Thanks, I will try that, and let you know. Also, I looked at that website of yours. Really neat setup! Are all of those older looking electronics so you can play old formats if you need to or are they for some special use.
You are just starting out, but I'm an old geyser, and alleged on these forums to be curmudgeonly also.
I have been collecting music seriously since I was quite young. In those days there was a mix of 78s and LPs. The LP introduced in 1948, a year after I was born gradually took over from the 78 during my early childhood. I have been a serious collector of LPs since age 7 and have a fairly decent collection. The
turntables you see have been with me most of my life, those three since my early college days, although some of the arms have changed.
The turntable on the left is mainly for playing 78 rpm discs. The dedicated preamp for this turntable is a Quad 22 tube model from the early sixties. It contains all the EQ curves for most 78s ever pressed. Different companies required different playback curves for their discs. The two outer turntables are Garrard 301s, which were first produced in the late fifties and set an entirely new standard in disc reproduction, and is one of the great landmark products in the history of audio. The arm on the left is the Decca ffss, with 78 and LP heads. Designed by Stan Kelly, and introduced at the dawn of the stereo LP era was another landmark product. The other arms are SME, one a Mk III the other a MK II improved.
Now to the
tape decks. Above the turntables in the middle is a mastering professional cassette deck from 1984.
On the left of that is a Revox A77 MK II two track high speed. This machine I restored from a pretty sorry state. It plays and records tape in one direction, there two audio tracks for stereo. It plays at 15 and 7.5 inches per second. Just above it is a dbx II encode/decode noise reduction unit. There were a few prerecorded tapes made in this format by Barclay Crocker and I have a few.
The machine on the right, is a machine that I acquired in pretty decent shape, but it did not work due to a couple of serious faults. The most difficult to solve was the fact that the capstan motor clocking chip was down and NLA. This is a Revox A 77 MK IV four track standard speed. Tape speeds are 7.5 ips and 3.75 ips. The tape has two sides. On side one stereo tracks are 1 and 3, on side two when you turn over the tape, stereo tracks are tracks 2 and 4. There were a lot of tapes prerecorded in this format by the major companies. The stacked four track head was introduced by RCA in 1959. The stereo tape proceeded the stereo LP by quite a few years. In the early to mid fifties, tape machines were introduced with staggered heads for left and right stereo channels. The problem was that there was no standard head spacing, so different recording companies tapes were made for different brands of machines. I have a few staggered head tapes in my possession and can record them to wave lab and synchronize the tracks.
The staggered head machines quickly gave way to the stacked two track machines. Prerecorded 7.5 ips two track tapes from this era have astonishing fidelity. I have quote a few. The introduction of the prerecorded four track tape in 1959 was a retrograde step as far as fidelity was concerned, but doubled playing time. Later tapes were made with Dolby B noise reduction, and this improved things greatly. I have some of those that have very good fidelity. The unit with the polished fascia above the four track A77, is an old Advent Dolby B noise reduction unit.
The machines in the rack are a bespoke Brenell MK 6 with parabolic tape path.
This is a very rare machine. There were quite a few made for the BBC. This machine was made for me in 1974. Speeds are 15, 7.5 and 3.75 ips. It can record and play back two track stereo. In addition to two track erase, playback and record heads, it has a fourth head which is a quarter track playback head, so it can play back quarter track tapes. This machine is one of two machines I obtained in 1974 to make professional recordings.
The machine below that is a Revox MK I two track high speed. It has professional Dolby A noise reduction units above it, one for each track. This machine I restored from an absolutely worn out state. This was a landmark machine, produced by Herr Willi Studer, of Studer Revox Switzerland. It was the worlds first solenoid operated, feedback tachometer controlled tape deck.
It was superior to the huge studio machines of the era. The early Beetles Abbey road recordings were made on machines just like that.
The other tape machine, the big one the other side of the audio work station, is a Revox A 700 two track three speed machine. This is the other tape machine I acquired in 1974 to record professionally.
Above the A 700 is a Panasonic Digital Audio Tape Deck, (DAT). This was a digital cassette based rotating head format, now obsolete. Sampling rate is 48 K rather than the CD 44K. Above that is a professional dbx 1 encode/decode noise reduction unit for the A 700.
Above the audio work station is a now very rare PC X-1 digital recording system.
The first digital recording system, was the Digital Audio Stationary Head System (DASH). This was developed jointly by the BBC and 3M. 3M did not pursue it long, but makers of studio tape machines such as Studer produced them for many years. CDs were mastered on such machines for many years. The advantage was that it allowed for razor blade editing, like the analog machines, they developed from. PC based editing was still way in the future.
The PC-X1 system was a VHS tape based rotating head digital recording system. It appeared in 1984, when I adopted it. After a few years it was superseded by DAT.
I used to do almost all the outside broadcast classical music recording for the UND public radio station KFJM FM in Grand Forks ND for many years as a public service. The big analog machines were very heavy, but the big issue was that the machines used a reel of 10.5" diameter tape every 30 minutes. Running costs were about $40 per hour. So the digital system reduced my out of pocket expenses considerably.
Now of course recoding is done on the
digital work station, which allows PC based digital editing and processing. CDs can be compiled to the Red Book standard. The DACs for encode/decode are in the blue rack mounted unit. This is an RME Fireface 800 connected to the mother board by Firewire 800 connection.
So this is the reason you see that equipment. It makes this set up part museum which fascinates visitors, but it also makes this studio one of the most comprehensive archiving studios on the planet.
I suspect this equipment is unfamiliar to you, and there is a good chance you have never seen a reel to reel machine in operation or heard one.
