Quote:
Originally Posted by 24-96 Mastering  In Germany, delivering mixes on tape is not as common as in the US or the UK even, so maybe those who get 1/2" tape on a very regular basis can share their views / experiences:
How much variation in sound (saturation, amount of LF, amount of HF, track speed, general "vibe", etc) do you perceive on the tapes you get?
The reason I'm asking is that we get most mixes digitally, so changes in sound between revisions or even from a vocal up to a vocal down mix are not something I usually have to consider. When we do get tapes however, I'm very aware of fluctuation/variation and, having started in mastering when digital was well established, this inconsistency is somewhat of a nusance, especially with regards to recalls/revisions.
From your previous experiences, can you relate? Do you get variation in tapes? Is it unnerving to you? Generally speaking, do you treat each tape print as a completely new entity or do you try and replicate one version's sound when you find a second print varies? Do you think the variation you get is mainly due to the nature of analog tape or slight variations in how the tape is hit? |
A very enlightening thing to check out is Jack Endino's graph's of various professional tape recorders frequency responses -
Response Curves of Analog Recorders
As you can see from glancing at the curves there's huge variations in response over various models of atr's even when all the standard calibration tones (i.e. 100Hz, 1kHz, 10kHz) are set to playback at 0dBVU.
How hard the tape is hit after a certain point also can have a big effect on the sharpness of the transients, harmonic content, and presence of distortion - sometimes this can be desireable - a lot of times not.
Best regards,
Steve Berson