Just to be sure that nobody misses this point: you bake once and play once - recording to a new digital format. The baked tapes aren't good for more than one play.

"The baked tapes aren't good for more than one play."

As far as I know the baked tapes are as good as new. I know of people buying up second hand Ampex Grand Master, baking it and reusing it. Not something I would recommend but new 1/4" is hard to come by and getting expensive. Most certainly always try to avoid playing tapes more than need be, especially masters.

Possibly where that caution comes from is a different problem that affects some old 2" video tape. As you play it as it comes off the head the oxide layer separates from the backing, not good. It is a totally one shot process recovering those tapes.

A couple of notes.
Tapes with sticky shed should be protected by storage in heat sealed plastic bags and pop some silica in with the tape.

Tape should always be stored tail out. You rewind it, play it and put it away. That means the pack will evenly wound and any print through will be trailing instead of leading.

Oh and keep heads demagnetised.

Bob.

"print through will be trailing instead of leading"

Ummmm, so you're saying that magnetism only flows one way through the tape surface? Really??? I am unaware of this phenomenon. Print through has always been bidirectional for me.

Most audio people recommend tails out. That way, any bleedthrough will be trailing the original audio and not be as noticed. That is what I have been told for years.

Dave T2

"Ummmm, so you're saying that magnetism only flows one way through the tape surface?"

It does actually work as decribed but at first you really made me think about it.
I guessed it was in fact symmetric however depending on the wind it would be less noticeable. A Google confirmed this from here:

the wind of the tape (A-winds for cassettes with the magnetic layer facing outward have stronger print signals after a loud signal--"post-print"--than B-winds used in modern open-reel recorders that have stronger "pre-print" signals preceding a loud passage. echo.

Bob.

I suppose i've noticed pre-print through more than post-print through, but usually because the dynamics of music *tend* to be a sudden loudness followed by a longer decay. However, when the dynamics don't hide it, i've always noticed both. I guess i've never paid attention to which sounds louder.

You know, I miss the feel of using tape. Seems more natural to me than a computer. Probably just being nostalgic, but watching it spin and whirl and knowing physically where you are cued is exciting in a way.

Dave T2

There's that one Led Zeppelin song, "Whole Lotta Love" where you can really hear this pre-echo effect.

"You know, I miss the feel of using tape. Seems more natural to me than a computer"..
Dave, its not just nostalgic, its the reason why some high end recording studios and musicians still have Analog recording equipment. Tape does have a real feel to it, its not in the mind, has a lot to do with there being no bit rate or sample rate ceiling. Add to that tape saturation and other weird anomalies and it really does behave unlike a computer.
Same goes for why guitarists and studio engineers will like to use thermionic valves (thats tubes for you US guys) in compressors and pre-amps :)
Analog is still big business in niche markets.

Laurence, thats an interesting point about the Led Zep track. I had always assumed that was an effect (pre echo) added on purpose. It certainly sounds like its done on purpose. The tape would not have been old enough at that time for print through right?

Paul.

I still often run a tape copy while i'm digitally recording something that's really important. It makes me feel way safer.

A few years back i was running sound effects for a local community theater. PCs hadn't come along far enough yet for me to trust them for reliable quality playback and burning my own CDs hadn't been heard of yet. There were so many effects that needed precise timing that i decided to go for 1/4" reel instead of cassette so that i could splice in leader tape with cue numbers written on it for rapid, accurate cuing. During intermission a couple of young kids came running up to ogle all the equipment, and one pointed at the ol' Akai GX260D and asked, "what's that thing?" I said it was a tape recorder. She got really confused and pointed at the Tascam 122 deck i was recording the performance with and said, "no, that's a tape recorder. what's that HUGE thing?"

I think a little nostalgic part of me died that day. ;)

Dave T2, I know what you mean about being nostalgic for the whole mechanical recording process. I was dubbing some audio tapes the other day and just sat there watching the 10.5" reels spin on my Technics RS-1500US reel-to-reel machine. It's really fun when I fire up my Sony BVH-2800 1" video machine, it is a loud, visceral, mechanical beast with lots of knobs, buttons, blinking lights and rapidly spinning parts.

What I don't miss are the analog tape artifacts.

Regarding the pre-echo on the Led Zep track, it was intentional, you just loaded the multitrack tape backwards and recorded the echo or reverb. I have used that trick on several occasions when it was appropriate.

hm, its a different effect John.


at 4.00

You mean the ramping up reverse reverb to the start of the vocal, it gets louder.
But this effect is a ghost vocal, before it happens - and its forwards, and constant level.

I think all they did was copy the vocal onto quarter inch, then dub back onto a spare track - a bit earlier than the original. Then mix it back in the mix.

Sorry is this is getting OT. But it is tape related at least. :)

Paul.

"I suppose i've noticed pre-print through more than post-print through, but usually because the dynamics of music *tend* to be a sudden loudness followed by a longer decay."

I've only had to deal with one tape with print through and it was "pre" and it was quite noticeable. I think what the wiki was also getting at is quieter passages don't print through as much as the louder because of the B/H curve of the magnetic media.

Bob.

Back in the analog tape days it was 'usually' common practice to play or 'library wind' and store the tapes "tails out' so any print-through would be post echo. Some tape formulations were more prone to print-through than others as was with higher tape level calibration. On some projects we were setting the op level at 6dB over 250 nWb/m, which was real hot.
I think I recall Eddie Kramer saying that WLL vocal pre-echo was not initially intended, but decided to leave it anyway.

If you flip a multitrack tape over which runs it backwards, play a vocal track through an external echo device and record that to another track then flip the tape back over, the vocal echo won't be reversed, it will just occur earlier than the original. Of course in the old, old days, echo was accomplished using tape, like an Echoplex, or by mixing in the playback head of a machine with separate record and playback heads. Of course, the amount of delay was a function of tape speed and physical distance from the record head to the playback head.

"or by mixing in the playback head of a machine with separate record and playback heads. Of course, the amount of delay was a function of tape speed and physical distance from the record head to the playback head."

By the mid-1970s, there were outboard analog phase shifters, often controlled by an obsessive-compulsive chain-smoking engineer whose eyes were glued to a dual trace o-scope, and with a steady hand on a large bakelite knob, the purpose being to chase the phase of the signal patched to the downstream dubbing head as closely as possible with the master. I alluded to this briefly in my previous post about the obsession with cleaning, as a minor capstan slip in an otherwise good vocal recording could make everyone involved in the session very angry. No wonder musicians smoked!

As a 23 y/o college-educated musician, these sessions were more valuable than all the tuition my parents had paid to get me to that point, and the visual memories have stuck indelibly ever since.

Our sessions were at the American Recording Studios in Denver, that at the time had the distinction of being one of only two studios in the country with full 24-track mastering on 2" tape.
Sorry for the digression.

I did some more research about the Zep effect. Turns out Jimmy Page himself is on record saying it was indeed a tape flip! Nice one John. And the engineer at the time refused to believe it would work. The engineer didn't want to push up the track fader to hear the result. Page made him do so and there it was - a prefect result.
One thing that throws me sometimes is the term 'echo'. Some people actually mean 'reverb' when talking about echo. When i used to work in a music shop years ago, i got dumbed down listening to customers asking for 'an echo effect' when in fact they really wanted a reverb. So we a really talking about Delay here - ie. the real use of the term 'echo'.
That now makes more sense. No fading. Just a single repeat.
John - i want to thank you for pointing this out, i knew it was intentional but never knew 'how' it was achieved - i have learned something new today! thanks.

Paul.