T
Tim Gillett
Banned
The goal of those NR systems was always to try to change the overall sound as little as possible. Moreover, proper tracking is essential with any NR system to have any kind of decent sound. This requires conservative recording level practices (keeping levels down, avoiding distortion and staying as linear as possible.) If you want to get the sound of pushing hotter levels on the tape, you are better off without NR.
Besides with wide track machines, noise reduction is usually not needed. You really get into needing NR when you cut your track width below 0.080" ( the width of two NAB tracks on 1/4", 8 tracks on 1" or 16 tracks on 2"). Beyond that you get the reduced S/N of narrower tracks combined with the accumulated noise of more tracks, so 24 tracks on 2" tape, for instance, or 16 tracks on 1" tape or 8 tracks on 1/2" tape generally requires NR.
Just my two cents.
Cheers,
Otto
Dolby only looked at the low level signal so it was fine to use Dolby and distort the tape at high levels. OTOH because you were pushing the signal into the red, tape noise wasnt such a problem , and so in this sense, Dolby wasnt as much needed.
Cheers Tim