Analog tape over ????

[Jack P]

Tape seems to be very popular on Gearslutz.

When clients in the past have given you their music
on tape and another format

is it always tape that is chosen ?

[MASSIVE Master]

Yes and no...

Seriously though -- Sometimes it is, sometimes it's not. Sometimes the safety copy is off the repro heads (it happens). Sometimes it's DSD and they prefer it over the tape (which is when I wonder why they sent the tapes...) other times, the tape is the king.

[ripper]

I'm a mixer/ producer and I've been taking tape and/or files to mastering for years.

What I do in the studio at mix time is relevant to your question.

I have an ampex atr 102 half inch w/ extended response heads and cranesong hedd 192 for conversion.

some albums, all is from the tape source.

some, we find maybe the tape has added a bit too much colour and we actually prefer the clarity, the "front" and the "harder" sound of the straight to digital (ie, no added tape compression) for maybe one or two of the songs.

unless i'm quite certain we prefer the tape, i'll do a mix to tape and a mix to digital to be able to further analyze during mastering which would be the better choice.

in my situation, the equipment at the mastering studio is relevant as well:
since the extended response heads give 15IPS low-end response at 30 IPS, it's the best of both worlds if you're going for that thick low-end tape thing. (thickness of 15ips, better SNR of 30 IPS)

BUT this only works if you PLAYBACK the tape on the extended response heads.
so if i go into a mastering lab that has a sony or a studer, i'm out of luck.
the work around is that I now transefer the 1/2 tape to analogue myself, using the HEDD convertors without processing.

so in that since, in many mastering situations, i'd be going from a digital file, but one that was sourced from the 1/2 tape.
(this also makes mixing to half inch very affordable for clients as you can roll back over the tape several times... i always do an erase pass first, though).

but even in these situations, theres a big difference between the file direct to digital and the file tape to digital.

i'd say 95% of the time, we choose what came from tape, but not ALL the time.

i would add that if i was doing crappy, sparkle cheesoid modern fluff pop, maybe we'd all hate the tape 100% of the time dfegad.

so it's a bit genre-specific.

[Bob Olhsson]

Originally Posted by ripper;2016162...

if i go into a mastering lab that has a sony or a studer, i'm out of luck...

It really depends on the mastering studio.

I'd take one of Bob Ludwig's modded Studers or Doug Sax's modded MCI over a stock ATR any day. We have tweaked out ATRs at Georgetown Masters but there are some utterly awesome Studers and Sony/MCIs out there too that have extended response heads.