Tape News

[johneeeveee]

This press release was just sent to Larry Crane (Tape OP, Jackpot Studios):

Dear Larry,

Activities bringing analog studio tape into production as carried out by RMG International in Oosterhout, The Netherlands, are now in a status to be disclosed. These efforts - bringing the EMTEC tape types back again to production and to the marketplace - are leading to a clear alternative and a redundancy in tape supply.

I think, this is good informatuion for the studio community.


Please take details from the enclosed press information. This information is for immediate publication.

In case you need more information, please don't hesitate to come back.

With best regards


Gerd Cyrener

Consultant RMG International B.V.
Former head of EMTEC
Marketing, sales (worldwide) and applications engineering studio products
___________________________________________________________________________________________

Gerd Cyrener, Dipl.-Ing.
Tannhaeuserring 180
68199 Mannheim
Germany
phone: +49-(0)621-81 91 742
fax: +49-(0)621-81 09 93 30
e-mail: mailto:gerd.cyrener@t-online.de
mobile phone: +49-(0)176-21 10 06 43
__________________________________________


EMTEC-Quality AUDIO TAPE
NOW AVAILABLE !!!

RMG International announces the availability of EMTEC-Quality audio pancake tape

EMTEC type Max. playing time in CC
FERRO PLUS C-60 & C-100 (C-130, C-180)
FERRO C-60 & C-110
FLX C-60 & C-115
Sample quantities will be available at the end of February/beginning of March 2005.
Production quantities is scheduled for April 2005.


EMTEC-Quality audio studio tape

EMTEC type Quantegy equivalent type
SM 911 456 Grand Master
LPR 35 457
SM 900 499 - Grand Master Gold Studio
GP 9 - Grand Master Platinum Studio
SM 468 478
PER 368 -
PER 528 -
PM97x series 6xx series
VM 95x series 70x, 8206 series
ADAT Master
formatted & blank ADAT audio
DTRS Master
formatted & blank DA 8
Samples will be available in May 2005.
Continuous supply starts in June 2005.


Recordable Media Group International B.V., Oosterhout, The Netherlands
has been accumulating 37 years of non-interrupted experience on magnetic tape manufacturing. With their highly skilled and experienced personnel and management, RMG International is fully dedicated to magnetic tape. A slim organisational structure enables low overhead.
When EMTEC closed down, RMG International acquired the EMTEC production and quality assurance equipment necessary to convert & complete the Oosterhout production lines to the EMTEC standards for audio tape production.

RMG International has the EMTEC
? production know how
? formulations and
? patents.

Former EMTEC key personnel is assisting in Oosterhout in order to maintain the EMTEC standards.
Following the installation of the EMTEC equipment and positive results of comprehensive studies on availability of the necessary raw materials, RMG International started prototype coating for audio pancake tape and is now preparing for studio tape.

RMG International, brief History
1968 Magnetic tape production for open reel and cassette tape started in
RMG International Oosterhout plant when it was a Philips division.
1981 Joint Venture Philips-Dupont, PD Magnetics B.V., on magnetic tape production,
brand name PDM. ½” Video tape for Video 2000 and VHS, 3480/90 data cartridges for
IBM tape storage systems.
1991 Installation of state of the art, new plant.
1993 SK, Germany, takes over the Oosterhout plant and renames into MPO B.V.
(Magnetic Products Oosterhout B.V.).
1998 New, state of the art, coating line goes into operation.
2004 April, renamed to Recordable Media Group International B.V..
2004 November, acquisition of assets and know how for the production of audio pancakes
for duplication and blank loading and for audio studio tape from EMTEC Munich plant.


Oosterhout, 4th February, 2005
Recordable Media Group International B.V.

Recordable Media Group International B.V.
Address: Bredaseweg 108,
4902 NS Oosterhout
The Netherlands
P.O. Box: 137, 4900 AC Oosterhout, The Netherlands
Phone: + 31 – 162 – 40 89 50
Fax: + 31 – 162 – 46 26 11
Website: www.rmgi.nl
Email: info@rmgi.nl

 

[Rokket]

Woooo Hoooo! I can get my analog studio after all!

thanks!

 

[Beck]

That is very cool!

If true and it comes to pass... oh boy, I just had a thought. Do we dare to hope that we will have even more variety by this time next year, and this whole thing will only energize the analog industry?

One thing that has been demonstrated this last month is how prevalent analog recording is among professionals. Though many of us have known that, now everyone knows. We may be relegated to "Archives and Other" on this board, but this "crisis" has been very telling when it comes to what's really going on in the rest of the recording world.

911 and 468 are great EMTEC tapes, by the way.

-Tim

 

[johneeeveee]

... dare i say it we might end up with quantegy being bought and revived, atr making tape, as well as emtec? a man can dream, can't he?
fingers crossed - jv

 

[beyond_therapy]

yea baby 911 tape can't wait.

 

[cjacek]

That is very cool!

If true and it comes to pass... oh boy, I just had a thought. Do we dare to hope that we will have even more variety by this time next year, and this whole thing will only energize the analog industry?

One thing that has been demonstrated this last month is how prevalent analog recording is among professionals. Though many of us have known that, now everyone knows. We may be relegated to "Archives and Other" on this board, but this "crisis" has been very telling when it comes to what's really going on in the rest of the recording world.

911 and 468 are great EMTEC tapes, by the way.

-Tim

Tim,

I'm not too familiar with the EMTEC line of 911 and 468 tapes. What makes the company and its tapes "great" ?

Thanks!

Daniel

PS: 911 (nine .. one .. one) is a cool name - makes me wanna call my local fire dept!

 

[BRDTS]

Quantegy has been operating for at least three weeks now with ten or so employees. Even though they're technically in bankruptcy, they're working through Spars to ship tape right now, there's no liquidation plan going on, and the tape biz is strong enough to support this revamped Quantegy. There are a few Spars announcements regarding how to order tape through dealers.

 

[Beck]

Tim,

I'm not too familiar with the EMTEC line of 911 and 468 tapes. What makes the company and its tapes "great" ?

Thanks!

Daniel

PS: 911 (nine .. one .. one) is a cool name - makes me wanna call my local fire dept!

Daniel,

BASF/EMTEC SM 911 was their bias compatible equivalent to Ampex 456. A lot of people liked the sound of it and were sorry to see it go a couple years ago when they got out of the tape business. It's described as being a little less edgy sounding than 456. 911 had and still has a loyal following. The EMTEC tape crisis was fairly recent and you can still find various tapes new-old-stock made in the last few years. I have a few reels of EMTEC 911 and one older unopened reel of pre-EMTEC BASF SM 911. I don't have the heart to break the seal on the old reel. That's what happens when the collector in you conflicts with the artist.

SM 468 was originally an AGFA product, PEM 468. AGFA sold their formulas to BASF when they stopped making tape. 468 is unique in the way it holds on to magnetic material, especially the high freqs. Even 20 years later the recordings are as bright and strong as the day they were mastered. It quickly became a favorite for tracking, mastering and archiving. I have several new reels of EMTEC SM 468 and a few of the AGFA labeled PEM 468. Even the AGFA is like-new.

There was an interview with Mark Pinske a couple years back where he talks about discovering how much better 468 was at maintaining the high frequencies while recording for Frank Zappa:

"We cut a deal with Ampex to drop hundreds of rolls of tapes at different cities, like Chicago, New York, wherever," says Pinske. "Well, Agfa started bidding for the business, and we started using Agfa 468. We switched in the middle of the tour, and when we got off of the tour, we started razor-blade editing a lot of the songs together from different shows, and you couldn't even tell the difference in the cymbals across the edits. That's what Frank liked about the consistency we did in the recording.

Well, some of the tapes that we meant to mix for an album we didn't get to mix, because we edited way more songs than we were able to have time to mix, so we put them in the tape vault. When we pulled them out a year later, the edits didn't work. The cymbals would drop as much as 3 or 4 dB at the high frequencies when they went to the Ampex 456, and then when we went back to the Agfa tape, it would get bright again.

This was very frustrating from an engineering standpoint. When I remixed the whole Baby Snakes movie [1983], we would have tapes that maybe the first 20 seconds would sound right, and then all of a sudden, it would get dull and everything would change. We'd have to strike the board and reset everything just to make the edit work. And you might strike the board maybe eight, 10, 12 times through one song, just to try to make the sonics match on edits that originally ran across like butter."

-Mix magazine, February 2003

Steve Perry of Journey preferred AGFA 468 and recorded many hits with it, including "Oh Sherry."

I've mentioned this before, but back in the day people had a true choice of tapes to put their music on. You will find many an engineer or artist that remembers being able to choose a type of tape based on what kind of music they were recording, and everyone had their favorites. Who could ever have imagined it would all end?

This is one of the big differences between analog and digital. It doesn't matter what brand of medium you use in digital because the medium doesn't actually hold sound; it just holds a pattern of 1's and 0's that represents encoded sound. Of course it's important to choose a good quality product to minimize errors, but the medium doesn't actually interact with the sound as tape does.

-Tim

 

[Beck]

Meyers (Smith) Gone for Good?

What the hell is this? I looked at this again and realized Steve Smith, not Meyers was the sales and marketing director of Quantegy. Either Meyers was using an alias all these years or this press release has his name wrong, or there's more than one steve something or other.

At any rate it appears that the longtime Quantegy sales director is not coming back. I had heard that he (Smith) resigned as early as December, but didn't know what his final status would be if Quantegy got back on its feet.

http://www.infocomm.org/index.cfm?objectID=FCB4356A-3006-4D89-8C9F8FF5C6E8B8D1

For now lets just say Smith and/or Meyers is/are gone.

 

[cjacek]

Daniel,

BASF/EMTEC SM 911 was their bias compatible equivalent to Ampex 456. A lot of people liked the sound of it and were sorry to see it go a couple years ago when they got out of the tape business. It's described as being a little less edgy sounding than 456. 911 had and still has a loyal following. The EMTEC tape crisis was fairly recent and you can still find various tapes new-old-stock made in the last few years. I have a few reels of EMTEC 911 and one older unopened reel of pre-EMTEC BASF SM 911. I don't have the heart to break the seal on the old reel. That's what happens when the collector in you conflicts with the artist.

SM 468 was originally an AGFA product, PEM 468. AGFA sold their formulas to BASF when they stopped making tape. 468 is unique in the way it holds on to magnetic material, especially the high freqs. Even 20 years later the recordings are as bright and strong as the day they were mastered. It quickly became a favorite for tracking, mastering and archiving. I have several new reels of EMTEC SM 468 and a few of the AGFA labeled PEM 468. Even the AGFA is like-new.

There was an interview with Mark Pinske a couple years back where he talks about discovering how much better 468 was at maintaining the high frequencies while recording for Frank Zappa:



Steve Perry of Journey preferred AGFA 468 and recorded many hits with it, including "Oh Sherry."

I've mentioned this before, but back in the day people had a true choice of tapes to put their music on. You will find many an engineer or artist that remembers being able to choose a type of tape based on what kind of music they were recording, and everyone had their favorites. Who could ever have imagined it would all end?

This is one of the big differences between analog and digital. It doesn't matter what brand of medium you use in digital because the medium doesn't actually hold sound; it just holds a pattern of 1's and 0's that represents encoded sound. Of course it's important to choose a good quality product to minimize errors, but the medium doesn't actually interact with the sound as tape does.

-Tim

Excellent info Tim! MUCH appreciated, as always!

~Daniel

 

[Beck]

Some Tape News

Nothing major...

http://www.wdws.com/localnews/story.cfm?Number=17733

http://www.oanow.com/servlet/Satell...rticle&cid=1031781139197&path=!news!localnews

 

[cjacek]

Nothing major...

http://www.wdws.com/localnews/story.cfm?Number=17733

http://www.oanow.com/servlet/Satell...rticle&cid=1031781139197&path=!news!localnews

Good articles. Thanks Tim.

Two quotes worth pasting here:

"There's a strange feeling about having made a record that is all 0s and 1s, and can be erased by the touch of a button," he said. "Also, I feel the sound quality has a depth and warmth that is almost impossible to recreate digitally."​

"It's pure [Analog], it's the perfect canvas for recorded music."​