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Last Manufacturer of Pro Analog Audio Tape Closes
goosman writes "Quantegy, the last manufacturer of professional reel-to-reel analog audio tape in the world has closed their plant in Opelika, AL leaving a reported 250 workers without jobs, according to the Opelika-Auburn News. Emtec (the former BASF, which used to be AGFA) was the last European manufacturer and ceased manufacuring in 2002. An audio account of the closing can be heard at NPR."
Does anyone else find it ironic that NPR has posted a digital stream of this story about the analog tape industry?
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
Sigs cause cancer.
I didn't know there were even 250 people who still used analog reel-to-reel tapes. Perhaps there were more people making the tape than using the tape.
Seriously, Quantegy was the last munufacturer of the 2" analog reel-to-reel tape that is used in high-end recording studios. And of the 1/2" tape used for analog mastering.
A dark day for those of us who loved the old analog sound.
Boycott everything - they're all trying to fuck you one way or another
Or did they buy the audio division when Ampex went to "Ampex Data Systems"? If I am to believe the article, then there would be no further sources of 2" reels. There are a lot of 24 track studios out there that still use this tech.
BBH
Eastman Kodak, the last remaining manufacturer of silver halide professional photographic film ceased production today, 1500 workers in Rochester, New York are now without jobs.
Maybe not today, but soon...
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
The article says they're just closed for restructuring. This is vague, but it may not mean they are closed down permanently.
I probably need to specify that "totally unexpected decline" was sarcasm, given the rampant grammar and spelling problems on /., some of which I must confess to contributing.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
If there is a market for 1/4", Maxell will reintroduce XL. Or some Chinese plant will start making it.
Pro tape, especially 2", is staggeringly expensive. And it still offers some qualities of sound which take a significant effort to duplicate with digital. Yes, this is aberration, but it's a desirable *analog* aberration, and studios that use tape contribute sort of a gestalt to the overall product, an organic quality.
I'm a big fan of digital, and I don't really care about analog tape, but I do sympathize with the folks still using 1" and 2" decks.
Digital recording is only *just now* getting to the point where it can truly take over. (It's been there for playback for decades, sure, but production is another story.)
But it's always been expensive to do 2". In the day, we'd get tapes that had been used once in a voiceover studio and bulk erase them.
Oh well... I feel sorry for the plant workers and anybody still using an ampex console. Somewhere I think i still have a Teac 4-track 1/4", and boxes of unused, or only partly used, tapes. Ebay time?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
> This would be just as news-worthy as hearing about the last vinyl LP plant closing or the last floppy disk going off the assembly line.
Yes, yes it is, what's your point?
Advanced users are users too!
I work at the BBC World Service, broadcasting in (approx) 42 different languages around the world - and we still use analogue tape for about 80% of our programmes! We are slowly being digitised, but believe it or not, analogue tape is great to work with, quick to edit, and extremely reliable, both for playback and archiving... I'm no luddite, but as someone who has to deal with on-air disasters, I know that tape recorders don't crash.... Our latest digital system runs on windows 2000... Say no more.
Now that there are so many digital recording formats, with various numbers of tracks, it is essentially impossible to create legacy recordings. Many programs we use today won't even run in 5 years let alone 100 and all we will have is basic 2 track mixdown masters of many records.
With tape you could use whatever you wanted to record a record, it all got put to the same tape and in most cases the tape lasted a very long time, 50 years plus. Better yet, often times the recording equipment was better than the tape playback so as time went on you could get better sound off the same tape because technology had advanced. Digital is locked in stone forever, never to reveal any improvements. Even as a crude 2nd step backup there is the potential to bounce your multi-track masters to multi-track tape for preservation.
Steve Albini, one of the world's best recording engineers has a good lecture about the importance of tape here
A small group of the best employees will get together and buy up enough of the equipment to keep one line running. They will buy the rights to the Ampex name and continue as a boutique manufacturer for high-end enthusists.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Great. Now I guess i finally have to upgrade to an 8-track.
...being around to hear "last buggy-whip manufacturer goes out of business" last century. Truly the end of an era.
I remember even ten years ago, when my DJ company would get shipments of new music on vinyl, the Canadian record companies were having to bring the records in from the U.S. because there were no pressing plants left in Canada.
And now there's not even any analog tape being made in N.A.! Does anybody else smell a cottage industry opportunity?
I suspect, however, that there will continue to be a small level of demand for film from analog photography hobbyists for many years to come. It might become a cottege industry, but there'll be an industry of sorts.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
one of my friends is a huge analog fan when it comes to his music making, all analog equipment, especially when it comes to sound processing and such, and he refuses to use computers in the process, but even he now uses a hard drive based 16-track recorder with a cd writer in it...previously he used a 4-track analog tape recorder.
analog can be of high quality, particularly when it comes to balanced signals and such for all your inputs...but analog reel to reel? I can definitely see why that's going.
First you got digital tape, of course DAT would be the most well known (at least it's the one I know) and while I doubt it can fill all the niches (particularly when it comes to multi-track recording) it can fill many.
That's not to mention a 24bit/96khz sound card can be had for mighty cheap these days...of course if you need one with 10 inputs it'll cost a bit more. This kind of technology can probably fill much of the demand for multi-track reel to reel recording...still change is never easy, especially when you're talking about hundreds of recording studios who probably use the stuff still...
I wouldn't be surprised if much of the cost of the upgrade would be negated by the fact you don't have to spend cash on tape all the time. Plus once it's in a digital format you can literally put it on anything, CD, DVD, tape, raid array, what not, and not have to worry about loss...of course this is assuming you're writing it on there uncompressed, or losslessly compressed.
farewell analog tape...
If you don't want someone to copy something, don't give it to anyone.
To those of you who are saying "BFD, nobody uses analog tape anymore", have a good look at the liner notes of one of your audio CDs (and don't you dare say "BFD, nobody uses audio CDs anymore."
Somewhere in those notes, there'll be a logo that says either AAD, ADD, or DDD. If your CD is either one of the first two, then the original instruments were recorded to 2" tape. If it's the second, then the 2" tape was mastered to 1/2" tape.
A LOT of professional recording studios still use this technology. For one thing, if you send too much signal into an analog tape, you get a nice sounding tape compression, whereas if you send too much signal into a ADC, you get really horrible sounding digital clipping.
\/me wonders what several hundred recording studios in L.A. are gonna do now.
Causation can cause correlation
You mean the *actual* source...
Analog tape has a finite Nyquist limit because of grain size and transport speed, unlike a digital recording which in principal is only limited by the sampling rate.
first the auburn tigers don't get to play for the national championship in college football, then 250 people lose their manufacturing jobs! its a bad week at the prettiest town in the plains.
Open reel recorders are still in wide use and will be for some time still. This is just one plant (granted, the last one in the US) laying off its employees and going through Chapter 11 restructuring.
I have a few open reel recorders that get regular use, including a fairly new (less than ten years old) Tascam unit.
Analog audio recording is similar to motion picture film (I have some cameras for that, as well) - digital (so far) just can't compare. There's a special magic to it that can't be replaced.
An audio account of the closing can be heard at NPR
pfft! ill listen to it when someone puts it on a 1/4" reel to reel... i like my broadcasts with that analog warmth!
I agree. Audio is one of the only fields where the older your equiptment, the better it is. Analogue is really appreciated, and I have a hard time believing that there was a lack of interest in tapes.
Shouldn't the BSA be writing an amicus brief complaining that CD have taken jobs from hard working Americans and demanding that the CD manufacturers pay a royalty to keep the buggy whip, i mean record, i mean reel-to-reel manufacturers afloat?
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
For one thing, if you send too much signal into an analog tape, you get a nice sounding tape compression, whereas if you send too much signal into a ADC, you get really horrible sounding digital clipping.
That's why you use high-resolution ADCs and run them at a safe margin less than full scale. Then, when you load the file into your mixer, you take the arctangent of each sample to get soft clipping.
Im pretty sure that in 5 years, Winamp will still be around and still be able to play MP3's.
Yet another person confusing consumer playback with mid to high end production. He's talking about the multitude of multitrack recording programs out there. Will there be a program in 50 years that will be able to open the Cakewalk files someone made in their basement in their youth (assuming that person becomes the next Lennon or somthing)? Will I be able to open the tracks that I recorded 7 years ago in Deck II on my old Mac? (I honestly haven't tried opening them in anything recently). This is what he's talking about, not about whether there will still be something that can play CDs...
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
The magic word is "restructuring".
Quantegy bought the reel tape business from AMPEX... and they're apparently failing as a company.
This will probably resolve itself as:
A) Quantegy gets its act together and the plant reopens, or
B) Quantegy goes under, plant is sold and it reopens.
As others have pointed out, there's still a significant pro market, and many audiophile types, so there's enough market for the right supplier.
From a 4-track I presume?? I actually did know someone with a 4-track in their car (1974) and have a friend with a few 8-track's in his collection.
The company will just change names and start over again. The new name will actually be....
(..pulls four scrabble tiles at random..)
QMAZ!!!
Holy Cow! Triple Word Score!!
Digital is better.
In every respect.
I am an audiophile, and If you are to play vinyl through headphones to someone in the next room they will not be able to tell the difference between the original source and a digital recording of the vinyl playback. A digital recording can have a superset of all measurable audio components - spectrum and amplitude.
And as for the aliasing of digital recordings, when the sound hits the air it IS analog it becomes analog. When you use very high quality digital audio recordings you can capture and reproduce sounds that begin to (and for all intents do) border on the limits of they physics of sound itself.
Digital is superior in every way to analog. it is a myth that a person can hear the difference in a sufficciently high sample-rate recording.
Imagine an analog recording like a wooden box. You can hold it and carry it around. eventually it will begin to wear and tear.
Digital is like the knowledge of how to build that box. everytime you want to use the box you can build it from scratch instantaneously and you have a perfect, brand new box.
Sure, it's made out of wood from a different tree than your last box - but it is in better shape and the wood which you construct it out is of the same type and is stronger since it is unworn.
Furthermore, with the eventual advent of exponentially more sophisticated computation we will see the ability to record sound and reproduce it in such a way that it could be called seamless.
This will be accomplished not by a direct imprint on some meduim, but via an informational representation (analogous to digital) which will so dwarf the capabilities of the ancient idea of analog recordings that those who said analog is superior will be gaffawed in a similar fashion as we laugh at the gentleman below for his statements.
"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value."
- Marshal Ferdinand Foch [Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre] (circa 1911)
He was Supreme Commander of Allied forces, 1918
He held a similar attachment to the classical way of doing things and saw inherent superiority in his beliefs.
He was wrong for reasons blatently obvious from the perspective of the modern day.
I can't say for sure, but I would guess yes. Someone has got to have the software around somewhere. (Does the LOC take software?) Then it just becomes a point of finding hardware to use it on, same as if you need to play back a reel-to-reel tape.
Sorry, but i don't agree. Digital is a lower quality representation packaged in a more convenient format.. Nothing more. Nothing less.
And I CAN tell the difference.
However, i will agree that the quality does degrade over time with analog. Digital does not.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I have a really tough time believing that all of the analog tape ('pro gear' type, as measured in inches...ha) is going to be gone soon.
...I only wish I could be one of them. Analog recording offers so many advantages (read: quirks) to the producer/recordist...and not to mention the highest bandwidth available in analog audio media.
As an 'audio guy' I have encountered so many 'analog heads' that I think for the wound-up-no-clue-audiophile-asshole market alone this would be worth somebodies while to maintain.
Once again, before I ramble too far off topic... I don't believe it. There are far too many studios run by far too many producers which insist--for one reason or another (read: valid or not)--insist on nothing but analog...high quality analog....1" reels, 2" reels...1/2" reels....for mixdown, for final masters...etc. I simply do not believe it. Too many 'big name studios' operate with this techonlogy as the centerpiece of their of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment. There's something to think about.
While I am continually saddened at the migration away for more sturdy analog ancestors of our current-day digital equipment, I simply do not believe that such a market--small but used to paying top-$$$ for everything....even tape--would be abandon outright.
I'm either in disbelief like denial, or disbelief like 'I genuinely don't believe it'
Doesn't matter anymore, given the butchering job done these days at the mastering stage in the "Quest for the Loudest CD". They might as well record direct to 8 bit for all I care - it's not like they need the dynamic range these days.
:)
Perhaps what they need is a mixing board with Volumes that go to 11
I suspect that is the wrong way to put it; in any event good analog tape with clean heads and good tranport will far surpass human hearing in its highest frequency.
It's just so much cheaper and easier to do this with digital, which in magnetic resonance imaging applications, for example, use analog to digital samplers measured in the *megahertz.* (Most of our hearing goes up to a maximum of 22 KILOHz.)
"even when it technically is not, particularly in the realm of audio"
How not? Perhaps DAT can't compare to professional analog reel-to-reel systems, but there are many modern digital systems that match or exceed the dynamic range and frequency response of any analog audio recording system.
an analog recording is much inferior to a live performance, information is lost and/or distorted and I CAN tell the difference! Analog recordings are just a lower quality representation of reality in a more convenient format! Poo on both of you !
How can they be dying?! I haven't seen any articles proclaiming the near death of proffesional analog tapes.
With tape you could use whatever you wanted to record a record, it all got put to the same tape and in most cases the tape lasted a very long time, 50 years plus.
This is true only in an optimal sense. In a very real and practical sense, it's not true at all. Many tapes are stored in only moderately optimal facilities, and a lot are stored in attics, sheds, and basements. A major scourge is the "Sticky shed" syndrome as described here, for example. while the old Ampex tapes were major culprits, in my own personal experience I have seen a large number and variety of tapes suffer similar fates.
Several months ago I had to resurrect a number of video tapes that had a similar problem. In short: tape is not as archival as vinyl. The question of archival quality audio reproduction is a hot topic being debated in library science. AFAIK, there have been no real concrete conclusions to the problem. From what I can gather, it seems very likely that the 21st century will simply disappear from history.
I hope that's not true, but there are an awful lot of extremely obvious and seemingly implacable problems facing archival audio and video storage.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
leaving a reported 250 workers without jobs
I'm not too sympathetic to these people laid off. They've known this was coming for at least 10 years.
My other first post is car post.
The best jokes are always the subtle ones.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
use documented formats.
open source.
they'll be readable as long as someone can program.
probably easier than assembling a player for that tape too.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
NPR's logo is almost identical to Sun Microsystem's logo for java.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
You are so right...think about how many formats digital has abandoned (8" and 5-1/4" floppies come to mind first) but I can still play my 1/4" reel-to-reels nearly thirty years after first recording on them.
And music never sounded warmer than when recorded through the old Ampex tube electronics with a bit of dB boost to saturate the tape. Even if you got some distortion (and occasionally it was desired) it was a cool distortion and not the digital crackle you get from today's electronics.
I've been slowly copying my old 1/4" reel-to-reels (1/2 track from my college radio days) to digital as some of the tapes are starting to deteriorate. Luckily I managed to purchase an old Scully 1/4" 1/2 track machine from a local studio (a steal at $200).
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
I don't understand how the last manufacturer of this type of tape in the world could go out of business due to financial problems. If this type of tape really is still somewhat widely used as many people have noted, why didn't they just raise their price to whatever level they needed in order to be profitable?
While I know you're being facetious, there's actually some value in that observation, you know. There's a famous (or infamous) audiophile magazine called The Absolute Sound, and the name refers to the idea of audio recording trying to be as perfect a replication of the live performance as possible.
And, incidentally, most of the TAS guys seem to be happy enough with SACD -- but not so much CD. The original poster's observation that you can't tell the difference between digital and analog with sufficient sampling resolution isn't really what was in dispute among the analog-philes -- what was in dispute was whether the sampling rate of CD was high enough. And as Jeffrey Baker observed in other comments, digital has hard clipping rather than soft clipping, and that can make a difference. (This is something you run into the visual equivalent of in digital cameras versus film--the difference between overexposing Kodak Portra 160VC film in my old 35mm SLR and overexposing a shot on my D70 is pretty stark, and--despite the many advantages the digital camera has otherwise--not in the D70's favor.)
While you have one very valid point that I can't argue--that digital audio will one day be 'nearly seamless'...and 'just about perfect'....it will have seams.
;)
I agree that one day--soon, at that--analog will be dwarfed in every way by what we do in the digital realm....it still won't be the same an equivalent analog counterpart...I'll let you choose what determines 'counterpart'
Analog is a continuous wave....digital is not. Period. Aside from the idiosynchrosies that make analog a great medium (creative) to work in, digital has that one drawback.
My point: For the love of God, man, do not confuse 'quality' with 'expense based level of accessability'.
To get an 'audiophile quality' analog reproduction you need to have the higest in quality--and highest in price--equipment. For digital the entry level is much lower.
My example: a $39 portable CD player (Via its line out) will have roughly the same (if not damn near identicle) quality output as a $1200 CD player....THD and frequency response being more limited by the output circuitry than any pickup circuitry.
it'd take (Est.) roughly $5000 worth of analog gear...(being just the turntable and tone arm) to reproduce that.
Take the high-end of analog audio....store bought vinyl reproducing ~60kHz signal, versus the high end of digital....DVD audio reproducing ~48kHz of signal...that's just the frequency...the real knock-out punch comes from the amplitude. The practically infinite variations between levels. As opposed to digital where it's quite tightly restricted. 16-bit audio (CD) does 65k discreet levels of amplitude....24-bit does 16.7mil. Quite a bit, yes....but, nowhere near par for reality, or even 'reference super-high-end-analog'
Yes, digital high-end is far more (economically) accesible...but analog high-end is far more 'real'....'hiss' aside
Where I'm going with all this: I am not going to run 2" tape to listen to the latest album by my favorite band....but I want the studio that records them to. I want that level of 'actual perfect' to exist in some form and to be one day accessible...even if for nothing more than being able to either archive it digitally (using the real top-shelf digital technology for later down-sampling to the lowest-common-denominator of digital playback tech)...or for actual remasterability in later years.
Remember: In the analog world, you CAN turn things up and down...in digital, all of it is artificial.
I remember feeling much the same way when the last U.S. vacuum tube manufacturer went out, and for that matter when the last vinyl record plant shut down. In a way, I'm surprised that professional analog recording held out as long as it did. Well, maybe not ... recording studios had a huge investment in high-end multi-track gear, and it never was cheap.
Does this presage the end of digital tape storage? Probably not for a while, the cost per bit is still pretty low once you've made the investment in drive hardware. But that will disappear at some point too.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
When I was at MIT (circa 1980) there was a recording studio down the hall from TMRC in building 20 (it was across the hall from an old anechoeic chamber...but I digress). The was pretty much abandoned and used by a small group of students for recording punk demos. The actual studio was isolated from the control room completely...the studio was on springs to completely prevent sound from bleeding through to the control room. The recorder in the control room was an old Ampex rack-mounted 2" 4-track machine...yes, FOUR-track. Recording at 15ips on 2" of tape yielded some incredible sound quality...think about later machines that squeezed 24 tracks of material on the same 2" of tape. In 1981 someone from Ampex contacted us and gave the group a new 1/4" 4-track so they could get the 2" 4-track for their museum. Seeing as how Ampex changed hands since then I wonder what ever happened to those vintage machines.
People used to buy those old Ampex machines just to get the tube pre-amp electronics...nice warm sound, pleasant distortion (when you wanted it), and no harsh digital clipping.
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
it seems very likely that the 21st century will simply disappear from history
I don't have any doubt that most all of the media created in the 20th century will survive, it will just be of such a compromised nature as to kill most or all of the significance. As many people have pointed out, there will still be MP3s floating around and lots of bad VHS copies of TV shows but all of the glorious masters will be lost.
It will be like reading every second page of a Shakespearean play. You still get the idea but all the nuance is gone. To go one step further, nuances are what inspire a new generation's creations.
buggy whip manufacturers report record low sales for 2004
I R soory I bee too bad speller, my grammar was ilitrate and she passd it's on too me.
Also punkuation is importrant, "Come on Frank!" make dfrent senses wid a commer after de "on."
mod parent up.
...but you'll never beat that infinitely variable and infinitely dividable quality of analog.
Sure, my 96/24 pro-spec audio cards can record almost as well as my Tascam 4-track--think about that for a second--but, where is the cutoff and how sharp is the curve? (audio nerd joke)
I mean it in all seriousness....The 'as-good-as-it-can-possibly-get' analog technology stomps and huge hole in the 'as-good-as-it-can-possibly-get' digital technology. Period.
The second digital recording can accurately (read: perfectly) model the infinite level of amplitudinal variance granted to us by the analog domain...then I'll digress on this point. Even as a '95% digital' audio producer....and even then, I'm sure higher tape speeds and tape width would be an easy fix to stomp a hole in the digital champion.
It can end up being an infinite race to higher sampling frequencies.... (remember your nyquist in digital, half of the top sampling rate is your actual top end frequency...and lets not forget about filter rolloff....22k tops for good cards, in reality...fuck the spec sheet)
Alot of CD's used to spell it out for you with ADD , AAD and DDD on the back cover and on the CD. These initials refer to the track recording, mix-down and transfer to CD respectively.
The government which is strong enough to protect you from everything is strong enough to take everything from you.
Well, those pro's need to get with the times. Analog had its place and time and is no longer needed (I'm sure I'll get flamed for that).
Yes, apparently, analog sounds better but who cares? I mean, you lose quality on every analog duplication pass. Every duplication of a digital produces, surprise surprise, a 100% identical duplicate of the original.
Now that most professional audio is sampled and 192K plus, what's the deal? What's so good about analog? Does it sound "smoother"? If so, why? Is it because of higher harmonics or is it because the technology introduces a "smoother", "softer" sound due to it's flaws?
Hanging on to this technology is very nostalgic, I'm sure. But even the horse drawn carriage got replaced by better technology.
The last vinyl record and vacuum tube makers aren't out of business.
As a turntablist I have struggled with the possibility of vinyl analog records someday not being made anymore. I mean, it is not just a hobby for me but a profession. Many audiophiles will say that there is nothing like the warm analog sound of the "needle and grove" combo. Some folks 1 2 3 have created a way to control playback of digital audio with turntables using timecoded records. I have played around with them, but they seem to have a "metalic" sound when the program time stretches/compresses the digital audio.
Is it possible to emulate analog properties?
(hope that made sense)
CUL8R.
Analog is better for Pro-audio because tracks are ADDED together. The high frequencies really get mangled when you add a bunch of digital representations together. Isn't that audiophile 101? Poser.
Or a really nastalgic Slashdotter with a hankering for magnetic tape :)
This package Does Not Contain a Winner
Then it just becomes a point of finding hardware to use it on,
.
Yeah, just go tell NASA how simple that is. If you can convince them, they'll throw millions at you . .
hawk
And I CAN tell the difference.
Christ, more luddite horseshit from another "audiophile". Can analog recordings be better than digital ones? Certainly they can, in the early years of the CD revolution a lot of CDs were remastered with the RIAA equalization curves that were used to master LPs, which meant that you superimposed an unsuitable equalization curve over a media that had essentially flat reproduction, which made it sound like crap. As engineers got more used to digital music this became less and less of a problem (although it's been replaced with the "let's master this fucker as loud as we can" problem). But as far as the supposed superiority of analog to digital give me a break.
Let's look at some of the fun artifacts you get with analog media such as LPs (I assume that you're referring to LPs because most of the "audiophiles" out there turn their noses up at commercially mastered cassette tapes). With LP playback you get to deal with cracks and pops caused by static on the record, wow and flutter from your turntable, cracks and pops caused by dust on the record. Now, if you keep your records clean and maintain your stylus and go through all of the happy horseshit that owning a turntable requires you can minimize this. But then you also have to deal with the fact that unless you're buying quality pressings, such as those from the Nautilus SuperDisc line of recordings or the Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab Original Master Recording series or their later Anadisq 200 series, the stock used to press most vinyl recordings was utter crap, which limited the ultimate quality of any vinyl pressing right out of the box. Then of course there's the fact that every single time you play that record you degrade its quality. Strangely enough though most "audiophiles" who disdain digital aren't consistent with their LP collections, if they were, and if their ears were as good as they claim, they'd have to toss an album out after say a dozen playings since its quality would have degraded.
As far as being able to tell the difference, a claim which so many "audiophiles" have made I'm sure you can. The vinyl recording is going to have less dynamic range, it has to because if it has too much dynamic range the stylus will pop out of the groove. What most audiophiles completely ignore is the fact that the pure music they claim to love so much has had the living Jesus processed out of it before it even hits the master. The frequency response is going to be different because of the preemphasis and deemphasis that the RIAA equalization, which was designed to deal with the mechanical limitations of the turntable, will not produce completely flat playback.
I would love to see an ABX comparison where "audiophiles" who claim to be able to tell the difference between digital and analog and prefer the latter, were put into a listening room. They would listen to a recording of either a compact disc played through an equalizer to degrade the sound quality, change the frequency response and reduce the dynamic range or a standard LP. I'd be willing to bet that without too much tweaking on the CD side of things you could make the CD sound like an LP recording to the golden ears of all of the supposed "audiophiles" out there. Perhaps someone should make a box that plugs in between a digital source such as a CD player and the pre-amp that does exactly this and then charge "audiophiles" out the wazoo for it. Sure, some people might claim that taking their money with a scam like this is wrong, but "audiophiles" are such suckers and easy marks that it's almost wrong not to take their money away from them.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
You don't have to agree, you're just totally wrong.
Analog storage is limited by the speed of the recording medium and the amount of surface area utilized to store the analog soundwaves (in whatever fashion).
Even professional recording gear resolves far less sound information than what digital audio gear can do... Sure, a standard CD is a pretty paltry 44khz/16bit. So crank it up to professional units... 96khz or higher, go to 24bit recording... Still not enough? Go even higher if you want, but you'd be deluding yourself if you think you'll hear the difference.
The sound quality that people tend to like in analog gear is a result of the imprecision of the devices. Signals tend to leak, get transformed and modified by the analog gear they pass through, and also as it relates to the environment the gear is in (RF interference, atmospherics, etc). Some would argue that it gives them a "wamer, richer tone", but it all boils down to analog devices not maintaining an exact representation of the sound they are conveying.
So yes, you probably can tell the difference, but what you're hearing isn't a result of the storage medium, but of interm processing and modification through imprecise devices.
If you were to take the same output of the analog tape deck and record it into a high-quality digital deck (at the aforementioned 96/24), then play both of those back, you'd never be able to tell the difference.
So, if you want to argue that you prefer sound processed through analog gear, that's just fine. To call digital "lower quality" is foolish.
N.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
reminds me of that story when I was growing up (in the 70's, when tube vs transitor was getting to be in vogue).
the story goes that two engineers were arguing about the sound merits of tubes vs transistors. the tube guy liked the 'sound' of tubes and thought this was the correct sound. the transistor amp just didn't sound right to the tube guy.
the transistor guy went back to the lab and re-evaluated his design and changed a few things. he returned to the bake-off and gave the tube guy another listen.
"its sound great now! what did you do?" asked the tube guy.
"well, I analyzed the distortion, hum and feedback problems your tube amp had and I installed filters and network to create the same set of intermod and distortion you find pleasing"
morale: its not really the components, its the implementation.
that said, I'll take an average digital signal over even a high-end analog one anyday. noise, hum and distortion are NOT my friends.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Register that domain name!
Yes, but can you play it back with a straight pin and a paper cup like vinyl records?
A good nuclear EMP will render digital playback equipment useless and erase magnetic media.
...but you'll never beat that infinitely variable and infinitely dividable quality of analog.
Um...if memory serves, magnetizable objects are made up of a bunch of little regions, called "magnetic domains," that are like little magnets. (A magnet just has the magnetic fields of the domains all lined up rather than in random directions.) These domains aren't infinitely small, just as photographic film suffers from grain. (Hence the cranking up of tape speed for higher fidelity, increasing the domains passed over per unit time.)
Also, it's not clear to me that an analog medium can be written to or read with infinite accuracy--but I hope someone more knowledgeable than I am can expound on that.
Tom Scholz, legendary engineer/bandleader for hte rock band Boston, just last month gave an interview published at Gibson.com where he stated that he knew he was going to have to give up on analog reel-to-reel in the next year or two, because nobody would be manufacturing the tape anymore. He has switched to ProTools but hates it, and says he has to have an extra full-time professional engineer on his payroll just to operate ProTools. And he goes on and on about the specific limitations of digital recording (frequent computer crashes) and the digital medium, and the audible superiority of analog tape.
u re Template.aspx?articleid=175&zoneid=2- -
"Classic Sound of Boston is Still Tom Scholz, Still Recording on Tape"
http://www.gibson.com/absolutenm/templates/Feat
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The big problem here is that analog tape is the universal archival medium.
100 years from now, engineers will be able to play back 2-inch 24-track tape if it's been carefully environmentally preserved. But in 2104, who will be able to access and remix the individual tracks on an IDE hard disk of an elaborately mixed album recorded in Cubase SX 2.2 optimized for a Motorola G4 processor running Mac OS X 10.2? Nobody. All we will have, if we are lucky, is a 16-bit CD with a stereo mix.
In 1997 I interned at Crawford Productions, a huge broadcast post-production facility in Atlanta Georgia. The Martin Luther King Foundation brought in Reverend King's entire library of sermons and speeches, which were on 1/4 inch reel-to-reel and cassette, for archival restoration. While Crawford made DATs and CDs, they explained to the Martin Luther King Foundation that they were also re-copying everything to fresh 1/4 inch analog tape, and that this would be the preferred archival method and the tapes they should most jealously protect.
What now?
If they had claimed that the plant should have stayed open because reel to reel tape is an ideal medium for distributing radio content while they themselves don't use it, that might be considered irony.
And the real irony is that that's hypocrisy, not irony.
it has! It's called a magnet and or a sledgehammer. IT can completely wipe out digital data with one quick slam depending on the media and it's enclosure!
There exists some positive integer N that you are the Nth person to read this signature.
Yep. I used to work for a government agency that recorded missile telemetry on 1" 14 track analog tapes. If you stored them in a tightly controlled temperature/humidity environment they'd last a long time. The problem is that's relatively expensive, and it's not always clear what you most important reels are. We were asked to retrieve some data from a tape that was only about ten years old and it came off the reel like masking tape. We were able to restore them to a certain degree, but if it were audio it would have sounded like crap even after we were done. I had to clean the tape heads every 100' or so...
Listen to some of Albini's recordings with a good set of headphones. They are amazing. Even more amazing was when I was finally able to hear them on studio reference monitors, but they sound great even with a standard stereo setup at home. His attention to detail is amazing.
REAL ROBOT DEVIL
You'll give me your hand in marriage!
REAL HERMES
Is this really happening or just being staged?
REAL FARNSWORTH
It can't be real.
REAL AMY
Not if Leela is engaged.
REAL LEELA [to Robot Devil]
That isn't what I meant.
That isn't what I signed!
REAL ROBOT DEVIL
You should have checked the wording in the fine - print.
REAL LEELA [reading contract]
I'll give you my hand-
REAL LEELA AND ROBOT DEVIL
In marriage.
REAL BENDER
The use of words expressing something of the other than the literal intention.
Now that is irony.
Oh God, an audiophile flamewar. Slashdot editors, delete this thread, now! Oh no...it's too late! I'm melting....I'm melting....
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
as opposed to the fact that they lost their jobs due to the totally unexpected decline in the use of reel tape. Unexpected? If you mean like how Bennifer unexpectly split up into their component parts..... Idiot, the digital age has swamped the analog tech.
Check journal for info on Anti-TextBook, an idea by me.
I'm fully aware of the inconsistencies with analog recordable medium....and even given that, I still side with it. I know that every time you play it back you are helping degrade the quality of the recording....I know that 'magnetic media' is prone to a multitude of conditions...and will be imperfect from the get go.... ...but, it's hard to beat--even givin its very human-like inconsistencies and fallbacks.
...I've worked wonders remastering brutalized analog recordings....and worked wonders even I couldn't believe, but, for abused digital...while I've worked wonders, it still sounded like a finely polished piece of crap....caveat emptor
Idiot, the digital age has swamped the analog tech.
/.er! *sigh*
And once again the concept of sarcasm is totally missed by a fellow
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
I work at an archive, and all I do all day is restore, preserve and digitise stuff on 1/4" analogue tape. Obviously the fact that there's no more tape being made is not really a huge issue for us, as we don't record to it anymore.
The real issue is that very shortly Studer, (one of the largest tape machine manufacturers) is stopping ALL support for ALL of their tape machines. This includes making parts or full machines. The machine sitting next to me right now (Studer A810) is running for at least 4-5 hours a day, and was already second hand when we got it. We have 10 or so machines in the same situation. These things don't just run for ever. They are extremely complex machines with many moving parts that just wear out after a while, and it's becoming very difficult to source replacement parts, not to mention people with the skills to keep them running properly or to do repairs.
I just hope that people copy their stuff to another medium before their machines stop working; which may be sooner than they think. What use is a "warm" analogue recording medium if you can't record to it?
I am an audio engineer and here's why this is Not Good.
Analog tape is not just a mediom for recording/archiving/storing music. It is a medium used to create it. That is, musicians use the characteristics of the medium - they manipulate it's unique qualities as a medium - to create sounds. These are not necessarily equivalent with different media (like digital media) - doesn't sound the same, isn't as easy to work. It's as if all the manufacturers of watercolors and oil paints went out of business 'cause we've just gotten acrylics to work right. Or if the makers of hand-held woodworking tools shut down because we're all going to use computer-controlled 3D modeling lathes from now on.
It ain't the same and it impoverishes the options - signficantly down-sizes the available tool kit. Things that were once easy will become harder, or more expensive, or maybe impossible.
I thought you'd like some advise from a audio professional... If your Windows 2000 system is crashing its not the fault of the OS. Trust me on this.
... below ...
... what was it that Win2K places above system integrity? Was it fancy GUI? Noo.. Speedy filesystem? No. Coherent and/or object-oriented system API? No! A high level of system security? Don't be stupid! Sophisticated scripting and shell? Confound it all!
Oh, okay. Here's how to crash Win2K on demand, Mister Audio P0rfessional. Download a copy of Exact Audio Copy, here-
http://exactaudiocopy.org/
Unzip it to a folder (machine w/Win2K, Sp2 onward.) Run eac.exe. Paf! Instant BSoD!
Now, reasonable operating systems do not allow this sort of degenerate behavior, because reasonable operating systems place system integrity above all else, whereas Windows places system integrity below
When somebody lets us all know what it is Windows is good at, please post back? Thank you.
Big Daddy, Johnny, Burp, Aunt Zelda, Scott, Slurp, Big Momma
Is there a reason that this stuff can't be saved to 44.1 16bit PCM with one track per file? I know that's what I did when recording my friends album and then I just used the multitracking interface in the software to layer it all and create the final stereo track for the CD. 44.1 16bit PCM is already a quarter decade old, I don't think the ability to play it back is going away anytime soon!
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
- Irony describes a result that is the opposite of what would commonly be expected under the circumstances.
- From that definition, you can see that there must be a common expectation in the first place. If an event happens that is merely coincidental or unrelated to the circumstances, it is "unlikely" or maybe "unfortunate" but not ironic. Even if something is coincidental in a regrettable, cynical, extreme, or unusual way, that does not make it ironic.
- Example 1: Rain on your wedding day -- regrettable, but your wedding day has nothing to do with the weather. Not ironic.
- Example 2: Running off with the best man on your wedding day. Ironic.
- If an event is appropriate given the circumstances, it is "fitting" or "apropos," not ironic. Even if something is fitting in a clever or unusual way, it cannot be ironic. In fact, apropos and ironic are more or less antonyms.
- Example 1: A traffic jam when you're already late -- something that just makes a bad situation worse is appropriate to the circumstance. Not ironic.
- Example 2: A traffic jam on a newly-opened expressway. Ironic.
So technically, I must say that no, the event you mentioned is not ironic but is better described as...[ ] extremely unfortunate
[ ] weirdly coincidental
[X] amusingly apropos
[ ] oddly fitting
[ ] poetic justice
and I hope you find this post useful.
Guest wrote:
No, you take the arctangent of each sample to simulate soft clipping. They are not the same.
Soft clipping is a generic word for an end result. Using an arctangent waveshape on a waveform is a means to this end; it will "get" you soft clipping, though it's only a rough "simulation" of what a valve amp or tape deck does. Simulating a particular flavor of soft clipping takes a lot more computing power, but if you just want to avoid harshly clipping your audio's peaks, arctangent is a nice-sounding way to do it.
"Analog is a continuous wave....digital is not. Period. Aside from the idiosynchrosies that make analog a great medium (creative) to work in, digital has that one drawback."
Analog recordings are subject to limitations of the recording medium. Frequency response, attenuation, noise, dynamic range, etc. The "pure wave" is just theoretical. Your analog recording is no more "pure" than a very high resolution digital recording. Both can resolve the original signal to a degree where any variations are far, far beyond your range of hearing.
Both have caveats.
If the digital signal can reproduce the analog wave to an accuracy far beyond what the human ear and mind can percieve, then the issue is moot. And it can.
Yes, however...
The definition of what constitutes a "high" frequency in digital all depends on the sample rate and sample width. Go up high enough, it's not a perceptable issue, as the frequencies you are dealing with are all well below your limit.
Analog recordings are subject to limitations of the recording medium. Frequency response, attenuation, noise, dynamic range, etc. The "pure wave" is just theoretical. Your analog recording is no more "pure" than a very high resolution digital recording. Both can resolve the original signal to a degree where any variations are far, far beyond your range of hearing. Both have caveats. If the digital signal can reproduce the analog wave to an accuracy far beyond what the human ear and mind can percieve, then the issue is moot. And it can.
;)
I agree with you... 100%... though, digital circuitry is just as subject to attenuation and noise...it is far more forgiving of the former, and for more 'workable' of the latter.
Digital is still subject to the same limitations of frequency response and dynamic range--in fact, the bit-depth and sampling frequency are direct results and/or measures of exactly that...keep in my your nyquist and filter roll-off...I know, I sound like a broken record...no pun intended.
My thing is, just because it is beyond our abilities of perception (or mere notice) does not in fact make it irrelevant. Regardless of whether I can hear it or not, I desire to have my purchased recordings descended from the accurate-as-possible-spec recording. While analog has many many many caveats and exceptions, and digital is 'too perfect for analog guys'...I understand, as I am not an analog guy...and that's not even with me going off on a tangent about how 'harmonic frequencies' far beyond our range of hearing have been found to affect our perception thereof.
Well put. As of yet I haven't heard anyone bring up the problem of generational loss. Given an ideally mastered analog source and a corresponding digital master at a common sample size and rate (and clean sample clocks at mastering and at final playback):
-A copy of the analog master will always be inferior to the master, while a copy of the digital master will (unless otherwise intended) be an exact copy. This is because there is ample chance for noise and distortion, both electronic and mechanical, to creep in in any analog playback and analog recording device. No amplifier is perfect, no tape transport is vibrationless, and no head/needle can read or write the source with absolute accuracy.
-While both media can degrade (CD-Rs are postulated to have far worse life than magtape in good storage), a digital master can always be supplanted with a copy of itself, while the original analog master will always be the best quality recording in an analog copy scheme.
-If a new generation of copies are made from the current generation before the media degrades, even under best real-world circumstances, then at some point in time the best available copy will sound unacceptable to the listener. Digital copies do not have this limitation.
Enough ranting. Analog vs. digital fights always make my blood boil.
I guess what I wonder is this: Analog has frequency response limits too.. so are we assuming that analog can record far higher frequencies than digital can? Why not then just up the sample rate on digital to compensate?
I don't see how digital can't be just as good, given that neither case represents infinite accuracy.
...primarily cost efficiency.
Labels don't give people a million dollars and say "come back when you're finished" anymore. They give you 2 months and $30k.
Faced with this, the goal becomes good quality quickly. Sure, people argue about the warmth and crispness of analog. But what most analog purists miss is the outright efficiency of digital recording.
If you've ever recorded a song, you know that no matter how good you are there is almost always a better take (with a very few exceptions). When that $30k is all you have, it is imperitive that the take be the best one.
With tape, it's take...stop...evaluate...rewind...record. And pray fervently you don't accidently overwrite something.
With digital, you can literally get 10 times the work done. takestopevaluatetakestopevaluate. There is no waiting, and if you screw up you hit 'undo'.
Even most of the folks that do have a million bucks and want to record onto analog promptly dump to digital for mixing. And the 'warmth' and 'crispness' of analog is largely a myth as of about 5 years ago (when ADATs started to die their long deserved death). Play a 2 inch recorded track vs a protools recorded track and 99.9% of the people out there will never know. A good producer/engineer can work wonders with good preamps and outboard gear.
So yes, it's a sad day...but not nearly as monumental as purists would have you believe. People who depend on this stuff for a living dumped this along time ago.
No one could deny your analysis except that you forgot one thing - digital is not spiritual. God prefers analogue. Vinyl is psychedelic and shit dude.
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
Analog *is* frequency response...that's my entire point, and even given digital's obvious upperhand in so many other domains...and my nearly-entirely digital production environment...I still would prefer analog.
Digital, with the right equipment, can record far higher frequencies....conventionally....though, analog can match it easily given fatter tape width and faster tape speeds....(lets keep those heads running 'very high impact' a friend used to say in relation to tape-speed adjustment).
The wave is analog...
My preference, would it could down to dynamic range (in digital, that's your bit-depth) or frequency response (in digital, that's roughly half your sampling frequency...remember, a wave runs 360 degrees...-180 to +180).......would be dynamic range, where analog has reigned supreme so far....in going from 16-bit to 24-bit sampling I noticed a massive while 'subtle' difference...it just sounded more natural....add all the bits you want, it'll be decades before we beat 2" tape on dynamic range...and frequency response, once again, is another rant entirely...subject to my experiences and what I've read.
Heck, buggy whip manufacturing and hand weaving still exists but these guys are going under.
Some CDs are intentionally clipped to heck during mastering because starting in the mid-1990s, record producers have been deluded into thinking that louder is better, and the resulting hypercompression has turned into an arms race.
The hypercompression of Zwan, on the other hand, may have been an artistic choice.
Having spent most of my teens, twenties, and thirties in recording studios (as a musician, engineer, producer, and owner), there's a lot I'm going to miss about analog recording on tape.
I'm not about to start the analog vs. digital flamefest. I see more good about digital than bad, but there are a few qualities of analog (particularly the last point above) that are worth preserving.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
Does anyone want to buy my reel-to-reel tape machine? :P
Oh well, back to 8 track.
I'm sorry, but no. I work at a plant in the U.K. which manufactures audio tape. I've seen it being made TODAY - so I can pretty much vouch for its continual existance.
What you have to do is "bake" the tapes.
What I've done on several occassions is take a tape and stick it in a Food Dryer - the kind you make jerky or dried fruit with. Then set it to a low temperature (like 105 F) and let it "bake" for several hours.
Then (and this is the most crucial part) :
you set up and TEST a digital recording system attached to the playback deck, and get the levels as close to perfect as you can, but let it peak around -3dB. Make sure you record it at some insane sampling rate and bit depth. 192kHz at 24bit is pretty good. Why? The bit depth is really important - this way when you process the audio through your restoration software, you have the bit depth to handle stuff like reverb tailings and other audio nuances.
If you chicken out and don't record at -3dB (which is fairly hot for recording analogue material, frankly) and record it at -12dB, but record it at 16 bit, and a quiet passage is at -24dB, you'll be lucky to be pulling an 8 bit recording out of it, and it will sound kind of gritty. IF you record at 24bit and chicken out, then the quiet passage described will be in 12 bit - not optimal, but one heck of a lot better sounding than 8 bit. If you record at 24bit and get a -3dB recording, then you'll still have boodles of headroom.
In anycase, you set up your recording system, carefully set the tape in the player, press record on your digital recorder, press play and the deck, and PRAY. Keep a mini vac nearby to suck up the oxide -as it goes through the capstan, it will shred and shed all over the carpet and the interior of the deck. Use the vac to suck up the oxide as it peels off the acetate backing. Also, keep a can of compreszed air nearby to blow components clean. After you record one song, stop the deck, blow the oxide off the components, vacuum the heads, and resume your recording...
It's a major PAIN IN THE ASS when done right, and that's why it's so freakin' expensive to get done. It's very labour intensive. And also very high risk: You Only Get One Playback after a bake. Once, I got two, but the second was pretty degraded - nothing over 8kHz came through.
The WORST is video tape. FUCK that sucks. If you get some distortion in audio, that's one thing, a little hiss is something you can accompodate in your listening - but dropped or stuck frames or getting vast fields of snow and frame roll makes for a ***really unsatisfying viewing experience***. Sticky shed video is a true horror. And it's the future. Despair now, and get it over with.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Sounds like they are going out of business for reasons including lack of demand, but not exclusively due to that lack.
OK, I just RTFA. I see they have gone down from 1100 in their hey-day. I don't see "Quantegy" listed on the stock exchange, so I wouldn't be surprised that grand-nephew bubba or whomever the current owner is just wanted to sell the plant to build a mall or something.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Still, there is a limit to your equipment, to your recording medium.
Your analog tape can't record a 3ghz signal. That's my point.
This "pure wave" exists only in thought, in the physical world it's affected by everything it passes through.
So, if you are saying that good tape gear has better dynamic range and/or frequency response than equivalently priced digital gear, that makes perfect sense. But to argue that htis is somehow a limitation of digital or analog technology is silly. Both have a limit to their frequency response and dynamic range, for different reasons. Neither can record things beyond those limits.
If both mediums had the same limits, the resulting signal would be the same.
I was at a local high-end home audio and video store, where they had a number of large-screen TVs showing HDTV signals. I watched one for a little bit, and noticed considerable compression artifacts (looked like a JPEG). I asked one of the salespeople where the signal was from, and he said that it was digital HDTV. I asked why they used digital if it had artifacts like these, and his response was that consumers instinctively think "digital == better!" and so they run digital HDTV. And this was at a place with shelves of tube amps and speaker cables costing in the triple digits.
I guess it's the common ignorance/trend that's pusing digital everything, regardless of quality.
Oh, come on. This is ridiculous!!!
First of all, all your audio files are saved as WAV files - which are basically samples. All your MIDI data is saved as MIDI data. You can import/export it into any program. Furthermore, people are also working on a basic multitrack data standard.
So, what is lost? The automation information, the tracks you colored green? That is also lost in old tape. Do you think all the fader information, outboard effects are not propriotary? Furthermore, tape gets erased and all the editing is destrutive.
Tape is just like a WAV file that you can have around - compare a document in the computer to the one written by you. It's like saying old documents that I made in the computer won't be able to be opened in the future!! You can always export the text and pictures and recreate it. Same with the multitrack audio files.
When you characterize the difference like that you make it sound as if analog doesn't have any meaningful limits at all. Just a tiny fraction of the density and speed that newer backup tapes get would serve pro audio tape gear just fine.
Well, sure, that's the important advantage of digital.
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
What makes people think Slashdot is so important that covering an analog tape factory closure is beneath it?
When I got into journalism school in 1991, I think digital audio editing was just being experimented with by many radio newsrooms. The way to edit stories then was to use a stiff, one-sided razor blade, an aluminum cutting block and translucent blue tape (or to mix a story down from two reel-to-reels to a third recorder). I like to think I was good at making edits, but my fingers weren't as dry as most other reporters and often you could hear the audio become softer and muddy at my edit points. After I returned from freelancing in India, there was one CBC radio piece I wanted to use for my demo tape. I never bothered to ask for a copy from the newsroom, but I had all of the old source tapes. So I stitched a copy together using a shareware, two-channel, 16-bit audio editor (CoolEdit, I think). I was absolutely astonished at how easy it was to edit the piece. The quality was easily as good as you would expect to get on a cassette tape. The very idea that anyone would use audio tape in news gathering in this day and age makes me want to laugh. In the editing suites at my old journalism school, there were also editing blocks that were 3/4 inches wide in the TV editing studios. Hard to believe people used to use razors on TV tapes too!
Imagine that, your post wasn't modded insightfull or interesting but this Linux fanboys was modded funny although its ignorant. Yeah, this is Slashdot. Linux fanboys unite!
Windows is built for compatiblity. Atleast I don't have to code my own WPC11v4 drivers... Look it up.
I do not believe that analog is absolute infinite...simply 'practically infinite'.
...and I do do better with digital. I run preamps and compression/limiting on my inputs, increasing apperent dynamic range...through attentuate, et al..I try to stay analog on that side as well. It seems to detract from digital's 'cold harsh reality' drawback...though I hate the cheeziness factor of having a tiny tube preamp....;) ....they work wonders......I have been at this for 13 years now, on digital the entire time, sometimes supplanted by analog inputs...4-tracks, adats...etc...I defend analog, I'm a practical digital fan. Temper my rants with that in mind.
I'm fully aware of how a digital recording is captured, converted, played back, and the same in reverse.
I do not want soft clipping, I was merely arguing it as a 'feature' of the format...one that is arguably quite convenient.
There sure are a lot of ignorant people on here.
Anyway, a big problem with digital is the incompetence of the engineer. Any idiot can get a protools rig and make it sound 'OK.' Plus, these Full Sail graduates also have a tendency to use horrid digital effects, and also to compress a mix to the point where there are no dynamics left.
It takes skill to properly use analog equipment, and it seems that the mindset and work ethic of an analog tape user is focused on doing things properly and having the results sound good.
With digital, you can also edit any poor performance into a great one, also removing any ambience and character that the material has.
My two cents.
http://cassettefetish.com
To call digital "lower quality" is foolish.
You point out (correctly) that digital is good enough that you can't reliably tell the difference, but digital, by *DEFINITION*, is "lower quality". It's part of the process of digitization.
So all of this frequency response on either recording device is kinda wasted anyway...
All things being equal, maybe analog is slightly better. But you're assuming perfect conditions, which simply don't exist. Analog gives you tape hiss, nonlinearities in the sound, frequency rolloff, and other lovely things. For reproduction purposes, it's not optimal, but people tend to prefer some analog in the process because it's what they're used to. Record production is not just about recording sound, it's about creating sound.
In the reproduction domain, you can manipulate a digital medium to have whatever you need in terms of frequency response and sampling rate. For most people, what you're dealing with is uncompressed PCM audio at a 44.1KHz sampling rate, which is more than enough to cover the audibility range of the human ear (Nyquist sampling theorem and all that). You do lose something with MP3 or AAC or Vorbis -- they're lossy formats. But raw PCM digital is as close as you can get to perfect 2.0 audio reproduction; it's actually higher fidelity than a lot of analog recording equipment.
I agree completely. You know what they say though, there's a sucker born every second. Reminds me of a "product" I saw on bluesnews I believe. This guy was selling replacement wooden knobs for some audiophile amplifier. $350! for stained and varnished knobs! hahahahh! Does anyone have a link?
The new name should really be:
CUFK!!
I hope sombody gets it...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I found it! It is actually $475! what a crock of shit.. http://www.referenceaudiomods.com/Merchant2/mercha nt.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=NOB_C37_C
Engineers found that people actually prefer a small amount of even order distortion compared to unmeasurable distortion. Having a slight bit makes the music have a "warmer" sound. Pure digital is cold and somewhat harsh by comparison. Zero distortion does not equal the best sound. Theres plenty of speakers with a flat frequency response that sound like garbage compared to something with some spikes or dips. I find it amusing that it takes a DSP chip with a half million transistors and 1000 lines of code to come close to the sound of a vacuum tube. Ask the guitar guys about tube emulation, its no good.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Here's another good one... $6,500 power cord
http://www.audioconnect.com/html/aluminata.html
digital=loss
Digital is a representation of the original source material. Its only as good as the sampling rate.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
yes my friend had an experience similar to this. after recording all digital for a while his band and his producer decided to try analog.
he had always loved tape, where as i have always preferred digital, and what he ran into explains why:
analog tape compresses, distorts and otherwise miscaptures the information being recorded. it just so happens to sound really nice (low end yeah!).
on the other hand, digital (up to a certain point) is all about capturing without coloration. it is not perfectly accurate but it is more accurate than analog. like you said, it just depends on your taste... i really prefer what i played to be what i hear unaltered.
I heard (namedrop) Rupert Nieve speak at an AES event over the Summer (/namedrop). He described a study in Japan in which he had been asked to participate. Essentially the adiologists, electrical engineers, and neurologists involved had determined that our phisiological responses were more positive to continuous analog data than to PCM digital audio. At some deep sensory level, digital audio just doesn't feel as good. Interestingly, non-PCM digital formats like SACD may be immune to this effect. The scientists thought that the agitation experienced by the test subjects was a reaction to the ultrasonic switching frequencies present in all PCM recordings.
I'm probably part of the last generation to have learned the craft on 2" tape. I love digital for all it's good points, but I hope this isn't the swansong for tape. Each tool has its own merits.
All you need to do is export (the multichannel master) to PCM, and any halfway decent program can handle it. PCM has been around quite a long time, and I'm willing to bet it'll be around longer than the best maintained tapes will survive.
And, like tapes, I'm willing to bet the IDE/ATA interface will survive for many decades in the future, and you'll have no trouble reading them.
The filesystem can be a bit tricky, but FAT32 should be readable by most every OS for a very long time as well.
But more importantly than that, is how easy it is to copy those PCM files from an old hard drive to whatever the new standard hardware/filesystem is, and possibly even convert from PCM to whatever has taken over. The easy of copying/converting digital media is so many times easier than analog, that it's no wonder everyone is switching.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
NPR reports this as being the last American plant. Are foreign manufacturers (BASF, etc) still making 1/4 inch?
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Didn't sell.
Then, almost as a joke, he designed the Carver Silver 7 tube amp. 20 tubes per channel. $25,000 each. Two huge chassis per channel. Huge transformers. Same transfer function.
Named the "best amplifier of the decade" by The Absolute Sound.
Uh, actually, the crap you buy at Wal-Mart isn't pro tape. The stuff that Quantegy made was. It had a thicker base and better magnetic particles stuck on it, and used better QA for less drop-out and longer lifespan.
Why do I M2 everything negatively?
I am not sure about Emtec but BASF is not former AGFA!!! Badische Anilin und Soda Fabrik (BASF) is German chemical and plastics manufacturing company originally founded in 1865. Agfagevaert Gruppe, Dutch Agfa-gevaert Groep, is German and Belgian corporate group established in 1964 in the merger of Agfa AG of Leverkusen, W.Ger., and Gevaert Photo-Producten NV of Mortsel, Belg. The merger established twin operating companies, one German (Agfa-Gevaert AG) and one Belgian (Gevaert-Agfa NV, which in 1971 became Agfa-Gevaert NV). Controlling interest in the group was purchased by Bayer AG in 1981.
I used to use quantegy (quantigy? formerly Ampex) tapes in my ADAT machine, a digital 8-track recorder that records 42 minutes of 8 channel, 48 khz digital audio on what is basically an analog VHS tape. Of coure, ADAT tapes aren't the same as reel-to-reel tapes- the packaging is different. I suspect that division will still be running for quite a while, as digital ADAT tapes tend to have better compatibility across machines than analog reel-to-reel. Still I have a hard time believing that not a single studio is going to record anything (analog) on (analog) tape anymore. Not because I don't think harddisk recording hasn't caught up with analog technology, but because the natural compression of tape gives quite a pleasant harmonic distortion to the sound recorded on it. Also, harddisks crash and burned media gets unreadable. For longer-term audio storage, tape is still the medium of choice. Given this, what's the alternative to reel-to-reel tape?
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
I've recorded in digital and "old school" tape studios.And they both kicked ass.How?The smart digital studio guys run the old tube preamps and eq's.That way you get that nice analog warmth going in,and the ease of digital editing afterwards.It's the best of both worlds.Now let us pray that those few plants making tubes don't go out of business,or all us musicians are REALLY screwed.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
My feeling, from my own experience, is that we will be spending most of the 21st century trying to archive all of that analog information left from the 20th. That is why the 21st will dissappear from history.
It's mandatory to wash your hands before returning to the land of Dairy Queen.
WTF are you talking about? I use EAC all the time on Win2K. I've ripped about 15 GB of music with it.
Make me a friend and I'll mod you up
is that the apple-struder model with the dolby cinnamon sprinkles?
Studer!
seriously, i'd kind of forgotten all of this - strange how quickly cassette tapes have faded from my consciousness...!
XLII! luxury! when i were a lad we had to make do with TDK AD90s. AND we liked it...
Ok, I suppose I should clarify:
You are correct - analog sound waves originating in an environment can never be represented in a digital format with the same clarity as the original sound pressure waves.
That said, digital sampling provides the best possible resolution and reproduction for storing and reproducing analog sound captures if you aim to get back exactly what was fed-in.
N.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
not neccesarily... harmonics located outside of our range of hearing have been shown to effect things we can hear.
...besides, I'd rather have all the frequencies I can get and selectively filter it out later than simply not have them. You never know what the future may hold for audio playback, and I would most certainly want the latest version of a recording if it were remastered to let some of those capabilities show.
'Why was the parent modded up if it's not true?'
You must be new here.
Fitness/jogging guru Jim Fixx dying of a heart attack while he was jogging: this is a pretty clear example of the opposite of what would commonly be expected under the circumstances. A similar [hypothetical] example would be Esther Williams (an expert swimmer) drowning in a bathtub.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Someone must have forgotten to tell you that your individual experience doesn't automatically apply to the rest of the computing world...
The following sentence is true. The preceding sentence was false.
Digital is better.
In every respect.
For reproduction and playback, perhaps.
But for recording and production, analog has its merits. But "audiophiles" don't care about that -- "recording professionals" do.
The following sentence is true. The preceding sentence was false.
correct me if i'm wrong but doesn't the tar command get it's name from tape archive? time to change it?
My friend's dad works at that plant. I live about 30 minutes from Opelika, AL, in Columbus, GA.
Am I the only one that even knows someone that works there?
I prefer sound processed through analog gear. Compare the Aphex 2020 broadcast processor to something like the Orban 8200. The main problem is the notable amount of latency introduced if any significant DSP graphing is done by a digital processor. I choose the broadcast processors as an example because they are all-in-one boxes, typically doing multiband compression and limiting, preemphasis, leveling, equalization, and other stuff. Even with just multiband compression, there is no digital unit that doesn't introduce latency.
This doesn't even touch on how bad sounding many of the DSP algorithms are when compared to their analog counterparts.
You left out the fact that in a digital domain, you can only build specific sizes of boxes. If you need a box the size that falls in between two of your digital boxes - you are stuck. In the analog world, I can alter the dimensions of the box.
Furthermore, with the eventual advent of exponentially more sophisticated computation we will see the ability to record sound and reproduce it in such a way that it could be called seamless.
But it will never be seamless. There will always be quantization errors.
Given an infinate amount of memory, processing power, and a ADC with infinately small quantization steps, I will be able to exactly record one specific tone. Anything else is an aopproximation of the original. The question is, "does it matter?"
Digital is NOT,/strong> better, just different from analog.
. there used to be a sig here.....
I think the perspective on this web site is skewed. Just because you all have some sort of onboard digital audio in your computer and listen to MP3's and own CD's and DVD's, you think there is no market for analog tape anymore.
You are also interpreting an article about a company "restructuring" as meaning "clearly because I have never seen an analog tape machine in real life, and they haven't used those since the 1940's, no one needs analog tape anymore."
I can assure you that this is not the case. Large recording studios routinely shell out high six-figure and seven-figure dollar amounts for analog recording consoles. These studios also very likely have 48 tracks (2, 24-track machines) of analog audio available. Do they have Protools? Sure, but he point is many people still prefer analog audio and to do a full length project with 48 tracks (all 48 are not usable, but that's another matter) you need SIX reels of tape (not counting safeties). The fact that the tape is expensive doesn't scare someone who can afford to pay $1,000,000 for a recording console.
As I said in another post I have a friend with NINE 2-inch analog machines that he rents to big studios. He also has some 1-inch machines, a few 1/2-inch machines, and a few 1/4-inch machines, ALL of which get used, and require tape.
I have a new reel of Quantegy GP-9 (their flagship product) about 24 inches from my feet as I type this, for an upcoming demo project I'm doing in a local analog room.
Even if Quantegy does not survive these financial woes, I highly suspect that either someone will buy their manufacturing facility and technology from them, or BASF, or perhaps even Scotch re-enter the market to fill this void.
Analog tape machines are not going anywhere. Perhaps Quantegy simply needs to re-assess their business plan and operate from the perspective that the analog tape market isn't what it used to be (I won't deny that) and perhaps is more properly looked at as a "boutique" market.
Rich...
Ignore Alien Orders
Quantegy:
... Orr did it for the community, to give back to the people. He knew it was the people who made the company. Orr knew the people and everything about the place. He knew which light bulbs needed changing, and when the toilet paper in the men's restroom ran out, he'd change it. He believed in the people first."
The company and the man behind the tape that recorded the world
Tamiko Lowery
Staff Writer
Opelika-Auburn News
Thursday, January 6, 2005
In the beginning, it wasn't about the money - it was about the people, according to H.D. Norman.
Norman, 54, a native of Opelika and protege under John Herbert Orr - the mastermind behind Ampex, what is now Quantegy - remembers how Orr put Opelika on the map.
"Orr had an entrepreneurial spirit. He always said his education came from the school of hard knocks. Business men are not as they once were - they run things strictly by the bottom line," Norman said. "Orr never went to business school, he learned how to make things on his own. He was a visionary, a pioneer - ahead of his time. He could have taken his invention anywhere in the world but instead he brought it back to his own hometown - back to Opelika. He was a down-to-earth man. If you ever needed anything, he'd give it to you. He believed in treating everybody right."
Norman says Orr understood people which was why he was so successful.
In November 1995, the Ampex Recording Media Corporation was put up for sale, and the recording media pioneer became Quantegy Inc., according to www.quantegy.com.
But on Dec. 31, 2004, the Opelika plant shut its doors. A brief statement released by the company that day said that "Quantegy Inc. has ceased operations pending restructuring. This is due to financial issues that have plagued the industry and Quantegy for some time. All employees are on layoff pending further notice."
"I feel for the people who have lost their jobs. I would not want to be at the short end of that stick. The CEO was here for a day or so without knowing the people here; he'll just catch a plane in Atlanta and go home," Norman said. "To lose your job is hard enough but especially around the holidays - it's callous the way it was done.
Orr died in 1984.
"I think if he were alive today, he would be very hurt," Norman said. "He used to smoke this big ol' cigar and if he didn't like somebody he'd fill that room with smoke to smoke 'em out. He'd be doing that now. He's buried down in Loachapoka, and I believe he's rolling over in his grave." Norman said the people, who worked for him, gave him faith in the company.
Deloris Waller, manager of the Alabama State Employment Services at Opelika Career Center, said hope is what they've tried to give to Quantegy employees who feel they have been forgotten.
"Monday at 8 a.m. there were 50 or so Quantegy employees waiting for doors to open," Waller said. "As of Wednesday there have been 120 come in, and they're still coming. The vast majority of them have worked there 25 years and up. They have been upbeat, as a whole, but they've got a lot of questions that only the company can answer. And I hope they get their answers soon."
Opelika Mayor Gary Fuller said during Tuesday's City Council meeting, "In a week to 10 days we should know more. They're working to restructure the plant and continue operations. We have our fingers crossed it will all work out."
Waller said any closing affects the community but is optimistic about the future with new industry coming in.
"Already there have been at least five local companies who have contacted us, even a company out of Georgia, indicating interest in these employees," Waller said. "We have given them all a packet of papers to bring back. Thursday, Friday, Monday and Tuesday are all booked for appointments where small groups of employees will come in. There will be people from Montgomery here talking about how folks can survive layoffs and career links to talk about training. I feel for
I am only speaking as a hobiest and from what I have read and heard, mostly regarding recording of Grateful Dead concerts.
The Dead have more of a documented recorded history than any other band in history. Almost every concert and other odds and ends like studio outtakes, sound checks, and practices have been recorded and circulated. The Dead have an official vault that has many of the analog recordings over the years, which is carefully climate controlled. There are mostly 1/4" two channel analogue tapes, but there are some multitrack recordings as well. Most of the 1/4" tapes were recorded at 7.5 ips, some were at 15. Not sure about the multitracks.
That being said, many of the older tapes from the 60s and 70s have had to be baked, literally, in an oven to rejoin the plastic layer of the tape to the magnetic layer. Many times when a tape is cooked, it is the last time that it is ever played. The Dead archivist also make a copy of every tape every time it is played from the vault with the best recording equipment available at the time in case something happens to the master. Unfortunately, crappy cassetes were used for recordings from the late 70s to early 90s. Digital recordings became avaiable in about 1982 or 1983. These early digital recordings were hacked PCM encoded data thrown on video tapes. DAT recorders became common in the early 90s. Now is is very common for recordings to be made as 16bit/48 or 16bit/44.1kHz recordings, some are appearing as 24bit/96kHz now. Many of these recordings now have a dedicated microphone preamp with a high quality AD converter, often times these preamps are after market moded for better sound. In my opinion, and that of many tapers today, the quality from good microphones with a good mic preamp and AD converter are the best available recordings today. The lack of the preamps made tapes from patches off of the soundboard better for earlier recordings.
My point being is that there is no good archival medium for audio recordings. Original wax recordings by Edison are still playable, but a silly recording of "Mary has a little lamb" are not too desirable, and the quality doesn't matter much. Vinyl is a decent archival medium, but the playback equipment is not likely to improve much beyond the original recording equipment, and vinyl noticibly degrades _every_ time it is played due to the friction of the needle on the surface of the disk. Yes, there are laser vinyl players, but I am not familar with them, and vinyl is not commonly known archival medium. Also, it is worth noting that there are some improvements that can be done with digital masters. I have heard a 30kHz DAT that was upsampled to 44.1kHz with noticable improvements.
We hanker for magnetic tape as in LTO Ultrium 2.
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.
Have you ever done ANY recording? Music is a sensual experence, not in the sexual sense, but meaning that it is based completely on what you hear, how you hear it, and how it effects you. Modern solid state and digial equiptment is perfect, too perfect. It amplifies and captures the sound EXACTLY as it is picked up by microphones and pickups. This is not always good, although in many cases it is just fine. For some types of music, the slight distortion and compression that is caused by tubes and tapes is desireable. It makes the music sound warmer than it actually is, evoking a feeling. As a geek, we all know that the setting and style of the matrix created a sort of feeling that made us more able to be absorbed by the story (and in the latter movies, the lack thereof). The same is true of music. If you are playing vintage surfer-rock, you want people to associate with the days-of-old.
As far as achival quality, there is digital magtape with quite good archival qualities, no need to rely on something optical for archiving. Modern half-inch digital tape is pretty darn good for archiving, and has more tolerance for non-ideal environmental conditions.
I'm not sure how well the bits last after the first few decades, however, as modern digital tape is magnetically quite different from half-inch tape from a few decades ago.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The whole point though is that you *don't* have all the frequencies with analog. It's a common misunderstanding. Every form of analog storage and transmission is band limited in the frequencies it can store or transmit.
If you're recording from a microphone, there is *always* a digital sample frequency and bitrate that will accomodate the performance of the microphone. The numbers may be quite high if the microphone far exceeds the performance of the human ear, but nevertheless it's possible.
We can currenly transmit 10Gb/s over a cable digitally, similar to best-quality analog video cables, and well beyond what could ever be needed for audio. Bitrates to and from digital magtape are approaching 100MB/s; it's hard to judge the total bandwidth of 2" analog tape at typical speed, but it's probably the same order of magnitude. Digital has come of age.
The real question is: for a given price, what's more accurate and/or sounds better. For home audio, digital is far cheaper for a given level of accuracy, but "sounds better" is entirely a personal choice. For pro audio, there has been a lot of really bad digital suff commonly available for a long time, and it takes a careful engineer to find the good stuff today. The good analog equipment is commonly known. So it's easier to get good engineering from analog, but that's just a historical artifact. The future is clearly digital, and the death of 2" tape manufacture is just one more sign of analog's passing.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The AC has a good point, however - not every piece of pro-audio mixing/editing equipment does "go up high enough", making good digital editing require more equipment knowledge than good analog editing. That's obviously changing, however, given the story. :)
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
...used to use diagonal tape splices for attack/release effects and crossfades. There were even "arrowhead" splices for doing this in stereo.
This only worked for low tape speeds; at 15 or 30 ips any spice you'd make would just shoot by the heads so fast you'd never hear that it wasn't a flat cut.
I'm unsure of the reason for doing diagonal cuts in the first place (aside from the reason of the aforementioned effects). I know that you didn't want to allow any more than the tiniest gaps between the tape sections in oder to keep from having tape adhesive from touching the heads - I can tell you that it's easier to do that with a diagonal cut than a straight cut (you can see misalignment better too).
Yes, there'd be one monolithic head for all the channels. I'm unsure if larger (>=8 ch) decks had a separate playback head like smaller decks did.
I seem to have a dim memory that the Tascam 1/4" 8-ch decks had heads with every other gap staggered, kind of like (ASCII art)
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in order to get the crosstalk down between adjacent tracks.
I've fixed my copy, and you can fix yours.
Note a computer can't process hundreds of tracks, can't you just make the tape wider, easier than making the computer faster? Also tapes have a longer lifespan than hard drives or CDroms..
Well guess there is no way of bringing back that guerilla..
Just say no to license servers!!
So after reading that Quantegy has discontinued making analog tapes I decided to call their customer service number. Much to my surprise, after two rings I got an actual voice! So I decided to ask a few questions:
Q: "Hello, Quantegy, please hold."......."Hello Quantegy."
M: "I heard you are going to discontinue the manufacturing of analog recording tapes."
Q: "We are going through some restructuring right now."
M: "Are you going to continue to take orders?"
Q: "As long as inventory permits."
M: "Well, are there any analog tapes available to order as of now?"
Q: "No. We have sold all of them."
M: "Is there a possibility of ordering them in the future or from other locations?
Q: "Sorry, I can't comment right now, we are just taking orders until inventory is out of stock."
Alas, I may not be able to find fresh tape to record with... The end of a great era.
Browse at 1. You'll thank me later.
That's what we did.
you set up and TEST a digital recording system attached to the playback deck, and get the levels as close to perfect as you can, but let it peak around -3dB. Make sure you record it at some insane sampling rate and bit depth. 192kHz at 24bit is pretty good. Why? The bit depth is really important - this way when you process the audio through your restoration software, you have the bit depth to handle stuff like reverb tailings and other audio nuances.
Heh heh. It wasn't audio data, it was 0-4Mhz analog signal data. Times 14 tracks. The drives were bigger than refrigerators, cost more than $300,000, and would move tape at variable speeds up to 240 inches/sec.
And yeah, we only got one playback (sweaty palms time). We dubbed it onto another deck.
Parent should almost qualify as TROLL.
The discussion (if a slashdot forum can be so termed) is RE: professional Audio tape (2" high-speed specifically) not LP. A CD is undeniably a better playback medium than a needle on a platter.