Sending a Digital Mix through Tape: Can You Hear the Difference?

Ok I'll be the first out of 165 comments to say that C was mono.

To me it sounded the best at 7.5IPS

Of course, this deck could be calibrated to yield more high end in the recording, vs the slight cut it exhibited... or a choice of tape might fo the same... 3 3/4 is just too slow to achieve a hifi result. Bearing in mind that these speeds were all based on the cost contingent, what could be done on a consumer level deck, vs diminished returns... etc. One thing i used to do is get some very fine thin adhesive tape and increase the size of the pinch roller, effectively doubling the IPS... which will throw the bias way off, but give you a heck of a lot more headroom and a ton more high frequency push! It shows you how vastly tape speed changes the resolution of the recording... and will draw things out of the mix that you didn’t even know was there! A metal capable cassette deck, or 3 head cassette, like a Teac i had, was able to give great sound, as was a BIC, which had 2 speeds, one 2x the standard. And DBX equipped decks can really pull your bass program together and make the bass guitar and kick drum congeal in a way that's very funky and is an all but lost art today. It's a shame that there aren't any high level artists that occasionally delve into the world of less than digital hifi. The Black Keys recorded famously on a vintage tascam 388 1/4" 8 track, otherwise known as 6-track with 2 optional fuzzy drop out channels (i never had that problem, but i always serviced mine when that happened. Something you should learn, if you plan on going analog, as most engineers could perform basic servicing of their analog decks, in the day).

A good way to do this, as with all three head recorders, is to make the recording and transfers in one fell swoop. This way if you have a dead spot or any wrinkle or blemish in the tape, you can heat it in real time, stop and restart the transfer. Also, There is a little more fresh vitality in a magnetic recording that is just a half second old, that quickly fades in scant seconds, to the stable state it will stay... like when you flood a glow in the dark object with light for a second, and it glows brightly for that first moment... if you can catch that first moment of the tape still 'glowing' you'll have a better representation of your analog recording. Plus it's a much faster process.

Very Nice !! I always wondered about this ...Thanks Bro!! I just like that hallow feel of tape ....It seems just a little less harsh !! ...I think it relaxes me more!! I was even think maybe part of the reason people don't listen 2 whole albums is because digital becomes more irritable over time !!??? I think it is a good idea to have both !!!

Wow I'm honestly impressed. Did not think it would make that much of a difference. Now an interested debate. An actual recording made on tape, versus a digital record copied on tape. Can you tell the difference? Hmmm...

Guessed right. Surprised at how much high end was cut out - huge difference. Makes me wonder about pushing more treble to tape. It smoothed out out but the digital mix sounded best.

I guessed that C was the original and I preferred both A and B to C.

I had no idea which version was which but i was like the B version was my favorite. I thought A was the daw but i knew i could be wrong because in the C version there was lot of high freq so… but B was my favorite version

Hey dude! How do you like get started with tape? Basically, I'm thinking about getting a tape recorder (something small and cheap) and hooking it up to my Behringer xenyx 1202fx mixing desk (how do I do that), then recording and mixing on the aforementioned mixer + tape setup, and then doing mix down to Logic Pro and doing some final mixing and mastering before releasing. That should preserve the tape dynamics and quality whilst making good use of Logoc Pro X. The only issue is I've got Basically zero clue on how to get started regarding which cassette recorder to get and how to hook it up to my desk to get multitrack recording and be able to mix on the tape as I'd do in Logic?

Can you explain the wiring

I got all of them correct!

C - A - B from left to right

I'm looking for camera suggestions and I like the way this looks. Can you tell me which camera you used?

A sounded the best in my opinion

Cool music you make ❤

I just picked up a similar quality machine. I’m looking forward to experimenting with it. More likely in a hibred type way.

Tape definitely rounds off the top end. I watched a vid the other day and the tape at 15”/sec was so subtle it hardly seemed worth it.

7.5 opens the mix a lot. Great demo. Thank you!

Yeah is mono for sure. Oops.