48 track recording

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arjoll

arjoll

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OK, this is probably more for some of the members who remember 70's music and recording.

Last week I was given the new 2 disc SACD re-release of "War of the Worlds" for my birthday (not that I can play the SACD layer yet!). Other than the fact that it has the dumbest packaging known to man (those horrible cardboard-with-plastic fold out things instead of jewel cases), it mentions in the liner notes that the recording/mix was re-created from the 'original 48 track masters.'

What kind of technology was used then to do 48 track? I've googled it and they're mention of using two 24 tracks, which I'd guess they'd have to do (I've never heard of 4" tape!), but this all pre-dates technologies such as MIDI.

Just curious about how they achieved this.

Some info about the release is at http://www.audaud.com/article.php?ArticleID=420

BTW I'm not really a big vinyl nut, I'm allergic to surface noise, but even on my modest system (Marantz CD4000, Denon PMA360, Infinity Reference 20's) the bottom end doesn't have quite the same punch as I remember the vinyl having. I really don't miss the snap, crackle and pop during Richard Burton's introduction though!
 
arjoll said:
OK, this is probably more for some of the members who remember 70's music and recording.

Last week I was given the new 2 disc SACD re-release of "War of the Worlds" for my birthday..

What kind of technology was used then to do 48 track? I've googled it and they're mention of using two 24 tracks, which I'd guess they'd have to do (I've never heard of 4" tape!), but this all pre-dates technologies such as MIDI.
Click to expand...

It was explained on the 20-bit remaster. I presume they've now re-remastered it to 24-bit or PWM or something ;-)
That CD belongs to my Dad, so I'll try to recall what it said:

They used two 24 tracks, IIRC a Studer (probably A80) and an MCI deck. They used MagLink synchronisers. The 1/4" mixdown was done on a Studer A80.
 
War of the Worlds?

Are we talking about the Halloween radio play done in the 30's by Orson Wells? :confused: There were no 48 track tape recorders back then or any tape recorders at all on this side of the pond.

What recording are we talking about here?

Cheers! :)
 
jpmorris said:
It was explained on the 20-bit remaster. I presume they've now re-remastered it to 24-bit or PWM or something ;-)
Click to expand...
Its a 2 SACD set, with CD and SACD (DSD) layers. Instead of 16 bits at 44.1 kHz the SACD layer is 1 bit at 2.8224 MHz. Not that I have any way of playing that layer - I might go and see if I can score a 'free home trial' of an SACD system over Christmas :)

jpmorris said:
They used two 24 tracks, IIRC a Studer (probably A80) and an MCI deck. They used MagLink synchronisers. The 1/4" mixdown was done on a Studer A80.
Click to expand...
Thanks for that. Apparently Jeff spent 3 months remixing from the originals, and enjoyed going back over the material. There's the standard SACD set and a 'collectors edition' with several discs of 'new material' which you'd have to be more obsessive than the average Star Trek fan to actually have the patience to listen to!

There were 77 tapes to go through which needed to be baked.

Great big 'digidesign' logo in the booklet, but I'm guessing they didn't use a digi002 :D
 
War of the Worlds - I know that record.
I used to have the vinyl record, actually it was a double album thing that opened and had really cool airbrushed pages inside of the martians destroying England and the human race moving to underground cities.

It was narrated by Richard Burton and had some really far out disco opera on it. Man I probably played it a thousand times. I was 10 years old at the time.

Where did you say you got that disc?
 
reel buzzer said:
Where did you say you got that disc?
Click to expand...
It was given to me, but I'm guessing it would have been bought locally. If you google it you'll see its available from most of the online stores including Amazon.
 
arjoll said:
Its a 2 SACD set, with CD and SACD (DSD) layers. Instead of 16 bits at 44.1 kHz the SACD layer is 1 bit at 2.8224 MHz. Not that I have any way of playing that layer - I might go and see if I can score a 'free home trial' of an SACD system over Christmas :)
Click to expand...

In other words, PWM. :)

One of the amusing pieces of fall-out from the War of the Worlds album is the truly abysmal film 'Hawk the Slayer' which was made around 1979. The music is so totally stolen from 'War of the Worlds'. Although it was all original music, it is painfully obvious what the composer's favourite album was at the time.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos...8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/203-3715849-8127928
 
arjoll said:
What kind of technology was used then to do 48 track? I've googled it and they're mention of using two 24 tracks, which I'd guess they'd have to do (I've never heard of 4" tape!), but this all pre-dates technologies such as MIDI.
Click to expand...

It's relatively simple to sync two 2" 24-track machines together. You have to have a timecode track on each real of tape, so really the maximum usable tracks is 46. You pluf the output of the 2 timecode tracks into a synchronizer. Someone mentioned the MagLink synchroniser, I'm not familiar with those, I'm too young to have been syn'ing 24 tracks then. I used to regularly use a Zeta-III for this task. You also have some sort of multi-pin control cable that runs from the synchronizer to each deck. You then set one machine as the master, the other gets set to "external control". Simplifying a bit, but in a nutshell, the one will now follow the other.

Most often, you really only run both machines during mixdown. It's a bit of a hassle to record with 2 machines sync'ed. Usually when the first tape gets full, you'll sync another machine to it, transfer over a rough mix plus a few other important tracks. This was often called the sleave tape. Then you do your overdubs on the slave, and sync it back up for mix down.
 
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