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Re: [ARSCLIST] OTR online?
The main point about pre-World War II wire and tape technology would
seem to be that, while various magnetic formats were already in use
on radio, they compared poorly to prevailing disc technology. They
suffered from a gamut of problems ranging from high distortion levels
and inferior signal-to-noise (AEG Magnetophon), to speed fluctuation,
sheer physical size of equipment and the chance of the engineer being
decapitated if the tape broke (Blattnerphone).
Admittedly, the Philips-Miller optical film system offered up to 15
minutes of high-quality audio, but the film was not reusable, editing
was nightmarish and the whole process pretty costly. By and large,
1930s tape equipment did not adequately satisfy the broadcasting
industry's main criteria of audio quality, duration, portability and
editability.
In Germany this situation changed irrevocably in 1941 when AEG
engineers von Braunmühl and Weber stumbled across AC tape bias, where
the addition of an inaudible high-frequency tone resulted in a
striking improvement in sound quality — something that was radical
enough to be discernible in prerecorded German AM broadcasts, if the
BBC's Caversham Park wartime monitoring reports are to be credited.
In fact, this is not so hard to believe, as the generous bandwidth of
national AM channels in the 1930s and '40s offered a far higher level
of AM fidelity than we're used to today. Nazi speeches aside, the
technical leap forward was most glaringly obvious in prerecorded
broadcasts by the likes of Fürtwängler and the Berlin Philharmonic,
as recent CD reissues have adequately confirmed.
While Jack Mullen may have been able to kickstart Ampex by sending
home a couple of these liberated machines in bits via the no-doubt
bemused Army Post Office, the final broadcast requirement for tape —
superior editability — was only really achieved when the notoriously
fragile German acetate-backed "paper" tape could be abandoned in
1947-48 in favor of 3M's new, sturdier #111 stock. From that moment
on tape was definitely superior to disc as a studio medium, even if
Bing's transcriptions were still pressed up as discs.
Tony B.
Robert Cham wrote:
All the networks started airing one-hour delayed programming for
the non-Daylight Saving Time stations after the war, and this led
to ABC (which had been NBC Blue before 1942) allowing Bing Crosby
to pre-record and edit Philco Radio Time in 1946.
After financing Alexander Pontiof's (SP?) development of the first
Ampex tape recorders from the Telefunken recorders brought back
from Germany after WW II. Crosby used to tell the story of how
the superior signal to noise ratio of tape was responsible for
ABC's decision. Similar stories of how Telefunken's development
of tape recording during WW II enabled the Germans to confuse the
allied bombing command about the whereabouts of Hitler at any
given time abound.
Bob
This story is almost complete fiction. First of all, the tape
machine was developed and made by AEG not Telefunken. Two entirely
different companies.
Second, that Hitler story is laughable. Hitler would "be" where
ever the broadcast announcer said he was!!! Besides, Hitler was
not making many speeches during the war. The sound quality of
distant radio reception would mask any differences between a speech
recorded on tape and a speech recorded on disc. Steel tape
recording on Blatnerphone/Marconi-Stille machines was done by the
BBC in England since 1929, so there were other familiar ways to
avoid surface noise. The Philips-Miller mechanical recording-
optical playback machine was in common use in Europe before the
war, and was capable of long continuous quiet recordings of higher
quality than the early tape recorder. And a freshly recorded
lacquer disc was very, very quiet and capable of frequency response
way beyond 10 KHz even in the 30s. There are so many other reasons
why that Hitler story is a joke but these should be enough Those
stories only "abound" because they get be repeated without any
research.
Lastly, the entire first season of Philco Radio Time was recorded
and edited on DISC. Tape was only used for mastering and editing
starting in the second season, and even then the tapes were dubbed
to disc for broadcast. The tapes were not directly aired until the
final weeks of the second season. Therefore the use of tape had
absolutely nothing to do with ABC's decision. The only part of the
story that is true is that Crosby put money into Ampex, but Jack
Mullen had already gotten Ampex working on developing improvements
on the AEG Magnetophons he had brought back. But ironically the
first tape machines ABC bought were Stancil-Hoffman.
Mike Biel mbiel@xxxxxxxxx