Recent content by Wilhem

When DuPont introduced chromium dioxide tape in the early 1970s the greatest complaint about cassettes was their bias noise. BASF and Philips decided to offer a new playback equalization of 70 microseconds to reduce noise by about 4.7 dB, not knowing that Ray Dolby's noise reduction system would...

The following document is a more detailed explanation of what bias is and does, written in layman's terms. http://www.ant-audio.co.uk/Tape_Recording/Library/Bias.pdf

DAT is not a reliable medium. The expansion and contraction of the base film of a DAT cassette in use is slightly greater than the tracking marks recorded onto the tape. This is an example of "cutting edge" technology were engineers pushed things just a bit beyond the limits of reliability. CDs...

The review above is how tape quality is determined. WernerO admitted that the tape does not sound bad, except for some compression effects, but the numbers indicate that there are far better tapes for far less money. Loading this tape into a housing with known wow and flutter problems makes the...

Tape engineers evaluate quality mainly on the basis of measurements, not just listening. For example, listening to the noise level of a pure chrome and then listening to the noise level of a ferric-cobalt generally suggests the two are not much different. However, listening to the noise level of...

The specifications for the tape do not match up with the marketing claims for its performance. The manufacturer's standard Type I tape was claimed to be a "superferric" that would outperform even the best Type II tapes of the past. Actual test results showed it to be a mechanically poor tape...

If the screeching is also heard through your speakers, it is severe modulation or "violining" that is caused by a number of problems. One problem would be debris, most often fatty acids that have oozed from tape, that sits on the heads and causes tape to stick to the head until the force of...

Not likely. It is not a premium tape and probably pre-dates the development of the unstable polyurethane that broke down. That does not mean that it will not shed oxide or stick to heads, but those symptoms would be due to other causes.

Pure chromium dioxide tapes lose a bit over 1 decibel of output in the first year or two, and the noise also goes down by the same amount. That means that the dynamic range remains the same, but Dolby NR tracking can be compromised. Chromium dioxide tape can also suffer from output losses and...

Test cassettes: the first two for proposed style, the third is for sound quality straight from Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs.

It is a basic ferric oxide tape. There were two tapes better at the time: Studio, which was a formulation with a more advanced oxide for better performance at slower speeds, and Professional, which was a back-coated ferric designed for 7.5 and 15 ips.

I don't know if BASF A.G. sold tape to TEAC for these cassettes, but I do know that any experimentation was confined to laboratories and not allowed out of the factory. The chrome and ferric audio tapes sold to duplicators had very tight tolerances, and any tape that slightly exceeded or fell...

High-speed duplication keeps the tape from direct contact with the duplication heads because at speeds of 80:1 there is an air barrier between tape and head. This the only thing I can think of that would make one method more "suitable" than the other. Unfortunately, the tape has to come into...

The use of chrome by duplicators was about 20% of the total production from music labels. WEA temporarily tried TDK SA but soon gave that up. No other major music label or major duplicator used cobatl-enhanced ferric tape. Many duplicators used digital bins with HX Pro on the slaves for either...

LP35 simply means "long play, 35-micron total thickness." It is a basic ferric tape. If it were a higher quality version, it might be LP35 LH for "low noise, high output" or LHS for "low noise, high output super" for decent recordings at slower speeds.. The R in a tape series simply meant the...