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:

The Canadian Broadcasting Corp mod to the A80RC repro board involves the addition of two capacitors on the foil side of the repro board. Every ex-CBC repro board I’ve seen has that mod on it and it makes a world of difference in how the machine sets up with standard Studer NAB heads and NAB EQ daughter cards.

The new capacitors are paralleled with C21 (fast) and C25 (slow) which are under the alignment pots mounted on the front extrusion.

C21 and C25 are both 1n2 capacitors (tubular). All the boards I’ve obtained with ex-CBC machines (and the one I obtained elsewhere I modified for this) have C21 (fast) paralleled with a 1n0 making the fast capacitor 2n2 total.

Likewise, C25 (slow) is paralleled with 6n8 making the total capacitance for C25 8n0.

I tried a board without this and it didn’t equalize as well at all for NAB. I have not evaluated this for IEC 1 (CCIR).

Try it before going any farther — also replace the three big electrolytics on the repro board if they haven’t been already.

A80RC Repro mod for no VU meter bridge

The other mod I do relates to not using the meter bridge. I put in R48 and R49 on the repro board. I actually make R49 out of two paralleled 6k8 resistors making it 3k4 rather than 3k3 and I disconnect the shielded cable conductor at point (5). In this way, I’ve reduced the capacitive loading on this point of relatively high impedance (when the knob is at -6 dB on the meter bridge, all that cable is being driven by a 2500 ohm source impedance which results in slight, but measurable HF rolloff which varies with the level setting of the pot. With the fixed 10 dB attenuator, the source impedance drops to 2267 ohms — still high. There are also potential headroom issues if you turn down the front panel control more than 10 dB (which is normal).

Electrical reasons to not use VU meters

I don’t use the VU meters (obviously if the meter bridge is not there…). In the Ampex AG440 which has a similar output topology (but higher source impedance) the distortion caused by the meter is clearly measurable. Since the A80 source impedance is lower, the VU meter-induced distortion would be lower, but it would still add some.

I would suspect that the distortion level would be about 12-15 dB lower in the A80 than the AG-440 based on the spec’d source impedance ratio, but I suspect it’s still there — just another reason in my book for no meter bridge. The concept was initially started by not owning any stereo meter bridges, but even with a stereo meter bridge available, I chose not to install it…or rather I de-installed it.

I’ve never been a fan of VU meters across program audio. In my early days of designing, we’d have two resistive buildouts, one for the line and one for the VU meter. Later, VU meters always had buffer amp boards.

Conversion of A80 transport from 7.5/15 to 15/30 in/s

One of these years, I will create a 15/30 A80RC as I bought an NOS high speed capstan motor, but, for now, my Sony APR-5003V machines are doing well at that speed.

One minor drawback is that the magnet in the slower-speed unit’s Eddy Current Drag apparatus on the left roller going into the head assembly needs to be reduced in size to decrease the drag. This is outlined in Studer A80 (All Versions) Service Information Bulletin SI)064081_D-E_Mod.pdf available at the Studer ftp site in this folder.

End of tape sensor modification

The A80RC transport normally requires both tension sensors to drop out in order to stop the tape. It is safer to use the model found in the A810 where either tension sensor dropping out will stop the tape. This simple modification—done only to a single plug-in board—makes the end-of-tape sensing on the A80RC (and possibly all A80 transports) work when EITHER tension sensor drops out.

The critical factors are:

• Azimuth
• Direction
• Polarity

The azimuth of both sides needs to be the same. If the two sides were recorded at different sessions and/or on different machines, then there is no guarantee that azimuth will be the same on both sides. In a large-volume project, this can be addressed by installing two repro heads, one for each direction, and adjusting azimuth separately. This does not work well for stereo tapes with different azimuths because any temporal perturbations in either the recording or reproduce passes will result in severe stereo image shift. If a record head had azimuth scatter between the two channels, it is best to split the difference, if possible without severe high-frequency attenuation.

Obviously, the direction of the playback needs to be reversed in the DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) software, but that happens pretty quickly on a current computer.

Not-so-obviously, the polarity of the signal is also reversed when played backwards. That, too, can be addressed, possibly in the same pass or, worst case, a separate pass in the DAW software.

This is not recommended for any tapes using noise reduction such as Dolby or dbx, nor for the highest quality of music. However, most two-track tapes recorded on both sides are not of this quality.

Related posts

About 2004-2005, I had some full-track 7.5 in/s tapes to transfer that had been badly warped and found that there was enough azimuth wander that the tapes sounded better using one channel of an NAB stereo head. If I used the full track head, while the results were quieter, the azimuth phasing was unacceptable. At that point, I was using a Studer A810 for this type of transfer.

A few years after that, I was asked to recover audio from a 7.5 in/s full-track tape that was part of the Monterrey Jazz Festival. The client was very impressed at my efforts. I was able to use the full-track head, but one of the major differences was that this time it was on a Studer A80RC rather than a Studer A810 and the difference in tape guiding seems to have been the “magic” in that transfer.

The rule is use the most stable transport available and the widest head available to capture as much of the sound as possible without annoying azimuth-wander-based high-frequency combing/phasing effects.

If you use a head narrower than the full-track width, there may be objectionable low-frequency fringing that would need to be compensated.

Related posts

Circle with a C in it © Wikipedia

Circle with a P in it ? Wikipedia

Circle with an R in it ® Wikipedia

Superscript TM ™ Wikipedia

This site talks about where to find these symbols in type libraries. When this was discussed on Facebook, Anthony Kuzub suggested this commercial site (they may only allow use if you are having them manufacture discs, please read their license).

For those making CDs, which is all that I have researched, the circle C and circle P are the most important.

The circle C applies to the liner notes and the music and lyrics for each work. The circle P applies to the actual sound recording. A different version (even by you) of the recording is a separate phonogram copyright.

The license to record and release a copyrighted work is called a “mechanical license”. After the first recording of the piece, that is compulsory and must be granted for payment of a statutory fee.

Trademark and Registered Trademark (superscript TM and circle R, respectively) are a different part of the law and protects things like Coke® and Kleenex®.

Music in video is licensed through synchronization or “sync” licenses. See this page. Videos appear to use the circle C as opposed to the circle P.

Photographs and books use circle C.

In many jurisdictions, the copyright in a creative work exists from the time of creation. Registration of the copyright helps obtain greater damages for infringement and assists in establishing a date of creation and authorship, but is not necessary for the basic copyright. This is different in trademark law, the circle R implies/requires registration.

There is much complex law surrounding these concepts and if you have any questions it is best to consult an attorney practicing in this field. This has only been provided for general information to the generally curious. I cannot warrant the accuracy of any of the links. They appeared correct to my limited knowledge at the time of linking.

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.

Many analog and digital formats are becoming harder to recover. David Crosthwait at DC Video lists many at-risk video formats that he can transfer. I was contacted today by someone wondering if I knew where to transfer QIC DC-600A data tapes. I said I did, and sent him to Chris Mueller who can transfer many formats including most QIC formats.

The point is, however, I don’t know how much longer all of this equipment will be workable. Ten years is pretty much a certainty. Fifty years is a very long time. Please, search your archives now for obsolete formats that still need to be converted. There are people who can still recover content from a wide variety of formats, but we and our equipment are all aging, as the Library of Congress pointed out. They had to repair the punch card readers before the Kennedy data could be captured. It’s getting more and more common to hear: if you want me to recover that data, first I have to restore the old player.

I have given up maintaining an 8-track cassette playback machine as the call wasn’t there. I sold it to another restorer, so let’s hope he will bring it back to life. Little by little, the less-widely used formats will fade away. My first 7-track 1/2-inch IRIG tape recovery in 2006 came to me after a long search in North America and Europe with no success. At that point, I did not own any real IRIG machines (I now own several). I used a modified audio recorder and a 1/4-inch 4-track instrumentation machine for the FM demodulation. So there are not many people capable of playing IRIG instrumentation tapes. I don’t think there are too many people able to recover 9-track data tapes.

Please, before it’s too late, bring your data into the 21st century. Be prepared to be told at some point in the future “it’s too late–no one can do it”. Another piece of luck was finding some old tape machines in someone’s garage for the recovery of the Lunar Orbiter images. They were almost lost. There are so many formats and all of them require dedicated hardware to recover the data.

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.

In reviewing this project, we had a large number of formats (sound familiar?) that needed to be addressed, and it grew beyond the original proportions when we decided to add in the summer of 2011 paper reference files.

• Reflective material:
  • photographic prints up to 8 x 10 inches, colour and black and white
  • photographic albums containing multiple prints
  • magazine and newspaper articles, standards, other documents up to letter / A4
  • larger-sized newspaper articles
  • engineering drawings up to 11 x 17 inches (ledger)
  • engineering drawings larger than 11 x 17 inches
• Transparent material
  • 110 negatives (colour and black and white)
  • 35 mm negatives (colour and black and white)
  • 35 mm transparencies (including Kodachrome and Agfa Rapid)
  • 127 “Brownie” negatives (colour and black and white)
  • 120 roll film (6 x 6 and 6 x 7 colour transparencies and black and white negatives)
  • 6 x 9 cm (Plaubel? black and white negatives)
  • 616 “postcard” black and white negatives
  • 4 x 5 colour transparencies and black and white negatives
  • 5 x 7 colour transparencies and black and white negatives
  • 5 x 7 black and white glass negatives in tricolour sets
  • 8 x 10 glass negatives in tricolour sets

This collection has come together from many sources. The biggest chunk is mine,  but I have materials from my family, my wife’s family, my stepmother’s family, and my mentor, NYC fashion photographer, Milton F. Gentsch. All of Milton’s prints were donated to the Fashion Institute of Technology, but they did not want the negatives, so I have retained about 3 cu ft of them, including all the tricolour glass negatives.

The bulk of my collection is 35 mm transparencies, and the bulk of the family photos of my immediate family were on 35 mm colour negative.

My son Robert and I scanned in 2008 and my sons Michael and Robert did split-shift scanning in the summer of 2009. Robert did a few family albums in 2010 and did a massive job on paper and slides in 2011.

We started out knowing we’d need a great 35 mm tool, so bought (apparently just in time) a Nikon Super Coolscan ED-5000 with SF-210 slide feeder. We had a Hewlett Packard Scanjet 5590 with duplex sheet feeder. We soon realized we needed a high-end flatbed scanner so, after doing some projects for people, purchased an Epson V700.

Our scanning rules were basically simple:

Quality 35 mm images were scanned to 36 MB files (12 MP, 8 bits/colour) and snapshots were scanned to 18 MB files (6 MP, 8 bits/colour). this was based on many considerations, including the fact that the Nikon D100 images (6 MP) were more than fine for any family images, the Nikon D200 images were really good (10 MP), we were already investing a whole bunch in storage already. We used a light touch of Digital DEE and Digital ICE to improve the non-Kodachrome, non-silver images. We retained all the transparencies in archival hanging slide sheets, and packed the negatives into semi-archival cardboard boxes sorted by year.

A few selected high-quality transparencies were scanned to 144 MB (24 MP, 16 bits/colour). Some of the low-volume high-quality items were scanned at reasonably high resolutions. For example, some 5 x 7 negatives were scanned as 350 MB files (175 MP, 16 bits). Most of the negatives were scanned at 6 MP, but a few were scanned at 12 MP, where I had experimented with higher-quality negative film instead of transparency film.

In 2011, as we started to scan paper documents as well as images, it became clear that the HP needed to be retired, and we replaced it with a Xerox DocuMate 3115 (made by Visioneer) double-sided sheet-fed scanner. The documents were scanned directly to PDF and the original paper copies were recycled after the scans were checked. These were magazine articles and (mostly obsolete) standards that I had saved as general reference. Some of the documents from organizations were returned to that organization (sometime without scanning) to assist in completing their archives. The document scanning was mostly done at 300 dpi, which is about 8.5 MP.

We also found a Brother MFC-J6510DW all-in-one on sale in 2011 and picked that up to handle the 11 x 17 scanning chores. It has a single-sided sheet feed on the scanner, but will print double-sided, but not well at 11 x 17 as it requires a 0.8 inch margin. Otherwise, it is a bargain for large-format scanning, although it still needs to make one splice if you’re scanning a record jacket, but that’s better than three splices, four images!

In all cases, we used the native scanning applications and found them to be adequate.

Other than the document PDFs, we saved all scans as uncompressed TIFF files in folders sorted by year, with month-day-event subfolders. All TIFFs were also converted to JPG images for fast access and ease of use and, due to the Adobe Lightroom requirements, kept in the same folders. We used Advanced Batch Converter to generate the JPGs. The software performed very well with one exception. I have a large number of Nikon D100 NEF images that do not have the corresponding JPG image–all the D200 images are shot with the camera generating both NEF and JPG–and the colour balance of the Advanced Batch Converter conversions from the D100 NEFs was substantially off. I have not looked into the issue due to lack of time.

I love Adobe Lightroom, but have not had enough time to enter every image the way I’d like.

We used two older XP computers for this task. Both were Pentium 4 computers with 3.0 GB of RAM. One was 3.0 GHz and the other 3.2 GHz. The Brother, Xerox, HP, and Nikon have all been connected (at one time or the other) to our newer Windows 7 64 bit machines. I haven’t tried the Epson, because that sits nicely with the 3.2 GHz XP machine as a photo workstation.  The Xerox now sits in the studio to quickly handle all document needs, and the Brother connects over the network, though we often use a USB key when we scan on it. The Nikon created a challenge for 64 bit Windows, but we fortunately found this link. Nikon’s response is here and I did purchase Vuescan prior to finding the fix link. I went back to Nikon Scan as while Vuescan is competent, I thought Nikon Scan looked better. I did try Silverfast which came with my Epson V700 and preferred the native Epson scanner software. I know Silverfast is well respected, but I did not want to spend the money when I was happy with the Nikon scanning software.

We currently have about 1 TB of images. We have two redundant Thecus N5200 PRO NAS units, each with five 1 TB drives, for a total capacity of about 4 TB per unit. These two units are located in different buildings and the remote one is a mirror of the local one. We also have a set of large-capacity (mixed 500 and 1000 GB) portable USB hard drives that hold a third copy of the images and other portions of our NAS units. These are in a rugged steel case, located about 3 km away. This set was added following the devastating tornado that hit Goderich.

Total scans:

Year   35 mm negs   35 mm transparencies    other       document pages
----------------------------------------------------------------------
2008      2,500            10,500
2009      5,500             2,050            775
2010                                         300               200
2011                       11,650                           11,200
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Total     8,000            24,200          1,075            11,400
Total scanned 44,675    digital images 17,299 NEF + 1000s of JPGs
      over 62,000 images total

Going back to the initial list, as of 2011, the following are complete:

• Reflective material:
  • photographic prints up to 8 x 10 inches, colour and black and white
  • magazine and newspaper articles, standards, other documents up to letter / A4
  • larger-sized newspaper articles
  • engineering drawings up to 11 x 17 inches (ledger)
  • engineering drawings larger than 11 x 17 inches
• Transparent material
  • 110 negatives (colour and black and white)
  • 35 mm negatives (colour and black and white)
  • 127 “Brownie” negatives (colour and black and white)
  • 120 roll film (6 x 6 and 6 x 7 colour transparencies and black and white negatives) (my collection)
  • 616 “postcard” black and white negatives
  • 4 x 5 colour transparencies and black and white negatives (my collection)
  • 5 x 7 colour transparencies and black and white negatives (my collection)

And the following remain to be completed. The key thing here is that all of the items except the 35 mm transparencies that remain to be done are from my mentor’s collection. I have completed all of those items from my collection, which is why they are listed in both places. They are fun, but they aren’t family.

I would estimate that I have perhaps 15,000 transparencies to do and I may actually triage them first. I also have another 5,000 or so transparencies from my Dad and from my stepmother’s family.

• Reflective material:
  • I do not want to say this is 100% complete as there is always something that comes up to scan, but, overall, all the back archives have been scanned.
• Transparent material
  • 35 mm transparencies (including Kodachrome and Agfa Rapid)
  • 120 roll film (6 x 6 and 6 x 7 colour transparencies and black and white negatives)
  • 6 x 9 cm (Plaubel? black and white negatives)
  • 4 x 5 colour transparencies and black and white negatives
  • 5 x 7 colour transparencies and black and white negatives
  • 5 x 7 black and white glass negatives in tricolour sets
  • 8 x 10 glass negatives in tricolour sets

This has been great fun, and I enjoy having access to these images. I find I use some of them more.

My great joy will be to be able to publish online my series of images of the Cathedrals and Abbeys of England and recreate the personal slide show in a modern format. That won’t go online as the music is copyrighted.

I cannot talk a lot about this project, as I have other work to do, but one of the major influences on some of the decisions I’ve made has been the writings of Tim Vitale. His papers provided great insight into what scanning resolution was necessary. I highly recommend these three papers:

• Brief History of Imaging Technology
• Film Grain, Resolution and Fundamental Film Particles
• Estimating the Resolution of Historic Film Images: Using the Resolving Power Equation (RPE) and Estimates of Lens Quality

I would like to thank Sue Bigelow of the Vancouver City Archives for introducing me to Vitale’s work. Sue is a great resource in this area and has a published paper. That link points to a copy of the paper at Wilhelm Imaging Research, which is a fascinating site for this type of work.

Here are links to the scanners mentioned:

• Nikon Super Coolscan 5000ED (going for crazy prices on eBay)
• Epson Perfection V700 Photo
• Xerox DocuMate 3115
• Brother MFC-J6510DW
• HP Scanjet 5590 (currently in retirement)

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:
—DAT
—Digital Compact Cassette (DCC)
—20-bit ADAT (8 track)
—DA-38/DA-88 DTRS tapes (8 track)

DATs have become especially problematic of late, and I have decided not to risk my remaining machines attempting to play them. I recently discovered, when attempting to play a client DAT, that two of my four machines, which I had considered backups, were non-functional after having been in storage for about a half-dozen years without use. I also have a personal collection of DATs that I need to transfer.

One thing that appears to be happening is that DAT tape may be in need of baking. I have had success with one tape, but more research needs to be done.

As with all formats, my ability to transfer them is limited by available working machines. While I did not make a big announcement about dropping 8-track analog cassettes, it was uneconomical to maintain the machine for that format as well, and I sold it.

I have listed other resources that might be of assistance on this link for dedicated digital audio formats and this link for digital audio formats that used an adapter with a VCR.

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.

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!

An example is here.

Last October, when my friend Christopher Campbell visited to exchange knowledge** with me, he brought along a Quasar Sensor Loupe from VisibleDust. I had to have one. It is designed for showing dust on digital SLR camera imaging sensors, but its built-in lighting and 7X magnification make it perfect for looking at the magnetic viewer. This link appears to be a new and improved version. They also make a smaller version (called the Mini) which I have never tried, but you can look at it here. It is a little bit less expensive as well as being smaller.

Details about this system can be found here.

When I am not using the VisibleDust viewer, I use my older Surefire L4 LED flashlight for illumination of the viewer, although any good LED flashlight, such as those from 4Sevens and Fenix, would work. I still think the Zebralight in the full-flood mode is the ultimate headlamp for hands-free working—there is no hotspot.

Finally, a note about the viewer images. The majority were made with a Nikon D100 digital SLR camera (6 MP, APS-sized sensor) and a Nikon 60 mm f/2.8 autofocus Micro (macro outside of Nikon-speak) lens. Although the reticle of the B&L magnifier is shown in some of the images, the lens of the magnifier was removed and only the Micro-Nikkor lens was in the image-forming path.

**Christopher is an artist, photographer, large-format image printer, and is involved in tape restoration. I helped him with tape recorder and electronics skills and he helped me with colour profiling, Lightroom and Photoshop tricks and techniques, and camera image sensor cleaning. It was a good time, I think we both learned a lot from each other. Funny thing about knowledge…when it’s shared both parties win!

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.

The LibreOffice word processor application won’t let you search on paragraph marks specifically, but does have an option for removing empty paragraph marks, so you can achieve the same end for when I search for ^p^p and replace with ^p in Word. The LibreOffice spreadsheet is very competent, as far as I have seen.

I have used Dia a bit for drawing and am thinking that it might just work for doing many of the drawings I do. There is also a scalable vector graphics (SVG) program called Inkscape that might do some of the things one might do in Adobe Illustrator. It also serves as a viable sketch pad for miscellaneous ideas. For some basic idea capture, it seems faster than Dia.

While on the subject of SVG graphics formats, Freemind is mind-mapping software written in Java. The boys have to do mind maps at school from time to time and none of us are all that good at it. Perhaps this software will help. It can export both SVG and PDF.

While I have current versions of Adobe Photoshop (CS5) and Lightroom (3), I cannot help myself from evaluating free alternatives as the number of computers here is growing and with both boys headed off to university (we hope) within 2.5 years, it would be good to select applications and allow them to become familiar with them. While Photoshop CS5 is a remarkable program, for quick adjustments and some very sophisticated lasso options (at least), Paint.NET is a great option. There seems to be a controversy between which is better, The GIMP or Paint.NET. Both applications have vocal adherents. I found The GIMP obtuse and difficult to learn. It was not intuitive to a PhotoShop user. On the other hand, I found Paint.NET extremely easy to adapt to. I haven’t yet done full-scale work in it, but it has real possibilities.

Paint.NET is an interesting story. It started as a thesis project in university. The initial goal was to use Microsoft’s .NET framework to create an improved version of the Paint program which comes with Windows. Paint.NET has gone way beyond the original Paint program (which I find generally useless) and while it is not Photoshop, it is small and fast and can do at least some of the things I used to start Photoshop for–and I can have it on every machine.

Paint.NET is one of the few programs discussed here that is Windows-specific. It requires the Microsoft .NET framework to function. Almost all of the other open source applications are available for Mac and Unix platforms as well as Windows.  I am certainly not one to say Windows is the only operating system. Since my primary money-making application, Samplitude, is Windows-only, that keeps me locked into Windows, as does almost 20 years of working in it.

While on the subject of Samplitude, I must say that after just receiving Version 11 (you can imagine the Spinal Tap humour that surrounds this version), I am impressed. The CD burning routines seem snappier, the high-quality MP3 generation is now much faster, and the new 6-band EQ is a joy to use. Samplitude has generous cross-grade and student pricing if you contact the U.S. rep, Tim Dolbear.

I cannot believe I have gone this far without mentioning two and a half really, really cool open source applications. These are the ones that made me believe that open source software could be just as good as the commercial product–maybe better. I’m talking about The Mozilla Foundation’s Firefox, Thunderbird, and Lightning.

Firefox has been my primary browser for probably four years now. It is wonderful. Internet Explorer 9 is also quite excellent, but I really like Firefox.

I had used Eudora since 1993 with my first Windows 3.1 computer, a 486 processor running at 66 MHz. Eudora was put out to pasture in about 2006, so by 2010 the lack of updates was annoying me and a few friends. I finally bit the bullet and transferred 17 years of email messages to Thunderbird. Mary Beth, our friend Marie-Lynn, and I are all using it. Marie-Lynn has not enjoyed the transition, but Mary Beth took to it immediately after using Outlook Express for several years. I love it. It’s not perfect, and I still think Eudora handled some things better, but, all-in-all, it’s an excellent program.

One of the more exciting features of Thunderbird is the ability to use the Lightning plug-in (the half-program mentioned above). This, along with the Provider for Google Calendar creates a competent and robust shared calendaring system. Mary Beth and I both share a single calendar and have it pop up right in Thunderbird. Multiple calendars are supported, but they complicate things a bit, so we’re leaving it as a single calendar that Mary Beth and I jointly maintain. The backup to Google Calendar is automatic and Google Calendar acts as the calendar server for both of our instances of Lightning within Thunderbird. The calendar is also accessible directly via Google Calendar from any web browser.

Finally, in the same vein, my son Robert and I are experimenting with Evernote. This is a note-taking application which backs up everything to the Evernote servers where it is accessible on the web. It will also synchronize multiple computers as I understand it. We are not too far into it, but in looking at OneNote in Office 2010 and Evernote, while Evernote is less richly featured, the built-in Web backup is powerful. Welcome to The Cloud!

Please email me any comments that you have about this series and unless you say “do not post” I will add them to the post, even though comments are generally disabled on this blog. I would also be interested in any thoughts on MD5 applications that can check a file on a regular basis against its hash file.

COMMENTS RECEIVED:

2011-03-01 I was contacted by Dave Myers dmyers (at) filegenius (dot) net about a product he is involved with called File Genius that is aimed at the professional architecture and engineering community as a collaborative tool and backup service. It is not precisely in the class of what I’m talking about here,  but for a larger, or enterprise, high-value environment it appears to be a choice to consider. I have never used it. Thanks, Dave, for the heads up.

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.

While I generally write on audio subjects here, computers also interest me. I started using Microsoft Word in 1985 and continue to use it, 25 years later, and own several licenses to Office (2002, 2003, 2007, and 2010), but as the number of computers grows, I find that the other office suites are truly viable alternatives for Microsoft, at least for what I do. On complex documents, I try and compose them in the version that the client is using, but for simple documents, my current tool of choice is LibreOffice from The Document Foundation. It offers the same basic functionality as the OpenOffice suite, but it is a fork in the code and is being run by a non-profit foundation rather than as part of a commercial enterprise.

Using the open-source suite solves my problem of having the suite available on all my computers plus it solves the problem of having the home/student licensing level on a computer I want to use for a business project.

I still use an older version of Adobe InDesign and Microsoft Publisher, I am planning on trying out Scribus on my next page-layout project. Both Publisher and InDesign are high-end products (Microsoft seems to be pushing Publisher up-market in more recent versions of Office) and the cost for my infrequent applications is not warranted.

I have been looking for a Visio replacement. While not apparently compatible with Visio, Dia has received some good press. I am looking forward to trying it when I need to do diagramming.

Please let me know if there are other worthy applications competing with Dia and Scribus as I have yet to go far down the learning curve on either of these.

For utilities, I have some favourites that I keep using. Many of these are NOT free, but are well worth it in my opinion.

I have retired the high-priced spread in virus protection in favour of Microsoft Security Essentials which is FREE!

File backup and copy ViceVersaPro—I cannot say too many wonderful things about this program that I’ve been using for almost ten years.

File renaming AdvancedRenamer—This is a bit difficult to understand at first, but is a very powerful batch renamer with many different “methods” of renaming. This is donationware.

Making JPEG files for reference AdvancedConverter—This shareware program is excellent at making JPEGs from scanned TIF files. I use this to create a reference JPG file for each TIF file I create in scanning. However, it does not seem to do as well with NEF files from my D100, so I’ll need to figure out other ways of doing this for those folders that do not already have JPEGs. It can be done through Lightroom, Photoshop, and various Nikon applications, but for the TIF scans, this is really fast and does a very credible job.

I have recently found an excellent set of software calculators from Western Australia. This suite includes the widest-range unit conversion application I have seen to date (currently listing 758 units). It is part of the ESBCalc pro suite.

For ripping audio CDs, Exact Audio Copy is highly recommended.

For figuring out data network problems, I use Netscan from SoftPerfect.

For communicating with my Garmin GPS, I use G7ToWin.

Finally, I was sad to see that Chris Marriott is no longer updating his program SkyMap. The version I had would not run on a Windows 7 64 bit machine–but I bought it when I was using Win 3.1! Instead of buying the upgrade that is now several years old with no further upgrades promised, I found four fun free astronomy applications.

Stellarium—Perhaps the best all-around program for casual viewing of the sky. It’s real point of interest to me is it shows constellation art which suggests what the ancients might have seen in the stars. It helps me visualize the constellations better.

Cartes du Ciel (SkyChart)—Probably the closest to SkyMap though each has their good and bad points (and remember my experience is with an old version of SkyMap). This is a sophisticated mapping program with selectable star catalogs and more.

Celestia—While the above-two applications are mostly focused on Earth-bound observers, Celestia will have you flying all over the Universe! It is something you can spend a lot of time with.

Virtual Moon Atlas—This focuses just on the moon and provides a fascinating view in detail! I recall buying a paper Moon Atlas in the late 1960′s at a high-school book sale. This beats that (I still think I have that Moon Atlas).

I was reading some additional NAS discussion on a photography list serve and was introduced to yet another NAS vendor that deserves consideration, QNAP. They appear to have wide distribution in North America (I found two online retailers that list them, CDW.CA and CanadaComputers.com. While the comparison was made to the Drobo products in the discussion I saw, these products appear to be similar in pricing and quality to Thecus and Netgear and offer some interesting options. Thecus units are more difficult to obtain, but Netgear units are also available at the two online dealers listed for QNAP. Yet another name just came up in the discussion, Synology. QNAP, Synology, and Thecus are all headquartered in Taiwan, while Netgear is headquartered in the U.S.

My experiences–mostly positive–have been with Thecus and Netgear,  but I wanted to pass along QNAP as yet another contender. While Synology is also distributed by the two suppliers I listed above, it seems to be less in-depth than the QNAP and Netgear distribution, focusing on lower-end products at higher prices.

I currently own two Thecus N5200PRO 5-slot models and four Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ RND4000 units. My neighbour (with whom I share off-site backup) has just bought a pair of the ReadyNAS NV+ units. In all cases, one of each pair is in my home and the other is in my neighbour’s.

I would suggest professionally rated drives if you want to spring for them, but they tend to be 3x the price of the desktop drives. I’ve used mostly desktop drives and 1 TB and less seem to work fine. The 1.5 TB drives have been developing a few “reallocated sector” errors.

I provided some information for the listing of tape equalizations, and I find the compiled table (here) most useful.

Thanks to Kevin Bradley and the IASA team for their work in making this available. If you want a PDF copy, join IASA and it’s available.

As I stated here in 2006, there is a 4 dB ambiguity at 16 kHz.

Many things conspire to make this 4 dB ambiguity essentially meaningless in a generally low-fi medium. The only reason I’m mentioning this now is that I’ve been bombarded with email from more than one participant in this discussion and apparently there may be some editorial judgment attached to what is posted.

Jay McKnight has graciously permitted my posting of his comments to me:

The problem, I think, is that people now-a-days are used to measuring digital equipment with digital measuring equipment, and think that precision measurements are always possible. As you well know, THIS JUST AIN’T SO WITH AN ANALOG MAGNETIC TAPE RECORDER! We try hard, and often come close, but there are just a lot of complicating factors, and most engineers are not aware of them.

For instance, there has NEVER been a measurement standard for tape flux vs frequency (“frequency response”) in ANY format. I have published on it (link here), but when we approached the IEC committee way back when, they said “we don’t write measurement standards like that”, which I think really meant “don’t confuse me with facts, my mind is already made up”.

There is also a problem revealed in the excessive spacing loss document, here . We suspect that this is the cause of the discrepancy in the wavelength-response  of the Philips cassette calibration tapes, but they would never admit that. Note that the German Open Reel calibration tapes even at the higher speeds 15 in/s (380 mm/s) also show this problem.

Note also that the AES Standard for measuring the medium-wavelength fluxivity ( AES Standard AES7-2000 (r2005): AES standard for the preservation and restoration of audio recording — Method of measuring recorded fluxivity of magnetic sound records at medium wavelengths (Revision of AES7-1982)) does not exist as an IEC standard, and we think that the amplitude of the medium-wavelength fluxivity on the German Open Reel calibration tapes at the higher speeds are about 10 % in error (link here).

When we approached BASF with these problems on their Calibration Tapes circa 1978, they said something to the effect “Your measurements are probably right, but we’ve been doing it this way for years, and we’re not going to change it now.”

So between the technical problems and the political problems with the IEC Committee (which, to a great extent WAS Philips and BASF), plus the fact that this is OBSOLETE technology, I think that trying to solve the problem with a 4 dB error at a 3 um wavelength on a cassette tape is futile. Take it for what it is. If it sounds bad, fix it as best you can.

To this, I might add that a colleague (and former member of the Ampex Standard Tape Lab) who would prefer not to be mentioned by name (and I can understand why after this week’s barrage of emails) has noted in at least some high-end cassettes back in the 1980s and 1990s that, if put away in storage for a year, they would lose substantial amounts of high-end. Some might have lost close to 10 dB at 10 kHz.

This high-frequency loss due to aging has never been studied, but it is one potential explanation for the very poor Dolby tracking with older tapes.

The same colleague also noted that in his measurement of cassette calibration tapes all of them were hot at the high end. The ones prior to the Prague Compromise were hotter than the ones after, but all were hotter than what the standard states.

A hot calibration tape will cause the repro EQ to be turned down. Adjusting record EQ to match playback EQ will mean that the tapes recorded on a machine calibrated with a hot calibration tape will be hot. Tapes recorded on machines that meet the standard will play back sounding dull on machines calibrated with the hot calibration tapes.

Please note, according to  IASA TC04 IEC Type I tape reached its final equalization curve in 1974, and that was 3180/120 µs, and the change was in the low end from 1590 to 3180 µs. IEC Type II and IV tape reached their final equalization in 1970, and that was 3180/70 µs.

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.