35 mm Audio Tape Recording!

That's mag-film. I did look into this at one point, around when Quantegy fell, though not seriously. Apparently you can still get Sondor recorders such as the OMA-E in up to 8 track formats, probably for the price of a new car.

However, I believe they were designed to record all the tracks at once - you couldn't go back and overdub just one track or something, unless they were specially modified for this. Which the Sondor might do, I don't know and I couldn't afford one anyway. And the things are about 6 foot tall...

If my calculations are correct, 35mm at 24fps would give you around 22.6 ips, and that would give you about 9 minutes on a 1050' roll, or 27 minutes on a 3150' roll, which seem to be the main sizes of fullcoat currently in production.

Some of Mercury Rev's songs (debut album?) were recorded 6-track on Westrex recorders this way, or so the story goes.
 
It's actually 90 feet per minute at standard 24 frames per second speed, which equals 18ips.

One of the problems with 35mm full-coat is that oxide formulas didn't keep pace with tape, but that notwithstanding, the wider track widths made up for a lot. However, the more rigid nature of full-coat created some guidance, head-wrap, and scrape flutter issues. The wider tracks make azimuth more critical, and even machines made in the 1980s suffered from design flaws, especially the multi-track ones. Dumb things like adjacent tracks suffering from lesser and lesser HF response because the electronics were stacked up, and each track had its electronics farther away from the head stack, resulting in longer head wires with more capacitance, which caused the HF loss. Something that should have been worked out in design, and may have been easily ignored in film sound work, but not so much in high quality music recording.

Though 35mm can sound good, it was not the ultimate in analog recording, it had its own issues, though may have been pretty good for it's day: the early 1960s.
 
Obvious for stated reasons why it went no where!

I can't imagine what a roll of that tape would weigh!
 
Wow. The technical discussion is making my head hurt, but a fascinating subject, nonetheless.

But, I think the contributions of Wilma Cozart Fine, a woman who obviously earned great respect in a field dominated by men, were considerable. I am glad to have read a little about her.
 
I search for a particular item and then come up with incredible finds.

This was one I felt was very interesting.

Always good to read of pioneers.

BTW, I have learned that one can always identify a pioneer by the arrows in his/her back!!!
 
Well, sorry if I seem to be shooting arrows at Wilma Cozart Fine, such was not the case. Those that used the technology of their day to its full potential are to be appreciated, if not emulated.

What the pioneers of today need to realize is, just because it's vintage or analog, doesn't mean it's musical nirvana. Quite the contrary. Each improvement brought new problems, but progress did move forward.

Pioneers typically learned from the past then forged ahead. They didn't go back and repeat the past. Things like 35mm dubbers were a huge improvement over what preceded them, but all of their flaws have now been put behind. What we learn from those that used them is possibly that what we are looking for might be found in unexpected places. 35mm dubbers were made to simplify film editing by getting audio on stock that was easily cut in sync with picture. The stock they used matched 35mm film physically, so the stock could be cut on an editor using a common shaft synchronizer (a stack of sprockets), and get editors a couple of extra tracks. It just happened they had wider tracks and moved a bit faster than tape, and that became what audio-only recordists exploited.

We might mention 1/2" 30ips 2 track tape here too, though it was really an albatross. Again, faster and wider solved a lot of issues, and created a few new ones. It was all heading to lower noise, better frequency response (30ips was great at the top, not as good at the bottom), less mechanically induced issues. It was a step forward, if not really adopted, and quickly overtaken by PCM.

Each step forward has introduced new problems to solve. Perhaps those are the arrows. But I guess I'm saying, looking back through rose colored glasses is interesting, and educational, but the old days weren't always great either.
 
Comments always welcomed and good points made.

We have a lot of folks to thank for equipment so reliable that we can use it today with joy.

There was no computer analysis technology at-hand then as there is today to analyze issues and to project. So them ole pioneers did pretty good!
 
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