On Sunday 26 February 2006 19:08, Maluvia wrote: Now thoroughly off topic, but what the hell... Existing digital technology quite handily exceeds the performance of any one track, or all 24 in parallel, in that 24 track recorder. Analog recordings best snr would be around 70db, and thats only done on very expensive tape formulations, the rest will be around 66db just from the hiss of the individual particles of the meduim going by. Run the tape fast enough and you'll move the majority of that spectrum into the ultrasonic ranges, essentially beyond the *average* ears detectability range. 15 ips helps, 30 is even better and at one point 60 ips was being mentioned but I've never had the pleasure of hearing those myself. 30 I have many times, and I thought it was very good indeed. One final note, most of the tape used on 2" 24 track machines was actually made for use as video tape in the quadruplex format, so the grain orientation for best performance wasn't lengthwise for good audio, and frankly it sucked at audio, but for the cross tape video tracks made by the video head as it spun at 14,400 rpms while the tape moved at 7.5 ips, or for really old first generation stuff, 15 ips. As for digital versions of that, then the range of the a/d itself becomes the limit, same as the file itself, and doubtfull it will exceed 20 bits on an everyday basis. This is 50 to 70db better than tape, so we may as well get used to it. I submit that the perceived 'superior' perfomance of good analog tape recorders, of any track width, is more a long term ear training result than anything else, after all, we have been listening to such machinery, faithfully encoded even on our cd's, and before that on our lp records of yesteryear, for 3 or 4 generations now. Do that for 55 years, and the ear thinks thats what its supposed to sound like, effectively becoming its 'Gold Standard'. The single exception to that I can recall would be the panasonic Technics RS-1500, I swear that machine could burn a track so hard you could see it on the back side of the tape. It rather handily could record 12 to 14 db louder a signal on the tape than any other deck I ever tangled with and stay below 2% distortion doing it. A phenominal machine for its time back in about 1980ish. Note that with the advent of digital recording, this use of analog tape as the intermediate storage medium is being used less and less all the time, so the distortion & noise artifacts of the tape are slowly disappearing. I sometime wonder if little niggly itches some get about the sound of so-and-so's newest albun isn't somehow related to this even if the cd is only 16 bit as the difference can easily be heard even at 16 bits. That diff of tape or no tape isn't always that obvious, and I had that hammered into me one evening in about 1961 when I had a chance to listen to one of Emory Cooks 78 rpm lp's that had been recorded in trinidad, live to disk, of some of their then infamous steel drum bands. No tape in the path, straight from Altec M21 mics thru the preamps & to the cutter head making the master. The hair stood up on the back of my neck, it was that real. There was stuff from the background crickets at 17khz or more that was as live and real as if I had been standing in the middle of those crickets myself. Even the whispers of the drummers as they kept each other in step, probably 55db below the drums, could be heard well enough to understand it if they were using english, which some didn't. It was then I also appreciated that both the turntable playing that record, and the turntable that cut it, were the then famous Fairchild Battleships. With properly mounted motors and arms, those things can dissappear into what can only be described as seismic noises. Very very difficult to hear on speakers that don't do well below 15hz. It was then that I really did understand that good audio performance by ones equipment was always judged to be good more because the rig was built or bought to suit the owner, than in the last nuance the current craze for oxygen free speaker cables (thats all sales dweeb speak folks) can ever make. As long as you get the best your budget allows, you WILL think its the best ever, or will have plans to replace what you perceive is the weakest link and then it WILL be the best. And DO break the budget if you ever come across one of Cooks 78 rpm lp's still in playable condition after all these years. Use a fresh, 0.3x0.7 thousanths eliptical tipped diamond needle, set at about 3/4 gram, in a Shure V-15 cartridge in a good arm and on a good turntable, sit back and enjoy the acoustic experience of a lifetime. But clean it first, with dish soap and warm water, and a velvet pad to remove as much of the decades of grime you can from the grooves, then rinse well with distilled water so you don't leave its minerals behind as it dries. Don't play it first as that will just further embed the grit into the plastic. They are priceless recordings of yesterdays excellence, please treat them with the respect they deserve. The material he recorded can best be described as eclectic, he even did earthquakes, but did use tape for that so he could speed them up for playback. Sounded a lot like thunder except the big clap wasn't always at the start of the sound. I know by now I've bored all the knowitalls here to tears, so I'll go back to my corner now. -- Cheers, Gene People having trouble with vz bouncing email to me should add the word 'online' between the 'verizon', and the dot which bypasses vz's stupid bounce rules. I do use spamassassin too. :-) Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above message by Gene Heskett are: Copyright 2006 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.