Hi! I'm very new to analog recording so I'm sure this is a very beginner question. Thanks in advance for the hand-holding.
I have a TEAC A3440 (1/4" 4 Track machine) using SM911 tape (purchased new, Pyral branded). I'm feeding it four tracks of line-level signal from a Focusrite Scarlett 18i8 that I want to record to tape.
To calibrate levels, first I send out a 1kHz -20dB tone to each of the four tracks, and set the TEAC's on-board meters to 0 VU. This fine, but once I start recording to tape, if I switch the TEAC's monitoring over to "playback" so I'm monitoring off the tape, the same tone is read as something like +5 or 6 VU off the tape for each track. During record, I can toggle between input monitoring and tape monitoring and see the levels from the tone are still being received at 0 VU, but are coming off the tape at that +5 VU.
Of course, I can just start recording first and re-adjust until the tape monitoring levels to say 0VU and it's fine. But this difference in levels still puzzles me.
So here's where I'm dumb. I hear people talk about tape bias, and although I never totally understood what that was, I feel like maybe that has something to do with this? Am I over-biased? Am I way off?
I have a TEAC A3440 (1/4" 4 Track machine) using SM911 tape (purchased new, Pyral branded). I'm feeding it four tracks of line-level signal from a Focusrite Scarlett 18i8 that I want to record to tape.
To calibrate levels, first I send out a 1kHz -20dB tone to each of the four tracks, and set the TEAC's on-board meters to 0 VU. This fine, but once I start recording to tape, if I switch the TEAC's monitoring over to "playback" so I'm monitoring off the tape, the same tone is read as something like +5 or 6 VU off the tape for each track. During record, I can toggle between input monitoring and tape monitoring and see the levels from the tone are still being received at 0 VU, but are coming off the tape at that +5 VU.
Of course, I can just start recording first and re-adjust until the tape monitoring levels to say 0VU and it's fine. But this difference in levels still puzzles me.
So here's where I'm dumb. I hear people talk about tape bias, and although I never totally understood what that was, I feel like maybe that has something to do with this? Am I over-biased? Am I way off?
Last edited: