There is so much nonsense in this thread I scarcely know where to begin. It’s so pathetic its funny, but I will try to address a couple points.
First of all, the perception some here are trying to create that people who don’t care for ATR haven’t used it is disingenuous and patently false. To leave people with that impression only invites the reader to stay stupid. Then you’re simply trying to win an argument at any cost rather than help someone match tape to machine. The tactics resemble those of ATR.
I'm pretty certain about what I'm saying and I have practical experience to back most of it up.
Heaven help us! I'm trying to be as nice as I can, but when you were born I was a teenage apprentice in TV broadcasting. I was owner/operator of a hopping recording studio in Central Illinois at the tender age of 24, so if you want to compare resumes I don't think you're going to score many points going that route. And in those days you had to have some rudimentary understanding of physics before you could wear the bade of engineer. This is what's lacking on most recording forums today. So you have practical experience to back most of it up. Hmmm... well ok, but it takes a lot more than that.
But to be honest I think people (here, especially) misunderstand this product and what people post here makes it pretty evident. Think about it - this place is a backwater compared to all of the audio and tape-related websites and print publications out there. If ATR tape is as bad as you claim, don't you think you'd hear about it on other message boards, in Tape Op, or from mixing engineers and studio people? It seems like the fear, doubt, and misunderstanding regarding ATR is pretty much limited to this website.
Nothing could be further from the truth. This site is one of the few sites that isn’t watered down thanks to the participation of a handful of regulars who bring a great deal of background and knowledge that you don’t find on the fly-by-night forums full of self-proclaimed experts. I see so much error on sites like gearslutz and tape-op I don’t have time to participate. More importantly, I don’t care about any website. The web on any topic is fueled by misconception and down right superstition and the farther away we get from when tape was the norm in the recording world the worse its going to get.
What you’re suggesting is that we dumb ourselves down to the collective inexperience of the general public according to some average web forum user, rather than the objective expertise that this topic requires.
When Quantegy came out with GP9 in 1998 they did not discontinue 456 or even 406, and that’s because the demand for the older formulations was very high due to limitations of machines that could not bias up to or mechanically tolerate +9 tape. Same goes for BASF/EMTEC. The introduction of SM900 did not eliminate the need for SM911, SM468 or LPR35, etc. If there were ever such thing as a one-size-fits-all tape these tape manufactures could have done it with their +9 tapes. RMGI could have done it with SM900. But RMGI absorbed people with enough experience to know that offering only a +9 tape would fail to meet the needs of most of their customer base. ATR on the other hand has one tape to offer, so of course they’re going to try to tell us it will work for every application imaginable, which is simply impossible.
ATR started out with a vision of a +9 (+10 according to their literature) tape that would keep their ATR-102’s running and that’s what we’ve got. Many semi-pro machines and home hi-hi decks are pushing the edge of their capabilities with +6 class tape. They simply cannot bias up to the +9 class tapes and/or tolerate the mechanical demands of running the heavier tape in the long term. Tape acts like fine sandpaper on a tape path and that’s why tape paths wear. Thicker stiffer tape demands more tension to maintain optimal tape-to-head contact, so naturally a tape like ATR, 499 and SM900 will wear heads and guides faster. Again this is no mystery, but is Tape Recording 101 and Physics 101 level stuff. Anyway it used to be.
ATR can’t fill every need unless they offered a range of tapes like other manufacturers. Even the latest run is comparatively thick and heavy. It’s the stiffest and least supple tape I have. I not only have ATR that’s less than a year old, but I’ve also got new-old-stock Quantegy 456, 406, GP9, Scotch 206, 226 BASF/EMTEC SM911, SM468, and SM900 for comparison.
We have a choice between two evils right now… RMGI and ATR. It’s not a great choice, but when you have a machine like the 80-8 that’s living on the bleeding edge trying to accommodate 456, the last thing you want to do to the electronics and the transport is to throw something like ATR or SM900 at it. You’ve got these choices… use RMGI SM911 or SM468 while you keep up the search for NOS tapes like Quantegy 456, 406/407 and Scotch 206/207. This goes for the Tascam 30-series as well and obviously anything that specifies 1-mil tape like the 388 or 22-2 is best used with 1-mil tape. I don’t care what the uninformed consensus is on amateur forums. I see so much hogwash on other forums I can barely stand to look.
ATR obviously runs fast and loose with the spec sheets. They don’t make any sense. They have changed certain parameters and left others alone that should have changed due to changes in the aforementioned parameters. No tape with coercivity of 365 Oe and a rententivity of 1590 Gs is going to get by with a bias of 3dB down from peek (as specified for Studer and Tascam machines running at 15 ips). Those figures are more in line with the original 4 – 4.5 dB down from peek in the original ATR spec sheets. But what the true specs are we may never know unless an independent lab does a thorough evaluation. It’s pretty obvious to me that ATR changed the recommended bias to 3dB down because a lot of machines are unable to do 4dB down. The easiest thing for them to do was to list a bias level that is close enough but still not optimal. We can’t ask Spitz anymore because sadly he is no longer with us.
I have little doubt that lo.fi.love is sincere, but I also have little doubt that if he had talked to the Pope instead of Mike Spitz he’d be here espousing Catholicism. We don’t need any more true believers trying to persuade us that their church is the one true church. What’s needed is more people with discernment and the technical background to parse out spec sheets and connect the data to the real world. We’re seeing less of that all the time, as people who were analog newbies a few short years ago are now self-proclaimed experts based on little more than that they frequent web forums and are following the consensus.
You can’t vote physics out of the equation. Sure you can try, but all the while the reality is the forces that cause premature head wear leading to more frequent head relapping, and that tax the electrical and electronics are going to be there just the same whether you understand it or not. So it’s not about consensus, but rather about measurable properties whether you know how to measure them or not.
All that being said, ATR is a decent tape (albeit way too costly) but its limited to machines that can accommodate +9 tape. For the last time, there is no one-size-fits-all tape! The idea that there could be one tape that is optimal for all machines is the misconception I wish to dispel. I can’t dispel that notion unless you have some rudimentary grasp of physics and can connect in your mind the properties of tape and the theory behind tape deck setup beyond just blindly following calibration steps.
I just hear misinformed / confused statements online sometimes and I think it's important to share my own first hand experience if it's to the contrary.
