Recording instructor says it's impossible to oversaturate tape

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dhinged

New member
I just went to a digital recording class at Guitar Center and everything the instructor said was great except for the following: he said that it's impossible to get sound wave clipping on a tape. When I laughingly said, "Well, I've gotten that plenty of times!", and he says, "No, that won't happen unless you're using a crappy tape recorder."

I've been using a Yamaha MT4X and a Tascam Portastudio 414 MKII 4-track recorder for the last ten years and they were definitely not crappy... they actually showed me when the input sound would clip, gave great recordings when they didn't clip (better than the later Tascam digital recorder I gave up) and had obvious distortion when they did clip. Before I knew what I was doing, people would notice the static and I had to make sure to find that happy medium with volumes.

I was confused that this guy who's supposedly been in the industry for 10 years (recording in LA with Slayer and Metallica) said something that completely contradicted my own experience and then saying I must be using a crappy tape recorder. I feel like he hasn't done much analog recording or was just offended that I contradicted him.

Has everything I've experienced been total delusion or is it actually possible to oversaturate a tape? As far as I'm concerned, if your input is clipped, it's going to record distorted to whatever medium you record to, no matter what.
 
He probably wasn't tracking Metalica and Slayer to a four track cassette porta studios and was more likely talking about something like this:

IMG_0332.103162550.jpg

Although if you hit the levels really, really hard you could still oversaturate, but if he was talking about digital clipping (since it was a digital recording class) which is a lot different from saturation, that would be impossible with tape
 
If you were clipping anything on those 4trackers it would be the inputs, or outputs. I 4-tracked and 8 tracks for years on casette and the electronics are notoriously poor. I wouldn't take him calling your equipment crappy personally - it was all crap for the most part.

dhinged said:
I just went to a digital recording class at Guitar Center and everything the instructor said was great except for the following: he said that it's impossible to get sound wave clipping on a tape. When I laughingly said, "Well, I've gotten that plenty of times!", and he says, "No, that won't happen unless you're using a crappy tape recorder."

I've been using a Yamaha MT4X and a Tascam Portastudio 414 MKII 4-track recorder for the last ten years and they were definitely not crappy... they actually showed me when the input sound would clip, gave great recordings when they didn't clip (better than the later Tascam digital recorder I gave up) and had obvious distortion when they did clip. Before I knew what I was doing, people would notice the static and I had to make sure to find that happy medium with volumes.

I was confused that this guy who's supposedly been in the industry for 10 years (recording in LA with Slayer and Metallica) said something that completely contradicted my own experience and then saying I must be using a crappy tape recorder. I feel like he hasn't done much analog recording or was just offended that I contradicted him.

Has everything I've experienced been total delusion or is it actually possible to oversaturate a tape? As far as I'm concerned, if your input is clipped, it's going to record distorted to whatever medium you record to, no matter what.
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Well tape has a limit. Is this just a bit on what is or isn't exactally being called 'clipping in this case?
 
chuckduffy said:
If you were clipping anything on those 4trackers it would be the inputs, or outputs. I 4-tracked and 8 tracks for years on casette and the electronics are notoriously poor. I wouldn't take him calling your equipment crappy personally - it was all crap for the most part.
Click to expand...


Yeah...you'll most likely get electronics distorting/clipping long before the tape saturates, and on the pro-sumer stuff it will usually be the electronics first, but even on pro gear, you can crush the electronics before the tape, which may be what the guy was trying to say. With most pro gear, you have the ability to re-calibrate for your specifc tape formulation to get the tape and electronics working together optimally...or you can set it up for some serious tape saturation without clipping the front end electronics.
I guess the question would be what the guy defines as "over" saturation when he says you can't do it...?
 
Dhinged you seem to use the terms "clip" and "oversaturate" interchangeably. We normally talk about an amp clipping when it reaches the limits of its power supply rails. We normally talk about tape saturating when it runs out of particles to magnetize.

Every tape machine's record head amp will clip at some point. A good designer made sure the tape saturated well before the amp started to clip. Normally that wasnt too hard to achieve.

The instructor seems to have been on the ball.
 
I agree with what Tim G said. I think it’s a matter of semantics here. Tape does note clip, but it does of course distort through saturation. Saturation is a gradual process. If you’re pushing tape so that you hear audible harmonic distortion then it is on it’s way to saturating. Full tape saturation simply means the tape can’t take any more signal (Flux) because all the magnetic domains in the oxide are aligned. Full tape saturation can be as hash and unmusical as digital distortion, but short of that tape distortion is more musical than electronic clipping. The term clipping applies to electronic components like transistors and op-amps. Both of these phenomena are called “Distortion” but they are quite different. And then you have tube distortion, which is different than either of the above. So it’s important to have a full understanding of what kind of distortion we’re talking about


If the instructor really thinks it’s difficult to saturate tape he is mistaken. On the other hand it is possible for a given machine to lack the balls to saturate modern high output tapes like GP9, SM900 and ATR. Other than that tape saturation occurs long before electronic clipping on even modest machines that are properly calibrated and that includes cassette multi-tracks.
 
Time - good point. They are obviously not interchangable, and you can make any of the all in 1 casette 4 trackers clip in a heartbeat..... Been there done that :-)
Tim Gillett said:
Dhinged you seem to use the terms "clip" and "oversaturate" interchangeably. We normally talk about an amp clipping when it reaches the limits of its power supply rails. We normally talk about tape saturating when it runs out of particles to magnetize.

Every tape machine's record head amp will clip at some point. A good designer made sure the tape saturated well before the amp started to clip. Normally that wasnt too hard to achieve.

The instructor seems to have been on the ball.
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Chuckduffy,

I think you got it around the wrong way. Easy to make a 4 tracker cassette saturate the tape.

Sure, easy to make the record amp clip too but by the time it was clipping the tape would already be wildly saturating. It was designed like that so the clipping wouldnt really be an issue.

Tim
 
I often get things backwards - but.

1. Instructor says impossible to get sound wave clipping on a tape
2. Student argues "Well, I've gotten that plenty of times!",
3. I point out that it's the electronics clipping - not the tape
4. I point out that he probably shouldn't take offense when the instructor said "No, that won't happen unless you're using a crappy tape recorder." - it's nothing personal, we all love our old gear - but that doesn't mean it isn't 'crappy' in the eyes of a guy used to working on a studer...
5. I agree completely that by the time the electronics are clipping the tape is wildly saturated


Tim Gillett said:
Chuckduffy,

I think you got it around the wrong way. Easy to make a 4 tracker cassette saturate the tape.

Sure, easy to make the record amp clip too but by the time it was clipping the tape would already be wildly saturating. It was designed like that so the clipping wouldnt really be an issue.

Tim
Click to expand...
 
dhinged said:
I just went to a digital recording class at Guitar Center .....
I was confused that this guy who's supposedly been in the industry for 10 years (recording in LA
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I'm thinking this fellow probably doesn't hit tape. That being said, pro tape machine electronics have pretty good headroom although it's certainly possible to clip if you hit them too hard. Maybe what he's suggesting is that you'll get the electronics distorting before you get nasty artifacts from hitting the tape too hard. Never mind intending print through issues...
 
What happens above where the tape begins to reach sturation, do the tops start getting lopped off?
 
Can I get a clarification of the word, "over-saturate" ? . . . Isn't "saturation" already in the "over" part of the tape headroom?. . . In other words, isn't the word just saturate, and not oversaturate? . . .

I also call it "tape compression", which is gradual, but when you're in the "over", you're already in the "over" part, right?. .
 
mixsit said:
What happens above where the tape begins to reach sturation, do the tops start getting lopped off?
Click to expand...

Naa...not like with digital.
Everything just starts growing some "hair".... ;) ...aka - harmonic distortion.
There is no hard clipping/limiting with tape, and by the time it hits the saturation limit...it's ugly sounding, so you'll probably never get there intentionally.
It is that gradual saturation and addition of harmonic distortion that many find pleasing and colorful in a positive way, similar to tube distortion...but there is a point of diminishing returns with both...too much of a good thing. :)
 
AtoDeficient said:
Can I get a clarification of the word, "over-saturate" ? . . . Isn't "saturation" already in the "over" part of the tape headroom?. . . In other words, isn't the word just saturate, and not oversaturate? . . .

I also call it "tape compression", which is gradual, but when you're in the "over", you're already in the "over" part, right?. .
Click to expand...

:D

Yeah...I was curious too what he means by "over" saturate.

To me, it means the point at which the tape saturation/compression is too ugly to use, so I need to back of a bit on my levels. :)
 
Well, you can be pregnant, but not really overly-pregnant, although you could be very pregnant, I suppose. . .

I tape-compress drums often, but I know I'm already IN the "over"-zone a bit when doing so. . .
 
Alright I should clarify then since we may have been talking about two different things. When I plug into a track from a guitar pre-amp out, the Tascam will show when the volume is in the red and it starts to distort. I align the volume knob to the "optimal" level (which is about 7) and then adjust the amp to make it not go above yellow except when I'm really hitting the strings. This gives me a nice volume and presence without distortion (I of course may adjust lower just in case).

So I did get "clipping" from my input when it hit the red (electronic clipping I guess) and that's when I got tape distortion. I'm not sure if I've ever gotten "oversaturation" on the tape itself... I may not have even been capable of doing that on the Tascam.

The point was he was talking about getting distortion on the recording and I got distortion during tape recording just like he got distortion during digital recording... which came from clipping. So when he said "it's impossible to get that on tape" I was miffed because I got that all the time! So even if he meant just tape saturation, it was out of context because it still depends on whether your input volumes are clipping... that was the whole point. It sounded as if clipping only happened during digital recording. When there's a bunch of people there new to digital recording, it seems like a bad thing to say that you can get distortion during digital recording while not through tape recording unless you're using crappy equipment.
 
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