1/4" vs 1/2" tape

[electric]

how much more headroom do you get with 1/2" vs 1/4"? just wondering. some studios only have a 1/4" machine in good working order. should i only mix at a place w/ 1/2"?

electric

[paterno]

For what it is worth, I actually prefer mixing to 1/4" instead of 1/2". the low end on the 1/4 always seems to sound more 'accurate' [for lack of a better term] to me than 1/2. The low frequency resonance, or head bump, doesn't seem as dramatic to me as on 1/2 inch, and doesn't mess with my bass/kick drum relationship as much.

cheers,
john

[NathanEldred]

I really like 1/4" as well...there seems to be a mentality that the wider the tape the better, that's not necessarily the truth in this case. I haven't heard 1" 2 track however, anyone want to comment?

[electric]

also for what its worth i am mixing hip hop. for this genre are people going to 1/4" or 1/2" ?

i actually have some new quantegy 456 1/4" that i have never used . maybe i should use that up first.

accuracy for what we are listening to in the control room is really important but solid low end and hot mix levels would be desireable too. (does 1/2" get more of that for us - i dont know?).

another question: i have never mixed from a big console. when also making your digital backup of the mix do people normally

A) use the output of the tape machine to go to digital (i am guessing this is bad but what do i know?)eg console>tape macine>ad converter.

B) (assuming console has a parallel master mix output) go out to the tape machine on one output from console and to digital with another parallel output.

C) go to tape and then to digital in 2 phases (assuming only one master mix output)eg first pass have the mix go to tape. then plug console output into ad converter and go to digital on second pass. which would therefore take 8 minutes to mix a 4 minute song to both tape and digital.

D) none of the above.

wow. that was a mouth full . sorry for the multiple choice question. i hated those in college.

regards,
electric

[Drumsound]

Many consoles have i/o for a couple ofg mixdown decks. You could got to tape and 1's & 0's at the same time.

[Bob Olhsson]

We went to 1/2" tape and 30 ips. in an effort to stop using Dolbys. I think modern 1/4" tape sounds as good or better than 1/2" did during the '70s.

The best sounding machine I've ever heard is a custom job that was built from a 1/4" Revox A-77 transport and heads in order to be portable. It only runs 7.5 and 15 but sounds amazing compared to the Studers and ATRs I've used to make transfers from it with. Thankfully most of the magic seems to be in playback because there are only a couple others and they are on the west coast!

[Jason Poulin]

I just started mixing to 1/4 " tape not too long ago

It made my mixes seem more "round and smooth"


good resluts.

Jason

[vtone]

good resluts.

yes, we are!