In a discussion on 2012-01-20 in the New Studer list, Todor Dimitrov posted the differences between the record and repro boards between a 1/4-inch and a 1/2-inch two-track A80RC repro cards. Here are the changed components for the 1/2-inch version. There are five different oscillator versions in the manual, including one for 1/2-inch.

RECORD: C34=68pF
REPRO: R1=100K; R21=330

CBC A80RC Repro capacitor mod

I had previously posted in the original (and now reconstituted) Studer List on 2008-04-24 that there were other extant and possible modifications. Here is a slightly edited and reformatted version of that post:

(more…)

It is possible to capture both directions of a two-sided half-track mono tape in one pass.

The critical factors are:

• Azimuth
• Direction
• Polarity

(more…)

About ten years ago, when I transferred the oldest tapes in the United States as part of the Mullin-Palmer collection, my good friend Don Ososke pressured me to use a full-track head for the project. I had started transferring these full-track tapes with a Woelke NAB stereo (two 80 mil (2 mm) tracks) head and recording both channels. When I obtained a Nortronics full-track head, the difference was night-and-day. The full-track reproduction sounded fuller, smoother, and quieter. There were no tracking problems to speak of that would cause azimuth wander large enough to create a “flanging” or “phasing” effect of in-and-out high-frequency loss. (more…)

I received a query from Sweden today asking

I have a Studer machine with butterfly heads with which I’d like to reproduce
tapes recorded with normal two track heads. Theoretically, how much more noise,
in dB, would I get from playing the “empty” part of the tape?

Let’s look at the assumptions.

(more…)

There is a recurring question as to what is the best way to set azimuth for playing a tape. Many people assume that using the test-tape alignment is best. Well, that makes another big assumption: The recorder used a proper test tape alignment. While that can be the case, it usually is not. (more…)

There are complex interactions between tape speed, track width, frequency response, and dynamic range. This article is an attempt to summarize the major influences. (more…)

I added a Track Configuration page to the resources hierarchy in the sidebar at the right. This points to other resources on the web to provide further insight into the various analog audio track configurations. There is also a brief note there about the variation in the two-track, half-inch format. These differences are minor, but they could be a source of some problems under some extraordinary circumstances.

This page was updated 2012-01-05 to provide track widths on higher-density audio multi-track formats.

A link to the Studer track dimensions page was added 2012-01-06.

Large-scale, enterprise-class storage is using combinations of both disc and tape. LTO tape appears to be growing more than any other format.

What is described in this article is obsolete in a large part. Please see the Data Storage category for current thinking.

For those of us who are working at a much smaller scale, I have provided references on what I do for fairly robust storage on a budget. Please see these two attachments: description and map. It shows a unified (I hope) approach useful to small archives and businesses. (more…)

There are several symbols that are widely used to denote that intellectual property is protected.

Circle with a C in it © Wikipedia

Circle with a P in it ? Wikipedia (more…)

This is a reminder that data formats come and go just like audio and video formats. On this, the 48th anniversary of the JFK assassination, this article was posted at the Library of Congress website. It talks about first locating and then converting research data held on IBM 80-column punch cards. I remember working with those my first summer job back in 1967! I guess I have a penchant for obsolete formats, as I learned a good deal about IBM’s unit record equipment, including the amazing 407 (introduced in 1949). That certainly was not as useful as knowing about analog tape now.

The punch cards were found and converted. This is a much happier fate than that suffered by the original IRIG 14-track 1-inch tapes of the Apollo Moon Walk from 1969! I am currently digitizing 14-track 1-inch seismic tapes surrounding the Mount St. Helens eruption in 1980. (more…)

There has been some discussion recently about the 4-channel cassette recorders that were used for court reporting and other logging- or court-reporter-type applications. It seems that the players only have one output and can select any combination of one or more playback channels into that one output.

This monitoring topology is actually identical to two 1-inch 40-channel reel-to-reel logging machines I have where one can listen to any combination of one through forty tracks on a single output. (more…)

In the 2007-2008 school year, my son Robert asked me why we did not have all our family images in the computer as there were some that he needed for a report. Since this was a project I had desired to undertake for some time (but who has the time), I responded with “I’m very glad you asked, what are you doing for a summer job?”

This caused me to increase the storage capacity and was actually the impetus for the purchase of the pair of Thecus NAS units in 2008. The storage impacts and other computer-related articles are discussed here.

This article addresses the scanning side of the project. (more…)

The long-term maintenance of digital formats that I do not get a great call for has become a burden. While I would like to have all formats available for all people, I have such a backlog of analog, that I will not be accepting digital-only projects in many formats that I used to.

The formats that I am still accepting are:
—Digital Files on CD, DVD, hard drive, USB drives, etc.
—CD
—MiniDisc (normal stereo, not porta-studio multitrack)
—PCM-F1 on VHS or Betamax
—Sony DASH (3202 or 3402) 2-channel reel

I will, however, attempt to play digital tapes in other formats that I used to accept as stand-alone projects if there are one or two in a larger collection that I am digitizing and the machine still works. These formats include:
(more…)

Over the years, I’ve used various methods of storing 35 mm colour transparencies. Until 1992, I used mostly metal slide boxes, but I do have about five Airequipt 2 x 2 Slide Files which are a hard plastic. One of them was sitting on a painted steel shelf and I found some oozing degradation components that were oily/greasy and rust where the paint on the shelf was scratched (probably prior to the box being placed on it).

These boxes have bubbled to the top of the priority list. The interior and slides seem to be fine…for now, and the other boxes are showing little or none of the symptoms of the one (which is probably not the oldest). The slides in this box date from 1983, but the box is almost certainly older. The Logan and Brumberger steel files are, as expected, holding up well, but I am migrating the images to hanging slide sheets from Transparent Office Products. I suspect that I’ll end up with about 2,500 sheets with probably 16 slides/sheet on average…and that will fit in seven file cabinet drawers (2′ deep). These sheets were originally sold by Franklin Distributors until Transparent took them over about half a decade ago. I bought my first sheets from them in 1991 or 1992 and they are still doing fine. Some other alleged to be archival sheets from the same time did not do as well.

We are scanning all of the images as we move them using a Nikon Coolscan 5000ED with SF-210 slide feeder.

I consider myself fortunate to have been one of many recipients of Peter Copeland’s generous assistance while working with some challenging tapes. I was saddened by his too-early passing in 2006.

The British Libary has now published his Handbook (click here).

For many years, I had been in favour of the Primera Z1 small optical disc printer. When Primera discontinued this several years ago, I was not pleased and purchased two as spares, hoping at least the ribbons would continue.

It appears that I am not alone in thinking this is a good product as it has resurfaced as the U-Print CDP78, now in black, and available from many online distributors. The cartridges appear to be interchangeable with the Primera. I can now suggest that this is a good alternative for safe, long-lasting, and reasonably attractive text labeling of CDs and DVDs. It appears that the Teac P11 is also similar. The last time I checked, the Casio required manual rotation of the disk, rather than the Primera’s automatic rotation.

Please provide me with any feedback pro or con—preferably as comments to this post.

CNET reported yesterday that Sony will be stopping sales of its 3.5-inch floppy disk media in March 2011 in Japan. Apple stopped supplying these as standard equipment in 1998 and Dell ceased that practice in 2003.

While this medium is not widely used for audio or video, there is, I suspect, still a large amount of ancillary data kept in this format. I will look through my collection and see if there is anything else I need to capture to my servers before my drives die.  I would not entrust anything important to this format.

We stopped using these about three or four years ago, with the last holdout being school work brought home. Now, even that is done on USB keys.

I have been having a lot of fun recently looking for specific software tools that avoid having to purchase multiple licenses of the high-priced programs. Here are a list of my picks of free and low-cost software tools. I am sticking with Samplitude Professional for audio and Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom for photo-graphics. The other alternatives, however, are wide open. (more…)

This is the second installment of my open-ended quest for great software. The previous (and inaugural) article is here.

The excitement is that the current version of LibreOffice has removed a good deal of the startup sluggishness. While still not as fast as MS Office 2003, remember with LibreOffice, you are starting the whole suite essentially. There is an option to load it at startup, which I do not use. (more…)

My friend Susan Kitchens and her brother took their parents to the StoryCorps recording session in Los Angeles a few weeks ago. She blogged it here. One of the neat things is that between her article and the discussion she and I had in the comments, we have a good handle on most of the equipment that was used in the trailer. It’s a good selection in my opinion and shows how simply good-quality recording systems can be set up. Further discussions from a StoryCorps representative have shown how clever the setup is.

OK, this is not directly related to audio, but three audio people I know have been bitten by insects this spring and have suffered greatly for it. One was bitten by a spider in California, one almost died from a flea bite in Texas, and another received a suspected spider bite in Pennsylvania…so be careful…you never know where nasty insects might be hiding…maybe even under a tape box!

If you are worried about what to do, a friend, though a staunch vegan, squashes spiders. Of course, certain spiders are good and eat other insects, so this is just another one of those tough decisions in life.

And then there is mold. A good friend’s life was cut short by interaction with mold, though he was a smoker much of his life, so I’m certain that contributed to it.

As my Dad used to say, “you don’t get out of this life alive”, but he made a good run for it, living until age 93!

This has been updated 2007-06. Please look here, but there is still good information, below.
Two ways of seeing tracks on a tape are listed here. We’re collecting more in the comments. (more…)

I first wrote about seeing the tracks here in March of 2006. While these solutions work, the Plastiform viewer needs to be kept in a humidor and the Kyread spray is a bit of mess to use and the results are variable. One result of the Kyread treatment can be seen here (please wait for the pictures to load, it’s a big page).

Here is what appears to be a vastly improved solution:

(more…)

I remain a fan of the Sigma MV-95 magnetic viewer despite its slowness at times. I discussed it at length here in June of 2007. It has helped analyze many problematic tapes and has helped me understand the issues enough to apply the correct solution to transfer damaged tapes.

An example is here. (more…)

In several articles on magnetic viewers, we have discussed the spray-on Kyread product. That company has been closed due to the death of the owner several years ago. The good news is that the Geneva Group of Companies (click here) has taken on the product line, but the bad news is that they have dropped many of their own magnetic-related products and as of this writing removed all of this from their website. However, a phone call will provide the needed information. Thanks to Graham Newton for providing this information.

A simple, 5-sided box solves two problems:
–Protection of the Studer A80
–Providing more work surface

(more…)

This is a guest article from Andreas Weisser who runs Restaumedia in Germany. Neither Andreas nor Richard can take responsibility for the work that you do based on these instructions which are provided on an as-is basis. Any risk of using them is solely your own and not Andreas’s, Richard’s, or anyone else other than you, the person undertaking to use these instructions. If you have any questions, please contact Andreas. — Richard

This is a step-by-step guide for the removal of U-matic Cassette from a Sony VP 7040/9000 U-matic Player by hand.

1 —  Turn the power OFF.

2 — Remove the Upper-Case of the video player. Use a Phillips screwdriver to loosen the fixing screws. Then pull the Upper-Case in the direction marked by the red arrows shown here in picture 1.

(more…)

We have seen some tapes which cannot be baked and others that did not need baking and could be treated in an easier way. Our degrading tapes page has been updated with a section on Lighter edge-shedding. This also includes a description of a simple tape-wiping process.

There was yet another discussion about winding tapes for long term storage. This time it was on the Society of American Archivists list. While it was focused on VHS tapes, where it was decided that it was more important not to leave the tape in the middle with active content exposed, some discussions of the mechanics arose and I have added them as comments to the original post, which is available here.

In 2006, I wrote a blog post (here) called “Let Sleeping Tapes Lie: What to do with poorly wound tapes”. For years, tape experts have been suggesting that it is not as good an idea to rewind tapes as was originally thought. This was partially based on the fact that most rewinding in archives was done on the oldest, junkiest machines so as to not wear out the good machines. Unless rewinding is done on high-quality tape transports, it is indeed counter-productive.

We continue to receive poorly wound tapes and are able to play them successfully. So why the quandary now? The reason is that I read portions of another Bharat Bhushan book, Mechanics and Reliability of Flexible Magnetic Media, 2nd Edition, New York, Springer, 2000. Referring to several research papers he makes a compelling case that tapes should be rewound annually if subject to storage environment fluctuations and every 3.5 years if kept in a climate controlled storage area. (more…)