THIS IS HOW A 24 TRACK TAPE MACHINE WORKS!

Comments · 484

• TH

  @TheDogPa · 6 years ago

  If you didn't ever wake up hearing 1k tones, you never worked in a real studio as a second...LOL!

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• DA

  @dawoudtherenegadesufi · 6 years ago

  In 1988 I got my first job as a recording engineer. We had one of these machines. And yes, it is a gigantic pain in the ass to operate and maintain!<br><br>I was also the in-house studio musician, and played guitar, bass, and occasionally keyboards (even though I don&apos;t know how to play keyboard - but, you do what you gotta do). I&apos;d sometimes do punch ins by holding a pen between my teeth &nbsp;and hitting record, while playing guitar.<br><br>Now, when I first got that job, I didn&apos;t know anything about recording either! But the guy who owned the studio showed me a few things. After two or three days of training, he tells me that this night, a Salsa band was coming in, and were recording AND mixing their whole album that night. Then he hands me the keys to the studio and goes home. Mind you, I&apos;d been a recording engineer, three days, never ran a recording session before, and to top it off, I was in recovery from alcohol and cocaine addiction (I&apos;ve been clean 31 years now). Well, I survived the session and the clients were happy with the results.<br><br>Aligning the channels,,, Dear God! Seriously painstaking work. One mistake, and you&apos;re cooked. <br><br>Wow,,, you sure bring back a lot of memories. Thanks for posting the video!

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• RO

  @rogerfurer2273 · 6 years ago

  Congrats on getting a real work horse! I began my studio tech career on an early model of that very beast. It did not have separate settings for low and high speed, so if they wanted to record at a different speed, I had to show up and calibrate every channel for the new requirement. At least one hour per drawer! And I won&apos;t mention the headaches of the transport logic, or the AutoLocater II--which was made before printed circuit boards came into being. There must have been 4 or 5 of those machines in Honolulu when i was active and I serviced them all. <br>Each studio had their own calibration tape. They were full track tapes, no separate &nbsp;tracks--very important for azimuth settings of the heads. And the manual! I hope you have one of those huge yellow 3-ring binders. It has all the procedures described, plus schematics of every circuit board. MCI was still MCI in those days and I had many conversations with the techs there. They were always very helpful.<br>The definition of distortion is the difference between the input and the output. The tape recording process itself has distortion--the output is different from the input--in the frequency response. I used to record a CD onto a new tape, once the calibration was finished. The studio owner and I would listen to the input--straight from The CD player--and then switch to the playback head. The usual response was &quot;That sounds better!&quot; The tape has a &apos;fuller&apos; sound or &apos;warmer&apos; or something. And recording on slow speed actually increases the bass response. I think the roll-off is down to almost 20Hz. High speed starts rolling off just below 40Hz and is -3dB at 30Hz. So for low end, the slow speed is great. And the high end is still above 19KHz. Not too bad. The main difference between the hi and lo speeds is the noise floor. Hi speed has less noise. But I couldn&apos;t really hear it, though I could see it on an oscilloscope.<br>Anyway it is nice to see one of my old friends again, doing that which it was designed to do; making music.<br>Aloha.

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• ES

  @Espresso101 · 6 years ago

  I would love to see a follow up video of how the tape machine is patched to your mixer, converters, etc. &nbsp;Almost like a tutorial on how to integrate a tape machine into your home studio.

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• MI

  @mikemartin6554 · 6 years ago

  I had NO idea there was SO much tech involved with analog. Brilliant video....you are a terrific host.

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• CY

  @cyorkgo · 6 years ago

  At first I thought this was a joke but I had to remember that most people watching this video have no clue what a tape machine is other than using a plugin... which is NOTHING like tracking to real tape. Man, the memories, the razor blades, the accidents...lol ... splicing tape was an art. If you really want to hear what tape can do, track using REAL instruments like trumpets, saxophones, drums guitars and basses... oh the saturation... especially on a &nbsp;nice horn section.

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• JA

  @jackbrowning511 · 4 years ago

  I too have. JH24 tape 2” and 1/4”, very cool machines I hope you get many years of fun with yours!!!!

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• YA

  @yawzaaaa · 6 years ago

  Ow I remember doing 24Track edits for a producer, lots of edits from 1 song to the other, after it was done he said &quot;ow lets go back to the originals&quot;. Shit luckily I had put arrows on the tapepieces I took out for the direction of the tape, and I had numbered them, so I could actually put it back together. Edit block, a razor and splicing tape, white marker to do edits.<br>Another thing was spot-erasing, we used this to erase ticks etc. Cue up te tape and mark on the back of the tape the beginning with a white mark and the ending. Then there was a setting on the machine (Lyrec) to put the machine into record but without the pinchroller pressingthe tape to the capstan. Now you could move the tape by hand back and forth betwee your two markers over the erasehead. Thank god for harddisk recording/editing!

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• HE

  @HensleyDon · 6 years ago

  As someone who learned on and is a fan of tape, it is not possible to bore me.

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• AZ

  @azeguitarist1 · 6 years ago

  If I ever had a romanticized notion to use tape, you just squashed it! 🤣tape maintenance is a full time gig!

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• TG

  @tgkpasa · 11 months ago

  They had this technology and still made the best music! Incredible

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• RJ

  @rjmprod · 6 years ago

  Brilliant... I was an Engineer in a Philly studio in the late 70&apos;s and early 80&apos;s and I miss these big elephants..We had Studer 24 tracks and Harrison and Spectra Sonics &nbsp;boards.

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