Reel to Reel tape questions

the phrase "tape saturation" has always amused me. makes me think of soaking fat into bread.

anyways, i've achieved adequate tape saturation, how might i increase my tape permiation?

i am interested in increasing my level of

tape penetration

tape acceleration

tape masturbation

oh you

not a real dr.hat goes on another meaningless tangent.

On a serious forum might I add.

I just found and bought a Grundig TK-745 reel-to-reel in a local pawn shop for 12,50 euros. I also bought a bunch of tapes, eleven I think, 1 euro per tape.

It's a bit annoying because there's almost no info about this machine on the internet. And it uses all these old cables for audio, a bunch of the connections are for DIN (I think) and there's this old headphone connection that I don't recognize. Maybe somebody knows which one it is?

I don't really get this bit about 'tape saturation': I heard tape saturation occurs when you record while there's no more space left on the tape so to speak I guess?

So how does this induce 'saturation'?

I understand that the 'hotter' you record, the more tape will be used, so the tape will be saturated faster? Also, does tape saturation = tape compression? I can't find any answers that are conclusive anywhere, to be honest.

lol my post sounds like a pisstake when you look at the posts before it, but it isn;t just saying

  Berk said:

I don't really get this bit about 'tape saturation': I heard tape saturation occurs when you record while there's no more space left on the tape so to speak I guess?

 

So how does this induce 'saturation'?

 

I understand that the 'hotter' you record, the more tape will be used, so the tape will be saturated faster? Also, does tape saturation = tape compression? I can't find any answers that are conclusive anywhere, to be honest.

yeah tape saturation and tape compression are pretty much the same thing, the saturation is occurring on the tape and it causes a compression like effect.

As for why, well its a bit of a complex question, and I'm not really techy enough to explain it properly. Analog tape doesnt fill up with data like a cd or waveform, as in the louder it is the more of the width of the tape is used in any one instant in time. It fills up with positively or negatively charged particles that align themselves in a complex way when magnetically charged by the tape head. I would guess that the upper limit to how much 'signal' these particle can hold drops off exponentially as it gets nearer the maximum, rather than just stops at a given point like digital data.

meaning you can pump more volume (electricity at the tape heads) into the tape and as you get louder the amount the particles need to be charged for each extra 'Db' of potential volume gets greater. meaning loud sounds are compressed, sort of.

I think its something like that, it makes sense in my head compared to what i know about tape, but I don't really know much about the why, just the what and how to use it!

I guess the term saturation comes from the fact that the tape is at its limit of how much charge it can hold when its is holding a signal of very high volume.

edit - just re read your post, it sounds like you may have mistaken 'space left on the tape' to mean space in terms of minutes, seconds etc, and that recording hot makes the tape run out quicker. This isnt the case, space on the tape means width ways, any one instant in time along the length of the tape. (though not really cos the tape is analog and the signal doesn't have an 'instant in time' like digital does!). the tape is the same length no matter how saturated it is. to use a digital analogy saturation occurs on a sample by sample basis.

sorry if you didn't mean that, wanted to make sure :)

oh yeah, when it reaches the upper few db of the tapes 'limit' and starts to compress it also distorts slightly, but a really nice warm smooth distortion that you only really get from analog tape, I guess thats part of the 'saturation' too.

Thanks a lot for that reply welcome to the machine, much appreciated!

Yeah I think I kind of meant space in terms of minutes and such. It's kind of weird how this stuff works with tape!

I take it then, that saturation of tape is only measured in dBs? The louder, the more saturation and that's it?

Also, if you overdub a tape that's already got audio on it, will your sound be more saturated than it would normally be, because 'it has to sit next' to all that other audio?

Thanks again for the answers so far, they've been very helpful

i love using my cariole for summa dat dirty tape distortion

I pretty much just record shit straight offa my speakers with that mic and then use the edirol to record off of the cariole speakers, great for ad hoc sampling as i can just leave the mic turned off but the unit in record mode and flip on the mic when i want to record something. One tape, just recorded over and over until it breaks. Makes everything sound lush

  Berk said:

Yeah I think I kind of meant space in terms of minutes and such. It's kind of weird how this stuff works with tape!

yeah, but its very similar with digital, think of saturation as loud volume. Its pretty similar to having a loud waveform that clips, the clipping doesn't effect where anything in the track happens, it just changes the sound while it is loud enough to be occurring! But with tape clipping starts of soft and nice sounding for a few Db's before it turns to full on distortion, but in digital the distortion gets nasty straight away.

  Berk said:

I take it then, that saturation of tape is only measured in dBs? The louder, the more saturation and that's it?

I dont think saturation is really measured at all, not practically anyway. its just what happens when you are pushing the limit of the tape you are using. I guess you could measure it in terms of THD but it wouldnt really give you that much useful info! It would change dependent on the input signal for exampe. On most reel to reel players there are VU meters and if you are in the red you are starting to use tape distortion, I think thats about as tech as it goes for most engineers!

thing is that the width of the tape allows you to have more usable signal before distortion occurs, its like resolution. so for 24 track 2" the resolution is smaller than 16 track 2" because there is less tape space for each track! so measuring saturation, ie distortion, in Db's wouldn't work!

  Berk said:

Also, if you overdub a tape that's already got audio on it, will your sound be more saturated than it would normally be, because 'it has to sit next' to all that other audio?

As far as I am aware you cant record new audio to any one track of a tape without overwriting the previous audio. so say you have one track recorded already at a modest volume and you overdub a new instrument to a new track at a modest volume then neither tape track will have saturated and it will sound normal. if you push the new track a bit then that track will be saturated but the other, original, track will stay the same (generaly speaking, poorer designed tape machines can spread signal across tracks). If you then bounced those two tracks down to a new track then it would probably distort unless you attenuated in some way because the new track would be trying to accommodate two hot trcks into the space of one.

you can think of each track with audio tape as being seperate from the others and seperately distortable, unless the machine is poorly designed. That said the poorly designed machines can sound cool for that reason!

  Berk said:

Thanks again for the answers so far, they've been very helpful

no worries, I am far from having a full knowledge of the subject, only a working knowlege, I'm sure theres peeps around that could correct me on the technicalities!

Cheers again for the info wttm!

also, thought this sound example was interesting, you can really hear the spaceous effect tape gives to this audio, someone from KVRaudio posted this

(there are two bits, in the second bit tape was used)

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.ph...3292554#3292554

sounds really good imo, probably someone with lots of experience in using tape and stuff

I acquired a Akai GX-630DB reel to reel machine 2 days ago for free, from my sister who's ex-boyfriend abandoned it.. its in perfect condition, needless to say im pretty fucking stoked, I've never done reel to reel stuff before.

Been doing some research on it and came across some youtube videos of the pioneers of tape composers.

I bought a bunch of DIN to RCA converters and I had a shitload of fun recording some drums and alpha juno to this thing, glad I bought the right plugs.

Also it has an Echo function (meant for recording only I think) and it works really well, I don't know if it's tape delay or something but I think it sounds similar (at the end only the high comes through and stuff like that). Yeah, I've noticed that it has a really good sound even if you're recording really into the red.

btw, when I brought this recorder home, little green bugs were crawling out of it and stuff lol

Yeah really fun. Can't wait for my sequencer (KAwai Q80) to record some stuff to this