need some help

  • Thread starter Thread starter lonewhitefly
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lonewhitefly

lonewhitefly

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I record and mix all-analog and am planning to press a 7" record. I think it would defeat the purpose in some ways if I were to cut it from a CD like most people do, so I would like to have the record pressed from ¼” tape. I found one guy who can cut directly from the tape without any digital delay. The problem is, I have never set up or calibrated any of my machines and have no equipment to make test tones, etc., which he requires and told me it is necessary to place tones for him to do the mastering. I have 2 mixdown decks, a Teac 3300-2T and a Tascam 22-2. I have also heard that tapes cut on Teac decks don’t sound the same when played back on “pro” type machines, don’t know if this is true or not.

So how would I go about calibrating the deck and getting the tones on these tapes? I will be mixing to either Scotch 206 or Quantegy 406, which I’ve used before.
 
Your task is not a small one and there are no real shortcuts.

You can either find somebody to cal the deck for you, or if you are going to do it yourself you'll need:

  • MRL calibration tape
  • true RMS voltmeter that can handle audio bandwidth (ideally 20Hz ~ 20kHz)
  • tone generator (you can find freebie software for computers to do this...)
  • the service manuals for both decks

IMHO this is the bare minimum needed...anything less and you start cutting corners on your calibration. You may be able to get away with using a regular voltmeter (non-true RMS), but it will not give you true voltage readings so levels and eq are not going to be to spec...maybe close at some frequencies...if you can get the meters calibrated at 1kHz on both decks you can kind of cheat and use a VU meter on the deck that's not being calibrated as your level meter, but beware that Teac meter ballistics are off in the upper frequencies (i.e. they start reading low at, maybe, anything above 4kHz and might be as much as 1 ~ 3dB off by 16kHz).

Okay...blahblahblah...

If you are dedicated to analog, which it sounds like you are, I think it can be a very rewarding experience to cal your own decks, and you can do it!

Best advice I got when I started getting into this stage a couple years ago (and I knew almost nothing about calibration) was to take it one step at a time (thank you Pianodano). If you wanna do it, get the service manuals (if you don't have 'em already), get a cal tape ( I think you can use the same one for both of those decks...are they both IEC equalization curve??) And get an appropriate meter and figure some way to generate tones...then crack open the manual. Teac did a good job laying the cal procedure out stepwise in their manuals.

Seems big maybe but just take it a step at a time. We're here to help!
 
yikes ...

thanks for the info. i am dedicated to analog but quite honestly i am not an engineer at heart and usually just end up frustrated doing this stuff when i could be writing songs etc.

but i understand i may as well buckle up and do it! i will take it one step at a time and i do have the service manual for the 3300, which is the one i will likely be mixing to anyway.

i was somehow thinking i could just put the tones on the tape and then that could be used as a reference to how it sounds on my machine while i am mixing it?

maybe i should hire someone to do it. there is a shop here in austin that is currently working on my 80-8 but i don't believe they do calibration etc.
 
Can somebody else chime in here?

I've never dealt with taking tapes to a mastering or pressing house...the typical tones are 100Hz, 1kHz and 10kHz right? like 10 seconds of each and they are used to trim up the reproducer at the mastering/pressing house right? But if the record deck is way out calibration-wise they're gonna tell you to get it cal'ed and come back right?

lonewhitefly, there is no reason you can't go ahead and print tones to tape, but above is my question...they want to make sure that what plays back on your deck is how its going to play back on theirs, and if your recod levels and eq are out-of-spec your mastered project is going to sound different than you want on theirs and hence get pressed different than you want.

BTW, I believe I have a copy of the 3300 service manual as well so we'll be able to speak the same language if you do choose to dive in.

I'll check out the linked songs later.
 
In your case I would definitely have it setup the first time by an experienced tech. And all things being equal I would go with the 22-2 for sound quality. Have it setup for either Quantegy 406 or Scotch 206 and stay with that tape throughout the project.

Once you have your machine in tiptop shape the standard tones to put on a master tape before the music are as follows (tones should be recorded @ 0 VU):

- 1 kHz 30 – 60 seconds (depends on where you send it)
- 10 kHz 30 seconds
- 100 Hz 30 seconds


They may also want 30 seconds of 15 kHz and 50 Hz. Ask the mastering/duplication house for their specific requirements. The above is just a general idea of what to expect.

The reason for the tones is so they can fine-tune their machine to your tape, as there are always slight differences from one machine to the next. The fact that you have a TEAC or Tascam “semi-pro” deck doesn’t make any difference.
 
thanks guys for all of the tips ...

beck's suggestion to go with a tech the first time around (hopefully one who i can watch & learn from) is probably the way i will go.

for all i know the decks are already set up but i guess i don't know which tape type. a friend of mine recently borrowed my 22-2 and mixed his band's entire album on it. then he transferred it to CD and it sounds really good. he mixed to 406, which i think my deck is probably set up for. but the 206 sounds good too (I have some NOS).

maybe i'll just put the test tones on tape and also make a CD burn and send both to the mastering lab. if he says the tape doesn't sound right, then he can use the CD to make the laquer.

thanks again for the tips!
 
thank you!

i am the vocalist/songwriter

do you have stuff on the internet?
 
lonewhitefly said:
thank you!

i am the vocalist/songwriter

do you have stuff on the internet?
Click to expand...

Yes I do. Right now it's all kind of lumped on a soundclick page. I still have yet to get my myspace page up and running. (As if I needed any more reason to procastinate, we just our first child, a boy, in November.) You can check it out here:

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=328768

There's all kinds of stuff on there --- demos of equipment, examples from guitar instructional books I've written, a few covers that my wife and I do as a duet --- but the tunes that best represent the singer/songwriter side of me are:

Nobody Showers
Feeling Tired
That's What I'd Say
Freedom of Youth
Not That Bad
Deaf Ears, Minnesota

All of these recordings are a few years old, and I'm in the middle of recording new stuff right now, but production has pretty much completely halted due to the above-mentioned future string strangler. :o)
 
lonewhitefly said:
sounds cool

what did you record them with?
Click to expand...

A few different things:

"Nobody Showers" and "Deaf Ears" were on a Roland VS880
"Freedom of Youth," "Not That Bad," and "Feeling Tired" were on a Yamaha AW16G
and "That's What I'd Say" was on a little Zoom handheld digital 4-track recorder. I just wanted to see what I could do with it, so everything's from it: the drum/bass machine, the built-in condenser mic for acoustic and vocals, and the amp simulator for the electric trem guitar.

I just sold my Yamaha and purchased a Tascam 38 off craigslist, so I'll be back to sweet analogue soon! It's in Texas though (where I used to go to school), so I have to wait until May to get down there and get it. (I had a friend pick it up for me.) :(
 
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