Search results

Cory: Interesting post. I remember discussing this issue with some 3M experts over the years. The first version (1965) was the M-23 series which used rim drive. The prototype rim tires worked great, but they had to go with a different source and process in actual production and had some...

I had some free time today, so I swapped out a channel electronics card on the Otari 8-track and then did playback and record calibration for that channel. The old card recorded and played, but I couldn't quite get proper calibration of input and record levels. The replacement card does a...

By way of update, I finally found a reasonable deal on a CB-116 auto-locator remote for my Otari 8-track. It seems to work perfectly on its own, without the full-function remote, which was a question I had back when I first got the machine, but had cleared up since in a conversation with Brian...

Yes, the narrower guard band increases cross-talk. AFAIK, that's about it. Cheers, Otto

I recently reminded myself that 1/4" 2-track machines have one of three track widths: .100" on DIN (European) machines, .082" on "NAB" machines and .075" on Ampex (and some other machines). Richard Hess has a nifty webpage on track widths for all sizes of tape...

I guess my basic summary would be that my 1" machine sounded better in certain ways, but my current 1/2" machine gets the recording job done pretty well, too. I didn't use NR on my 3M M-56 1" 8-track and I don't use it on my Otari 1/2" 8-track, and I only calibrated the M-56 at +6. The...

So the bias was set for 406? All bets are off on an old, unknown tape. The bias setting is probably not optimized for the unknown tape and that can cause output to be all over the place. Just for fun, test the unknown tape by inputting a 0VU tone, push record and monitor off playback and then...

I'm not quite sure how Dave does these tests on tape machines, but it's fairly easy to conduct a similar test on a mixer. It was interesting to compare my Mackie CR-1604 to my Roland SMX-880 line mixers. The Mackie has a delay of around 9 usec at 20K. It's about the same a bit above 1K, but...

Folks here might be amused to know that in Dave's high-end listening tests on all these machines, ProTools HD 96/24 came in last after the Studer machines. The basic thing seems to be coherence of timing across the audio band. Ironically, the PT system has the least group delay, which is the...

Brian Roth is one. There is a fellow in Calgary named Dave Kean who is big into the machines and I've been told is now making the little plugin opamp modules for the electronics. He has a number of machines in service. I wouldn't be surprised if he is also able to work on the newer...

Probably Stephens (especially if you need portability), then 3M right after. M-79 is newer, slightly smaller and has varispeed, M-56 and M-23 sound better. Then probably Ampex ATR series. Dave Amels did group delay distortion tests and found that perceived natural sound in listening tests...

I haven't yet had the pleasure to work with one of his machines, but you have to give John Stephens a lot of credit. His machines had several significant innovations: 1) capstanless transports introduced in the early '70s, 2) transformerless, unbalanced I/O, and 3) very compact channel...

How about an M-Audio DMP3? Two-channel mike preamp and DI and the sound and specs are just fine. They go for about $100US every day on eBay in barely used condition. Cheers, Otto

Since I posted on this thread back in September of last year, I picked up an Otari MX-5050 MkIII 1/2" 8-track for basically the cost of shipping. That machine is really working well and so now it's basically the Otari that I track on while the Teac 4-track is more for jotting down the...

For anything from the olden days that first came out on vinyl, it's a pretty safe bet that if it was redone later as a half speed mastered disc by Mobile Fidelity Labs, then it was a pretty good recording and judged worthy of a pressing of the highest quality. Cheers, Otto

Whether it's considered proper in other parts of this site, I certainly hope that anyone who has any analog stuff they want or need to sell feels OK posting about it here, either with a link or with details. Honestly, I don't pay a lot of attention to threads on the other parts of HR very often...

I'm using SM911 on my A-3340S and it has worked just fine. Cheers, Otto

Aphex 109 can do 4-band mono or 2-band 2-channel/stereo. It sounds pretty darn good for being so cheap (typically $100 with PSU on eBay these days). Otto

Yes, I made them. I couldn't afford a real drum set. In 1985, I made them as single head drums (only one rim). I glued the pieces all at once and clamped them with a couple of straps tightened around the circumference, then glued the rim on the edge of the shell (all at the same time, IIRC)...

This is an older photo. They look a bit tidier now (and sound more to my liking) because I have better, internal damping built into each of the toms and the bass drum. Time to do a new photo. Still, you can see that the shells are made of beveled, flat pieces. Cheers, Otto