Reference tapemachine

andromedaaudio

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As there is not much happening on the cost no object " all out assault" tapedeck development .

A reference 2 track machine from the past

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuJ9yNFVIFM

I ve never heard more then 1/4 inch tape , apparently going wider/faster gives you lower noisefloor, more magnetized particles/more info .
Anybody can comment on the audible/advantages??

PS with all due respect to UHA tapedecks who look very promising in their top off the line hot rodded DC powered machines, would love to hear them one time ;)
 
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Bruce B

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According to the studies I've read, 45ips is much too fast. The optimum speed is right around 22ips.... right between 15 and 30. It has to do with the wavelengths and head gap physics that I should be able to find the study.

As far as width, yes, the more the better. I've heard a bigger difference between 1/4" and a 1/2", than going from 1/2" to 1".

(edit): It's somewhere on this page:

http://www.mrltapes.com/jm-bibliog-by-subject.html
 
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andromedaaudio

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Good to know .
Should be used in the ultimate machine afaic ;)
at least 1/2 inch , 22 ips
So the industry is basically still stuck then with not the optimum speed due to wrong standarisation in the past.
Tapelength conveniance ?
 
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andromedaaudio

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The links in mrl tapes dont work at my end .
here a bit i googled :

http://johnhaeny.com/waves-white-paper/

The 350 Transport has 2 speeds. 15ips (Inch Per Second), and 7.5ips. 15ips was the default professional standard providing the best high frequency response and the lowest noise. 15ips has a gentle roll off at around 16khz. 7.5ips was the minimum reasonable professional quality speed for studios and there was also a fair amount of equipment for the home that operated at 7.5ips. 7.5ips has quite a high frequency loss with a roll-off starting at around 8Khz, but 7.5 managed to preserve low frequencies better than the 15ips with a slightly more ‘solid’ bottom end and therefore was widely used in rock recordings in the 60’s and 70’s. (You can look this up, but it has to do with the relationship of the wavelength of the signal and the width of head gap…the slower the tape speed the easier for a ‘given’ head gap to record and read the lower, or longer, wavelengths.)

When switching between the 2 speeds you should expect to get a very much improved high frequency response with 15ips when compared to 7.5ips but perhaps a somewhat less tight low end. Note that 15ips will also provide less THD (Total Harmonic Distortion) than 7.5ips. There is also a shift in the frequency of the noise by an octave between 7.5ips and 15ips, with the noise at 15ips sounding an octave higher than 7.5ips. This difference has always been argued, with some preferring the noise signature of 7.5ips and others preferring the noise signature of 15ips. As time progressed and 30ips became popular many used 30ips because as the noise shifted upwards yet another octave from 15ips, it moved further away from the fundamental musical frequencies and thus became less obtrusive. Experiment and form your on opinions on these issue of speed vs. noise vs. frequency response.
 
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c1ferrari

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If you examine the video from ~ 2' +, it appears there may be a gap between the pinch roller and the pinch roller cap.
The upper portion of the tape is not in contact with the pinch roller. YMMV.
 

andromedaaudio

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could be , could be not, hard to see because of the light , maybe those 1 inch pinch rollers consist in this case of 2 half inch stacked on top of each other and the upper half is missing here .

just merely guessing here lovely machine though. ;)
 
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andromedaaudio

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Actually on the studer A 80 RC i had i made a good profit , one of the very few ever in my hifi career , i bought it from a guy in amsterdam , he had an appartment of about 20 m 2 , and he was a kinda hippie/ would be soundengineer .;)
The whole place was filled with smoke and thats were he did his recordings in digital because he bought the A 80 broken and had no real money to fix it , it wasnt running at the time .
Spend a good amount of money to get it in a good state , the thing i didnt like about it was the meterbridge otherwise i might still have it , but i might go in the future for another machine something like the above mentioned or an A 820 , but im not in a hurry.
I sold to a recordingengineer who has his own studio where it gets more use , he doesnt record with it how ever , he was saying he was just going to pass the signal through the machine , kinda like those digital studer tapemachine add ons or how you gonna call them
 

andromedaaudio

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Yesterday I had the pleasure of listening to a few tapes (including Tapeproject 10) played through a Telefunken M15A and a Doshi tape preamplfier. The sound was very good, but the complete absence of subjective noise really impressed me - much far better than my Bottlehead Eros. Nothing I should not expect - the four Telefunken ECC801s used in the preamplifier cost more than the Eros head preamplifier.

Aha microstrip , i didnt know your tapemachines were like this very nice ( Pics on page 10) , if your tape repro quality is not clearly better, it means 2 possibilties either your digital is really good or my speakers make the difference more obvious.


Ps i read it wrong it was a friends system but nontheless , if you ever are in brussels and im a little bit settled i can demonstrate what i mean :D

there is another possibilty that we value different things in music reproduction/ sound
 
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andromedaaudio

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I listened today extensively to the nagra T audio.
Hands down the best tapehandling and best built machine i ve seen so far .
Its like a swiss expensive watch what a precision enginering , and both factory maintained
Soundwise the Studer B 62 is the champ
 

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