you are a restoration expert and
have done an expert restoration on the machine or have paid plenty
of $$$ to have it done by someone else. The same can be said of just
about any machine ever made that has more than a few hundred hours
on it and/or has not been stored in an ideal environment its whole
life. And some machines have built-in manufacturing or design
weaknesses that cripple them over time no matter what. Belts stretch
and fall apart, for instance, even if the machine isn't used. Some
of the connectors used on MCI machines corrode, no matter what. Etc.
etc.
-- Tom Fine
----- Original Message ----- From: "Richard L. Hess"
<arclists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, July 27, 2008 1:06 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Playback on contemporary machines (was Send
me a kiss by wire, baby my heart's on fire!
Hello, Mark and Jim and Shiffy,
I think it's important that we reinforce the lesson of playing
magnetic media on the best available equipment. While there are
times when playing a tape on the machine that recorded it will
provide the sound that the producer originally heard and intended,
in most instances, playing a magnetic recording on a high-end,
late-model (but not necessarily last-model) machine will provide
superior results. This means that Shiffy's one-off device is
probably the best device to reproduce a wire, and it means a small
handful of the best tape machine models should be chosen and
preserved for playing tapes. I won't bother enumerating those
models here, as I think that list is well-known.
The philosophical approach that works for me, and I suggest that
everyone consider, is that machine perturbations are additive. Play
deficiencies/perturbations rarely if ever "cancel out" record
deficiencies/perturbations that are already recorded on the
magnetic record. Therefore, the machine that adds the fewest
deficiencies/perturbations that is compatible with the speed and
track format (or can be made compatible) is generally the one to
choose.
There are usually other competing factors driving the selection of
the reproducer, but having a machine to play the magnetic records
with performance better than the record machine is generally the
best way in my opinion/experience.
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.