OT: just for those intersted about analog tape

[Bill Vermillion]

On Thu, Jan 06 17:37 , while denying his reply is spam, Walter Vaughan 
prattled on endlessly saying: 

> John Esak wrote:

> >Is this true?  If so, how would anyone ever get new tape for their old
> >machines?

> JE, you of all people should realize that this is capitalism at work. 
> Someone will cobble up a line that can make the tape at a PROFIT. It 
> doesn't take 250 people to make high quality tape.

But it does take some expensive equipment.  At one time we were
rejecting 50% of all Ampex tape we received.   Ampex didn't have
any other customers complaining so they sent an FE along with the
salesman to see what the problem was.

We demonstrated the problem.  For one things you needed a
wide-range monitor system and we were the only major studio in the
state not using JBL speakers.  The A room had Westlake cabinets but
we had custom made crossovers as the White and Urei's had problems
that WE didn't like.  We put in some extra heavy cabling and got
another 1/2 octave on the bottom end.  The B studio was using Urei
monitors.

If you only recorded rock you would never notice the problem.
But we did strings, voices, horns, in addition to the r'n'r stuff.

And when using full dbx noise-reduction it would become apparent
when low level voices opend up the devices.

The effect was random low level very low frequency noise.  We
called it 'rocks' because it was a sound you would imagine with
5 foot boulder hitting each other.

So each reel of tape was QCed before recording - even though it was
Ampex Grand Master in which each roll was tested end to end for
output and response and chart for each roll matching the serial
number on the roll was included.

About 2 months later they found the problem - the problem which we
were the only studio that complained about it.

It was a bad bearing in a calendaring machine.  Calendaring makes
the tape surface extremely smoothy.  It basically runs the tape
through huge rollers and squeezes it thiner.  The substrate
was  a 1.5 mil plastic material and the coating was in the
range of 1 mil of a proprietary oxide formula.

The bad bearing meant that each time the calernding device made a
rotation and the bad bearing came into play the clearance between
the top and bottom rollers changed and thus the calendared
thickness of the oxide changed.

One of the properties of magnetic tape is that the low frequency
response is dependant upon the thickness of the coating, and this
minor change in thickness of the coating, thus changint the LF
response abruptly causing the soft low freqquency pops.

Quality tape is not easy to make.

One other time we had problems with oxide shedding and it turned
out one of their suppliers had changed the formulation of one
of the solutions they used in making the coating.  While it seemed
to be no problem for all other users, it reacted adversely with
some of the chemical components in the oxide.

Yet another time Scotch/3M came in an took our entire stock of
2" tape as there were problems with it and they want to make sure
no sessions were lost.  We were half-way into a lockout using
226 and we did NOT want to change brands in the middle of the
stream - because no matter how often the tape companies say 
their tapes are compatible with each other - they are NOT - and
we'd align for each batch.

So they found 6 rolls in a studio in San Francisco and flew them to
Orlando overnight so we could continue.

> If someone's willing to pay, the market will supply.

The problem is that high-quality costs.  In low volum it costs even
more.  We were in the $50K+ column from Ampex, Scotch and Agfa -
though we did not do that much with each they did this to be
competitive.   That meant it only cost us about $125 for each
2" roll of master tape that was capable of 16 minutes of music
maxium.  Rolling tape at 30 ips consumes a LOT of tape in a hurry.

First column costs were about $175 and list was $225.  One or two
local dealers would get tape from us as we'd sell it cheaper than
their vendor.  The duplicating company in the building next to ours
used so much tape that a semi from Opeleka would drop off about
1/3 of a load there, and then travel to Miami for shipment to
SA.

And the prices I quote are from 20 years ago - and everything has
gone up.  With lower volume it will go up even more.

> Look at Nexus. They figured out how to print on plastic very
> early in the game. Who knows. If you can print ink, why can you
> not print iron oxide at Nexus?

Printing iron oxide onto plastic is about where the recording
industry was in the early 1950s.   Since analog quality is highly
dependant upon the medium it's a precision operation.

> I mourn the fact that they appeared to stop fighting 1-1/2
> years ago. This company saw the writing on the wall. They just
> gave up, hoping that tomorrow never came. But, their last new
> product announcement was in 2003 for professional firewire
> drives.

That was Quantegy or someone else?

> They[1] tell me a long term growth company *has* to replace 20%
> of it core business goods/services EVERY year. Not have new
> customers, but 20% different/more core value items to sell to
> existing customers and new customers. In five years you should
> be selling less than 20% of the same products you sold (or at
> least you've added enough bling and chrome to make it seem
> completely new and improved).

That of course is industry dependant.  The entire magnetic data
industry lost it's way in the US years ago when the decided it was
easier to push the current technology to the limit by chemical
doping to get more output.  They laughed at Sony and others who
were developing metal particle and metal tape.  Sony had problems
with rusting.  The US companies did not want to move forward but
just improve the current product.

The Sony found out how to stop the metal particles from rusting.
The encapsulated them with a ceramic coating and they and the other
forward looking Japanese industrial manufacturer soon owend the
entire industry.   That's part of the technology that made the DAT
and AIT drives so workable.

> The most recent product we've made is door opening weatherstrip
> for 1976-78 Dodge Aspen and Plymouth Volare 2 door hardtops. I
> never imagined that today people would be trying to *restore*
> one of those cars to original condition. The door seals cost
> today about what the value of the car was 7 years ago, but now
> people are willing to pay what is essentially custom-prototype
> production costs.

People like that can be money fountains.   If it can't be found
they will find a way to make it.    Forging new crankshafts isn't
cheap but I've heard of it being done for exotic and expensive
foreign machines.

> I'm starting to sound like ML... cut me off.

It was just getting good.

Bill

-- 
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com