Anyone ever send a track to a tape recorder then back?

  • Thread starter Thread starter DAS19
  • Start date Start date
D

DAS19

New member
Has anyone ever tried getting some tape compression by transfering one of the tracks to a cassette tape recording deck and then back into the computer. Im thinking maybe it adds a little natural tape compression and tape quality to the track. I think mixing it in with the clean channel would be a nice effect thats cheap.

Anyone ever tried it?
 
DAS 19,

...There are no hard rules ultimately, but I don't know how much sonic love you will get out of that.

Compared to a reel-to-reel machine, cassettes just don't have that good a signal (signal-to-noise, wow/flutter, freq response) nor the overhead in the rec/repro electronics to be hit hard the way a good r-to-r can.

You won't get the silkiness of a wider-track r-to-r. You would get a different-sounding track, most likely with a bit of noise and/or distortion on it, depending on how hard you hit the cassette. But give it a shot.

I would say one way to get an audible and perhaps usable special effect out of it would be to dub onto a really cheap cassette deck, to get some crazy artifacts and by-products into the sound and mix that back with the clean track. That may not be what you are after, but just an idea.

You must also bear in mind that as the cassette track rolls along when you dub it back, it will start to drift on you compared to the original track.
Depending on the length of the vocal lines and the quality of the cassette transport, some editing most likely will be needed to re-align portions of the tracks.

Hope this is of help,

Best,
C.
 
I've unarchived some tape stuff into digital.

I think tape compression is a real phenomenon at big speeds and tape widths. However, my 15 ips from 1/4" 8 track tape probably had very little compression.

I can only think that a cassette format would yield little compression and lots of hissy artifacts of a very limited format.
 
Yes. I was doing a radio play for the BBC a few years ago and they needed something that sounded like it was an archive recording from the 1970s. So I recorded from the DAW into an old cassette recorder at too high a level so there was tape distortion, and then back again to the DAW. It seemed to add instant old-and-crappiness.
 
Agent47 said:
Yes. I was doing a radio play for the BBC a few years ago and they needed something that sounded like it was an archive recording from the 1970s. So I recorded from the DAW into an old cassette recorder at too high a level so there was tape distortion, and then back again to the DAW. It seemed to add instant old-and-crappiness.
Click to expand...

Pretty much what he said, if that is what you are talking about.

On the other hand, the way I read your post lead me to think that you are looking for the old-school professional tape sound that you get from recording on a quality reel to reel - not the shitty sound of recording on a crappy cassette deck. If you are talking about the latter, sending your mix out to a cassette recorder and back in won't give you a nice, "warm" sound as so many call it.

One way to do the latter (or what I read from your post) is to buy a decent, functional 1/4" or 1/2" stereo recorder deck, and mix out to that, and back in. How much of a difference will you notice? Probably not a huge one - and as the though has crossed my mind before, apparently it hasn't enticed me enough to drop at least a couple hundred+ on a decent, used reel recording deck.
 
Never tried this, but a thought just occured to me-

What if you recorded from your DAW on to cassette (or any size tape) as hot as you could without too much distortion, then bounced it back onto another digital track and mixed it together like you would with parallel compression?

Not sure it would work without some kind of sync, but it might get some saturation artifacts of the tape without losing fidelity or raising the noise very much.
 
DAS19 said:
Has anyone ever tried getting some tape compression by transfering one of the tracks to a cassette tape recording deck and then back into the computer. Im thinking maybe it adds a little natural tape compression and tape quality to the track. I think mixing it in with the clean channel would be a nice effect thats cheap.

Anyone ever tried it?
Click to expand...

You can't get tape compression from a cassette based system because of the lack of aplifier drive and the Dolby/DBX NR systems.

Whatever you are hearing is coming from the tape recorder's amplifiers only and whatever the tape adds to the sound.

This tape compression thing has been misinformed to everyone here for far too long. Analog Only people seem to keep this going without understanding what it is and how pro decks get it.
 
Agent47 said:
Yes. I was doing a radio play for the BBC a few years ago and they needed something that sounded like it was an archive recording from the 1970s. So I recorded from the DAW into an old cassette recorder at too high a level so there was tape distortion, and then back again to the DAW. It seemed to add instant old-and-crappiness.
Click to expand...

Tape distortion like you got is not the same as tape saturation that people are looking for.
 
also...

we used something similar to this...

DATA1307.JPG





NOT THIS

trc-sb1000.jpg
 
I lay back a track from time to time. When I'm tracking (increasingly rare) I like to track *to* tape and immediately pull the signal off the repro head. Recording to tape in the first place is a little different...
 
MCI2424 said:
Tape distortion like you got is not the same as tape saturation that people are looking for.
Click to expand...

Of course not. I wouldn't expect anyone to do what I did to make something sound better. We just wanted an old crappy, aged sound, which we achieved.

For tape saturation, go 1/4" I guess...
 
MCI2424 said:
Tape distortion like you got is not the same as tape saturation that people are looking for.
Click to expand...

It's quite possible to get tape saturation effect using a cassette, and for it to sound reasonable. It depends on the tape and the deck you use. Using the Sanyo machine pictured would probably not be a good choice!

In between the big Ampex pictured and the Sanyo were lots of good quality cassette decks which would be suitable. Many would be Tascam.

Better quality Chrome and Metal tapes had performance comparable to open reel (though still more hissy generally) and so long as the record electronics didnt clip before the tape saturated (not hard to design) you were in business.

Recording to analog tape doesnt necessarily give you "that warm analog tape sound". You have to choose saturation which depends on how hard you hit the tape. You can record to analog tape and make it sound almost indistinguishable from the source. Tape saturation is an effect that's possible when using analog tape in a certain way.

If you just want a crappy sound there are 101 ways of doing that, both in digital and analog.


Tim
 
DAS19 said:
Has anyone ever tried getting some tape compression by transfering one of the tracks to a cassette tape recording deck and then back into the computer. Im thinking maybe it adds a little natural tape compression and tape quality to the track. I think mixing it in with the clean channel would be a nice effect thats cheap.

Anyone ever tried it?
Click to expand...

yeah! it can be a really nice effect. I'd recomend it.
 
you can demagnetize the tape...Thats what the entire degaussing room was for

If the client started fooling around about payment, you walked over to the degaussing machine and stuck the tape on it and started counting. Usually be the time you hit 2 or 3 they'd have some money
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top