I am going to run a tape listening party/seminar at Electrical on March 5th. It is basically a repeat of a workshop I did at the Hotel 2 Tango in Montreal where we set up the Studer to record at various different settings (level, speed, eq, and bias) to hear the effects they had on the recording.
I give a primer on the basics of tape recording, what the level and different equalization standards are, and how they differ. Then we will record a band on all the different formats using a fresh reel of ATR tape. Fortunately, the Studer A820 can remember a bunch of calibration presets, so this will allow us to toggle between the different recordings without waiting long. We can then listen back to the different recordings, and comment on what is happening, and how it sounds.
The formats we would be recording in are-
-30 IPS
-30 IPS 2dB underbiased
-15 IPS NAB and CCIR eq
-15 IPS NAB and CCIR eq underbiased
-15 IPS CCIR eq with SR Noise Reduction (if we have time)
- 7.5 IPS NAB eq
All of those formats would be recorded in groups of tracks set to three different recording levels (+6, +9, and +12 dB over 185nWb/m). You will be able to hear vividly the effects of tape compression and the changes in noise and frequency response that the different level settings bring you.
The costs cover booking Electrical's Studio A for the day, a reel of tape, and maybe some HobNobs. I would do it out of my house, but you can't fit too many people there, and studio A sounds better. When we are done we can retreat to the Hungry Brain (bar) down the street to forget everything we learned.
You can sign up here.
The way thepoint.com works, if you haven't used it, is you pledge to buy the ticket, but don't get charged until the tipping point is reached. It is just an easy way to organize things.
Please come!
Greg Norman
