TAPE GUIDE (Jul. 1984)

Bulk Erasing

Q. I have a good bulk eraser, and it wipes out all recorded sounds on my tapes. With a bulk-erased tape do I have, in essence, a "virgin" tape? Will it capture high frequencies as well as a new tape? Have I degraded the tape in any manner?

- Gary Tillery, Tulsa, Okla.

A. Bulk erasing the tape with an eraser of good quality does no harm to it and leaves you with the equivalent of virgin tape, except for physical wear (such as oxide shedding) which may have occurred due to repeated use of the tape, and provided that you use the eraser properly. By proper use I mean turning on the device while several feet from the tape, bringing it slowly to the tape, describing a circular motion about the tape for several seconds, gradually withdrawing the eraser, and only then turning it off.

Balancing Act

Q. I have a collection of about 200 country music discs that I plan to put on tape. I find that most of these re cords are heavy on the right channel (some are heavy on the left channel and some are equal), so I have been increasing the left input when taping. The problem is that this seems to muddy the recording a little, although this could be my imagination. Should I at tempt to find an exact balance be tween channels, or should I copy the record the way it was recorded? In other words, should I always make the channels equal by means of the re cord-level indicators, or should I only resort to this when there is extreme unbalance?

- Gary Tillery; Tulsa, Okla.

A. You should balance the channels according to the dictates of your ears or of the record-level indicators. In the case of your discs that appear to be heavy on the right channel, instead of raising the level of the left channel to the full extent necessary for balance, try a combination of partly raising the left channel and lowering the right one. However, use the combination only it you are convinced that raising the left channel truly muddies the sound a bit.

Slow Down, Please

Q. Recently, there was a letter asking why open-reel deck manufacturers don't bring back the 1 7/8-ips speed. You said most manufacturers feel that those who want 1 7/8 ips will simply turn to cassette decks. That response "ain't quite it." You want the slow speed in order to permit a long unattended re cording, or to provide long playback time of noncritical material, or to use a minimum amount of tape for such material. Cassette only gives you 45 or 60 minutes per side unless you have an auto-reverse deck that reverses in re cording. But I can put a 2,400-foot tape on my open-reel deck and go about my business while the deck tapes a 4-hour radio program at 1 7/8 ips. Not every recording is of super-quality music. The slow speed is darned handy for talk shows, back ground music, old radio, dubbing old LPs and 78s, etc. The main consideration is fairly good transport stability so that wow and flutter are acceptable.

I think all home open-reel decks should have the 1 7/8-ips speed. Along the same lines, I also wish that cassette decks would have a half-speed setting (15/16 ips) for noncritical recordings. Consumers want not only maximum fidelity but also versatility.

-Jack Burke, Chicago, Ill.

A. I agree with you, but economics is economics. The fact remains that nearly all makers of open-reel decks have judged that the market for 1 7/8 ips is not large enough to warrant the extra cost of providing this speed. Along these lines, the company that used to make a 15/16-ips cassette deck (Nakamichi) decided to abandon this speed.

Let me add that one of the reasons for such abandonment is the difficulty of maintaining correct azimuth alignment. A given amount of azimuth error produces ever-greater treble loss as tape speed is decreased and as track width is increased. In open reel, track width is nearly 80% greater than in cassette, so azimuth loss is a good deal more pronounced for open reel at a given speed and a given azimuth error. Within the cassette format, as one goes from 1 7/8 down to 15/16 ips, azimuth loss similarly grows much more severe.

(Source: Audio magazine, Jul. 1984, HERMAN BURSTEIN)

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