Analog Recording?

Snarl 12/8 · Post by **Snarl 12/8** » Tue Apr 21, 2009 10:17 pm

I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brEzYdLrPws

shedshrine · Post by **shedshrine** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 12:16 am

Link to "VIDIPAX-Preserving Yesterday for Tomorrow"

Its a hard disk in 1956.... The Volume and Size of 5MB memory storage in 1956.
In September 1956 IBM launched the 305 RAMAC,
the first computer with a hard disk drive (HDD).
The HDD weighed over a ton and stored 5MB of data.

Magnetophon from a German radio station in World War II.

Full article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetophon

"Although adding a DC bias to the record head gave some improvement, it wasn't until 1941, when AEG engineers Hans Joachim von Braunm?hl and Dr. Walter Weber accidentally discovered the technique of AC tape bias in which the addition of an inaudible high-frequency tone resulted in a striking improvement in sound quality. Magnetic media is inherently non-linear, but AC bias was a technique whereby the tape's magnetisation was left in a state proportional to the instantaneous audio electrical signal. The Magnetophon became a high fidelity recording system that outperformed gramophone recording (which was the 78 rpm system at this time).

American audio engineer Jack Mullin acquired two Magnetophon recorders and fifty reels of magnetic tape from a German radio station at Bad Nauheim near Frankfurt in 1945, and over the next two years he modified and developed these machines, hoping to create a commercial recording system that could be used by movie studios. American popular vocalist Bing Crosby would use the technology, as modified by Mullin and the fledgling Ampex company, to record his radio broadcasts in the more relaxed atmosphere of the recording studio, which was a significant break from the then-norm of live studio audience broadcasts. This was an excellent invention for the time."

Snarl 12/8 · Post by **Snarl 12/8** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 12:37 am

I dunno why, but that Vidipax site made me nostalgic for my Fostex 8-Track. Talk about "lost tapes".

Water got poured through the Fostex when this dude was pressure washing my house. It's never really been the same since.

JGriffin · Post by **JGriffin** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 8:39 am

shedshrine wrote:American popular vocalist Bing Crosby would use the technology, as modified by Mullin and the fledgling Ampex company, to record his radio broadcasts in the more relaxed atmosphere of the recording studio, which was a significant break from the then-norm of live studio audience broadcasts.

And it was Les Paul who put Crosby in touch with Ampex.

RefD · Post by **RefD** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 9:01 am

dwlb wrote:
shedshrine wrote:American popular vocalist Bing Crosby would use the technology, as modified by Mullin and the fledgling Ampex company, to record his radio broadcasts in the more relaxed atmosphere of the recording studio, which was a significant break from the then-norm of live studio audience broadcasts.
And it was Les Paul who put Crosby in touch with Ampex.

eh?

in the Les Paul documentary i have Les says Crosby hooked HIM up with the Ampex people.

JGriffin · Post by **JGriffin** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 9:15 am

RefD wrote:
dwlb wrote:
shedshrine wrote:American popular vocalist Bing Crosby would use the technology, as modified by Mullin and the fledgling Ampex company, to record his radio broadcasts in the more relaxed atmosphere of the recording studio, which was a significant break from the then-norm of live studio audience broadcasts.
And it was Les Paul who put Crosby in touch with Ampex.
eh?

in the Les Paul documentary i have Les says Crosby hooked HIM up with the Ampex people.

Les Paul wrote:I'll tell you the story of how the tape recorder came to America. I was working with Bing Crosby on the Kraft Music Hall in California and Bing says to me: "You know, I wish there was a way I could do like you do. You have all your (transcription and wire recording equipment) at home and you can record your stuff in your garage. I have to go down to the studio and do everything. I can't play on the golf course. I'd rather do it right at the club house if I could."

It just so happened that Judy Garland and I were doing a broadcast on Sundays in New York City. We had to fly from California to New York and it took 19 hours. We were playing at 53rd and Broadway and a little old man came up to me -- this was about 1945 or 46 -- and he said his name was Dick Ranger and he had a tape recording machine. He said he picked it up when we invaded Luxembourg in the big push to end the war.

This was big news to me. Colonial Ranger said he walked into a radio station and saw this tape machine and grabbed it. It was too big to carry or ship back so he dismantled it and brought it back to the States piece by piece. Colonel Ranger took this tape machine -- it was called a Magnetophon -- to Orange, New Jersey and put it back together. Then he made a copy of it he called the Rangertone.

Meanwhile, I go to Bing Crosby and tell him there's a man that nailed me at 53rd and Broadway with a tape machine. I said that's your guy. You can put that machine right on the golf course and you can record your show from there. Just get your trio to play behind you and there you go. So Bing says find the guy and bring him out here.

I called Colonel Ranger, brought him out to California, and he demonstrated the recorder at KNX, which is CBS out in Hollywood. Bing said I'll take 50 of them. But Ranger said he could only make one a year. This guy just wasn't a good businessman. Bing says I want someone who can make 50 of them and I need them now.

Well, there was another guy named Jack Mullin who also had one of the German recorders in his garage but he hadn't put it together yet. Finally, Mullin put his together and took it over to Ampex. The people at Ampex took a look and said let's go with it. But first, they said, they had to have some money...so they went to Bing for the cash. He said how much do you want? They said $50,000. Bing wrote out a check for fifty grand with no interest. He said I don't want any part of the Ampex company. I don't want anything to do with you guys other than have you deliver me those machines. And so it was that I worked on the very first broadcast with tape.

If one of the reels on that machine broke it could have killed five people in the room...it was going so fast. The tape that the Germans were using was made of paper. It was like fly paper. The Germans would just scratch some iron dust on it. Later 3M provided the first version of "Scotch" recording tape to replace that German paper stock. So that's how the tape machine got to America. It just floated up on our shores and Ampex made a fortune from it.

Let me say one more thing about tape, since I was there from the beginning. Anybody out there who thinks they've got something stored away on tape had better think twice because we don't know how long tape is going to last. It's almost like a (heart) bypass, unless someone stays around long enough to tell us we won't know how long it's going to work.

RefD · Post by **RefD** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 10:18 am

whoa, matter and antimatter!

*puts on dilithium crystal catcher's cup*

Judas Jetski · Post by **Judas Jetski** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 2:36 pm

see what I mean? This thread is annoying, but it's also interesting. And there's multi-ethnic potty humor involved. What more could a guy want?

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