analogman_digitalworld wrote:
Even today, what would I do if someone came into my studio with a 9-track tape of Soundstream data? Or a Betamax with DBX Digital audio? Or a 3M Digital master, or an X850 tape, or Prodigi or -- or -- or...
It seems odd to me that digital systems go obsolete yet analog systems are "re-manufactured". And just how are these analog machines maintained so well. Oh there are schematics, drawings, and documentation on how they operate. Boy the digital guys sure messed up on that one. Not one shred of documentation to be able to keep those dig beasties alive.
In 1990 or so (only 4 years after the last run of machines came out of Mitsubishi), Chicago Recording Company was delivered a Mitsubishi X80 master to use as part of a re-issue project. They had a working machine, and their own file tapes would play, but the delivered master wouldn't.
There was no support from Mitsubishi, and in three days of calling around, they couldn't figure out why the machine wouldn't play the audio. They sent the tape to Nashville (where there were quite a few of the machines in the day, and a few still working) and had several studios try to play it to make a copy. Finally, by chance, the tape ended up on the machine it was originally recorded on (which had been bought at a closing sale). It wouldn't play. The engineer, as a last resort, twisted the azimuth screw, and -- briefly -- a choppy kind of music came out. Then it wouldn't play again.
For compatability's sake, the azimuth stability of these machines is critical, and there is an azimuth adjusting screw. Unfortunately, nobody (not even Mitsubishi, apparently) ever made an alignment tape for them, so every machine on earth is different, and fractional azimuth errors caused the error correction to be overwhelmed.
There's an example of a machine that cannot be made to perform properly, no matter how much energy is put into it, because the tools to make it right were never made, the installed base (200 total machines at its peak) is shrunken, and the technology was abandoned before anyone developed technical proficiency with it.
Dr. Thomas Stockham, from MIT, founded Soundstream in 1975 and made the first commercial digital recording in 1976. Telarc released the first Digital to LP recordings in 1978 and CDs in 1982. The Soundstream recorder sampled at 50kHz and had to be down sampled to 44.1kHz. Today Telarc is releasing on SACD from the original Soundstream masters, material that has not been heard in the sample rate of the original recording for nearly 30 years.
While Soundstream was an interesting concept (Delta-mod at a high sample rate, just like SACD and DBX digital) it had its own problems: Horrible phase shift in the converters (from the anti-aliasing filters), no dither and no error correction, which meant that low level signals tended to be overwhelmed by error. This was when people started talking about how digital "took away the ambience" of a recording.
I'm thrilled that Telarc has found both a working nine-track drive and a working Soundstream decoder. They are probably the only place to have such a combination, as the original installed base of Soundstream systems was about 20. If they can play back those tapes without having to re-draw half the waveforms in DAW, they're beating the odds like nobody else.
Need 3M... I know where 2 are within 30 minutes drive
Need Prodigi... Throw a rock they are everywhere
Betamax... Come on there's got to be one out there somewhere and easier to find than trying to get a 40 track 2" to play back on a 24 track Studer.
I know where quite a few broken and dis-used machines are as well. I don't have a protocol for playing one of these masters though.
40-track Stephens would be difficult to play back properly without a Stephens 40-track machine, but I could play it back and hear sound on any machine in the building. Within a week I could get a headstack made and wired-up, if it were important enough. Orphaned digital files are silent.
I love analog. I love how big (size) and warm (heat) and the the smell of analog tape winding on the reels... I'm serious... I do. I love the sound of analog.
This fetishism regarding analog technologies is retarded. The systems work, are reliable, robust and universal. That's enough for me. I don't particularly care what they look like or smell like, and I think digital systems have advanced to the point that -- regarding basic sound quality -- I have no real complaint with them. The current 24-bit systems sound fine, when properly executed.
Sound is not even an issue worth discussing until archival performance and moment-to-moment reliability are realized. Digital systems expect you to back up your work continuously -- a tacit admission that the data aren't safe.
The digital recording culture is also a debatable point, as the facilities and tricks at the disposal of the engineer become the defining characteristics of a generation of music, but I digress.
-steve
) The first magnetic wire recordings sound like hell as well but they can be played back.