tape warmth. and harmonic distortion

[Farview]

That was just the first one I found on Ebay. I couldn't remember the model # of the 1/4 tascam or fostex machines, so I looked up the Studor.

You might have an easier time finding them under home stereo instead of pro audio. There are tons of 1/4 8track machines on ebay.

 

[track pusha]

ok thank you everyone for your help, and suggestions.

Falken, if i understood you right, your saying that i should get a 1/4 reel to reel right?

and another thing is it hard to work with the tape, i've heard from people that it can be a nightmare sometimes. i dont think it would be hard since i'll just be recording my mix to the machine then then back to the pc, but i could be wrong.

also with these machines is there alot of hiss

 

[Farview]

You have to have the tape machine aligned and calibrated. It will be calibrated for a speciific type of tape, as long as you use just one tape formula, the calibrations should stay for a while.

Yes these decks have hiss, but that is part of that tape sound. Some of them will have noise reduction (DBX, Dolby S, etc...) which helps with the hiss, but some people think it ruins the sound.

The truth is, tape machines are a big can of worms. Studios that run these machines have in-house guys that align and calibrate them on a regular basis. They tend to be big, hot, sometimes tempramental things that require a lot of maintainence to perform at their optimal. There is a reason why all the sound engineers in the 60's, 70's, and into the 80's were electrical engineers first.

 

[FALKEN]

Falken, if i understood you right, your saying that i should get a 1/4 reel to reel right?

if you are trying to transfer to tape and back to pc again, yes.

the most often recommended machine in the analog forum is the tascam 32, because it was made for home recording, so you don't have to be an electrical engineer to make it work once its set up (usually), like Farview says.

expect some hiss. thats just how it goes. but not like cassette hiss. r2r tape is much thicker than casette tape, and runs much faster. the hiss will be barely noticeable. the thickness and width would be comparable to number of bits, and the speed it runs is comparable to bitrate. most stereo machines like the tascam 32 run at 15 ips (inches per second) and are 1/4". anything more is considered overkill (like 96 kHz) but like 96 kHz there are people who swear by it.

if you don't like the idea of hiss, I would look at some plugs or some rack gear. the blockfish is a nice plugin compressor that adds some tape-like sound. supposedly the distressor gives a good emulation as well but I haven't thrown down that kind of $$ yet.

 

[Farview]

15 ips is good for that tape saturation sound. 30 ips is cleaner and has more headroom, but it doesn't smoosh the lows together as well. It's a toss-up which one is better, it has more to do with the sound you are trying to get.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Agreed with the 15ips 1/4" analysis from both "F"s above , though if you are using a crisp tape of a brand with good bias match to the brand of the deck with clean, demag'd heads and good levels, the amount of actual audible hiss from just a single generation through the tape should be audible only if you are intentionally trying to hear it. There's no good reason why you shouldn't be able to get at least 80dB-85dB between the noise floor and tape saturation on a good deck with quality matched tape. And you might be pushing into saturation a bit intentionally anyway, which will give you that much more room.

And if the hiss is bothering you, a little bit of range expansion (either outboard or once you have the signal back into the DAW) can often help that.

G.