At 10:00 PM 2009-12-16, Corey Bailey wrote:
>Having dealt with squealing tapes at virtually all recorded speeds and (most)
>widths, the simplest and most effective solution I've found is to lubricate
>them. That said, the most effective lubricant I've used so far is from Last
>Factory.
Hi, Corey,
I have had pretty much the opposite results with The Last Factory products.
>1) Unless you have modified your play electronics, playing, for example, a
>7.5ips tape at 15ips will invoke a different EQ alignment curve which will
>result in inaccuracies when pitching the file back down in the digital domain.
>(Something I don't like to do in the first place for a number of reasons)
There are many ways to handle this and most of the times I record an
MRL test tape to make sure it's all fine at the end.
In my experience, this is a problem that is mostly limited to
personal and oral history tapes as they are the ones usually recorded
at slow speeds. I've had little or no issues with master tapes,
especially on the single-head reproducers.
>2) Having tried this and observed the signal with calibrated test equipment
>showed that the squeal is, more often than not, still there and
>although it may
>not be (as) audible, it is having an effect on the audio in other ways such as
>increased harmonic distortion, induced wow and flutter, etc.
That certainly may be true in some instances, but in others, there is
a threshold where the squeal stops. It was actually Jay McKnight of
MRL who suggested the higher playing speed (I think I mention that in
my blog post) and this was based in part on the analysis he did of
the mechanical properties of tape for Ampex.
Cheers,
Richard
Richard L. Hess email: [log in to unmask]
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.
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