Tape Speed Question

[m98ter]

Recently, ive come across a reading that said tracking on a 424mkIII should be done at the "high" tape speed to cut down on tape noise. Honestly, thats a button on my portastudio that I've never bothered to touch. I guess my question is does it get rid of any more noise, and if so what do I need to know to use it other than flipping the switch (do I have to put it back on normal for playing tracks and mixdown?)?

[glimmer_doll]

using a higher speed will improve your quality somewhat. Kind of like with VHS if you record on SP the quality is higher than SLP

if you record your tracks at high speed, then you would also playback/mix them at high speed

[leddy]

Originally Posted by m98ter

Recently, ive come across a reading that said tracking on a 424mkIII should be done at the "high" tape speed to cut down on tape noise. Honestly, thats a button on my portastudio that I've never bothered to touch. I guess my question is does it get rid of any more noise, and if so what do I need to know to use it other than flipping the switch (do I have to put it back on normal for playing tracks and mixdown?)?

It's a huge difference. With clean heads, the right tape (use exactly what the manual says), and running high speed (I even turn the pitch control to max to make it faster) you can have surprisingly good results with a 4-track cassette machine.

The higher speed will reduce noise and widen the frequency response. The manual should list the specs for each speed.

[DigitalSmigital]

but use your high-speed setting, fer sure. It's like doubling the megapixels on a digital camera. More high end.

[The Ghost of FM]

I've never tried it, but I heard using pitch control introduces warble

It's most like very true that using the pitch control for additional speed/fidelity is actually a bad thing for a couple of reasons.

1 - The speed stability that is required and desired to not have audible wow and flutter is diminished by using the pitch control in that while the transport is under its control, the normal circuitry that stabilizes speed is bypassed and more drift will definitely be introduced. As a side note, more tuning issues as well will come into play as the speed drifts the pitch & tuning in and out on subsequent overdubs.

2 - tape calibration and dbx noise reduction depend on standard speeds to work properly and when you force the transport away from those factory calibrated settings you will throw off dbx tracking and cause it to false trigger and pump and breath more audibly.

Cheers!