Noise Reduction unit or plugin

  • Thread starter Thread starter Adrian Ried
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Adrian Ried

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Hi I recently bought a Tascam Atr-60-8 tape machine but without the noise reduction unit. I'm getting quite a lot of noise and was just wondering until I am able to find and buy the noise reduction unit would i see a similar if not better result by just using a plugin maybe a waves plugin in ProTools?

Cheers
Adrian.
 
Because I am an old fart, I tend to think noise reduction units for it. However how hard are you hitting the tape with signal, if you hit the tape hard the noise floor is lower? I remember a lot of studios did not have noise reduction and the recordings were fairly quiet.

Alan.
 
Thanks for the reply Alan!

How hard should i be hitting the tape? I know analogue peaking is almost a good thing compared to digital. Should i be hitting the peak on the tape machine?

Thanks!
 
Adrian Ried said:
Thanks for the reply Alan!

How hard should i be hitting the tape? I know analogue peaking is almost a good thing compared to digital. Should i be hitting the peak on the tape machine?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

This will depend on the tape used (which tape are you using), but I used to hit the tape around 0 to +3 most of the time, peaks to +5 are fine I used to hit drums up to +7, you have to experiment a bit here because as you hit the tape harder you get the tape compression effect, for example I used to hit a bit softer when it came to bass guitar, maybe 0 - +1, and vocals to maybe +3 max. You will find the ideal levels after you get used to the machine.

There will be answers turn up here from others that may disagree with me but I used to like the effect of hitting tape hard, and the reduction of noise due to the higher headroom.

Gee I miss tape, maybe I'll dust my 16 track off for a project soon.

Alan.
 
I'd probably feed the deck all kinds of sources, monitor off the record head and fool with record levels until I had a feel for it.
 
Put it this way, you don't need to keep it below the red LOL,

Alan.
 
It would be good to know where you are "fluxwise" with the machine. By that I mean playing back a test tape (or one with a know flux level on it*) so that you know the output of the recorder and thus what level you can run with any given tape.

Once you have that key piece of information you can line up the machine for optimum noise and response. Bit of a faff but you CAN use a computer and DAW to both generate the tones and read the levels coming out. You CAN use a digital multimeter but don't trust them past about 300Hz, even the so called "true rms" jobs!

You should also de-magnetize the heads, guides etc but de-gaussers are I think a bit rare and expensive these days? Maybe there is an old tech' around who could do it? A local studio/radio station might help.

However, if you have had the machine from new and have never buggered about with the calibration it is probably near enough but you will need a service manual to check the line up, might be in the user handbook but I bet you will have to buy the former.

We, son and I, have a Teac A3440 but once computers came on the scene it was just to much hissy hassle!

Dave.
 
Nope, still can't edit.

*Meant to say, maybe someone here can let you have 5 mins of tape with some tones on it?

Dave.
 
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