Re: [ARSCLIST] rehousing audio cassettes

[Jennifer Tobias <jtobias@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,
Thanks for the great input! We are in fact digitizing our collection, but we of course want our originals preserved in the best possible condition too, just in case. Thanks for all the great information!
-Jen Tobias

Jen Tobias
Technical Services and Special Collections Coordinator
Naropa University
Allen Ginsberg Library
(303) 546-3505
jtobias@xxxxxxxxxx
-----Original Message-----
From: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List [mailto:ARSCLIST@xxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Richard L. Hess
Sent: Wednesday, January 21, 2009 10:17 PM
To: ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] rehousing audio cassettes

Hi, Tom,

I agree with your points,  but there are batches of tapes that are 
failing in odd ways -- and I'm not even referring to the horrid 
feri-chrome tape in my blog from a few years ago.

We're seeing some second-tier tapes which are becoming dimensionally 
unstable and won't wind well. This is where I've been pointed towards 
metal cassette shells and other "fixes" short of a Studer A80QC to 
play this stuff back on.

The tapes tend to "cone up" on their hubs and then wedge against the 
inside of the case. I've seen this with mostly second-tier Canadian 
tapes, but have had a half dozen out of several hundred mixed lots 
that have done this. They are often C-120s, but I think I had some 
C90s do it as well.

There is another phenomenon that has only been very poorly documented 
and that is loss of highs just sitting in a wood drawer with no 
magnets around. Some suggest that it is a magnetostriction effect 
with the small radii that the tapes in cassettes move over. I don't 
know and I haven't seen anything in the literature, but I haven't 
done a comprehensive search for this specific item.

It seems to happen shortly after recording ( ~ < 1 year ), so it 
doesn't appear to be something that is limiting life, but has already 
degraded the magnetic record. This may be some of the reason that 
Dolby NR doesn't track as well as we'd hoped it would, especially on 
cassettes (where this problem is most noticeable).

And yes, of course, always transfer from the best available source. 
Sadly, with many oral history collections, the cassettes are the best 
available source. My big project that I've had in here for a while is 
dragging on because I'm trying to find the best copy of stuff and all 
are horrid. But the metadata the client is doing is farther behind 
than my transfers so if I get to keep ahead of the metadata I can do 
other work.

I did transfer one nice collection of about 50 reels that had been 
previously transferred to cassettes. I had to throw in the baking, 
because the client thought the cassettes were "good enough" but I 
just couldn't see not doing it from the reels. It was such a joy to 
hear real 1/2-track mono, on 1/4-inch tape without the cassette 
"filter" over it. Even if the reels were mostly 1.88 in/s. I think 
they were done on a Uher or similar.

Cheers,

Richard

At 07:23 PM 2009-01-21, Tom Fine wrote:
>Hi Richard:
>
>I very much agree with you that all magnetic tapes are finite, so 
>anything of value on them should be transferred as the clock is always ticking.
>
>That said, I've been transferring a group of about 50 cassettes I 
>recently inherited and have been happily surprised by the results. A 
>few of these tapes are, literally from the very dawn of cassettes as 
>a mass medium (made at the first mass-duping plant in NY to do 
>compact cassettes). Others were stored in very non-ideal conditions 
>(a basement damp enough that paper labels were warped and stuck to 
>the plastic cases). Others, including one of historical 
>significance, were made on very low-grade examples of the cassette 
>art. All except one played perfectly the first time in the machine. 
>That one needed a shell transplant, mainly because the tape splice 
>to the leader had dried out and the pressure pad glue had dried out. 
>The audio quality varied from mediocre to very good but none was 
>terrible (even an early mass-duped tape made from a 1940's disk 
>recording). To be fair, almost all were spoken-word so the need for 
>excellent speed stability and reliable frequency range extension was 
>not as great. I was never a fan of cassettes in their heyday, on 
>audio quality grounds (with music), but in recent years, my respect 
>for the design of the medium grows. It is a cockroach-like audio 
>storage medium, relatively non-fragile and usually fixable if the 
>problems are mechanical.
>
>Compared to finicky digital-tape media, cassettes are likely to 
>remain playable decades longer. But, Richard is right -- all tape is 
>finite and everything of value on it should be transferred. In the 
>case of cassettes, if you have a better source you will have better 
>audio quality.

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.