Professional Tape Recorder Specs

[Carl G.]

Ran across specs on Professional RCA Tape Recorder from 1960's.
This is why we're glad we're not in the 'good ol' days'!
RT-21B:
7 1/2ips: 40hz-10Khz +- 2db
15 ips: 50hz-16Khz +- 2db

(small pic wouldn't upload)

[cgrafx]

Ran across specs on Professional RCA Tape Recorder from 1960's.
This is why we're glad we're not in the 'good ol' days'!
RT-21B:
7 1/2ips: 40hz-10Khz +- 2db
15 ips: 50hz-16Khz +- 2db

(small pic wouldn't upload)

dont forget the wow and flutter specs.

and the 5 minutes to rewind or fast forward from one end of the tape to the other.

[Dave Labrecque]

And noise. But I sure do miss the convenience and power of razor blade editing.

[John Ludlow]

But I sure do miss the convenience and power of razor blade editing.

And how the limited number of tracks required and encouraged creativity, genius, and precognition in multi-staged track mixing.

[Dave Labrecque]

And how the limited number of tracks required and encouraged creativity, genius, and precognition in multi-staged track mixing.

Well, I was being sarcastic. But I see that you are not. And I have to agree.

I have to wonder, though, if it points out not so much creativity/genius/precognition so much as loving the result for what it is, rather than for what you think it ought to be. Less choice means more acceptance. And maybe more of an necessity/ability to hear things more esthetically/abstractly and less technically. Right brain over left brain.

[John Ludlow]

Well, I was being sarcastic. But I see that you are not. And I have to agree.

I have to wonder, though, if it points out not so much creativity/genius/precognition so much as loving the result for what it is, rather than for what you think it ought to be. Less choice means more acceptance. And maybe more of an necessity/ability to hear things more esthetically/abstractly and less technically. Right brain over left brain.

No, no - I was being sarcastic. I was thinking of all the times I bounced tracks on my Teac and later wished I could change it. It turns out my precognition is terrible. And I clearly lack the required genius. As a result, ideally, I need to delay my inalterable decisions until the last possible moment. It did put people who could reliably perform within that environment at an advantage. But I was not in that group.

I will say, though, that making a decision to commit to a partial result and and then make future decisions in relation to it, knowing there's no going back - rather than always being able to change everything - does drastically change the process of making music. And, as a result, it also changes the potential outcomes. Sometimes finding a way to react to something flawed produces a result that is off the beaten path and special. Something unique that wouldn't have been possible otherwise.

Back in the sixties there was a period of time where bands were writing their song lyrics that way. Just allowing a stream of consciousness set of words and shadowy concepts to be what the song will be based upon and going with it. Committing to it. As an example, consider, 'A Whiter Shade of Pale'. Absolute nonsense lyrics that somehow form the basis of a poignant song that flows smoothly from one musical emotional image to the next - and still connects over fifty years later.

[Tim Miskimon]

My biggest gripe about digital recording is the playback from one software version to the next becomes more and more impossible as the years pass by.
It doesn't matter what software you used - playing back a recording to remix years later is a big pain in the ass.
In a lot of cases Operating Systems keep you from using previous software, plugins, hard drives, motherboards, etc.
And it just keeps getting worse as time goes on.
It's a constant moving target.

20 years down the road no one is going to even know how to play any of this stuff back because no one keeps notes anymore like was done back in the analog days.
It's sad that you can get a 60-year-old analog tape to playback but not a 20-year-old digital recording.
You can find a working tape machine from the 70s to playback tapes but not a 20-year-old Windows computer with all the right hardware and software to play back a digital recording.

Saw has been pretty good of being backwards compatible but that's not enough.
I have hundreds of multi-track recordings on old IDE drives and Windows 10 lots of time won't read them.
Microsoft created a nightmare for us recording guys when they put all those administrator permission schemes into their software and it's getting worse with each new version of Windows.
Sometimes without warning when I put a hard drive from another machine into my windows 10 machine it won't let me read it - it blocks me out saying "I don't have permission to read the disk".*
Put the drive back into an old XP machine and they work.
In order to get them all to play back right I would need a wall of computers Windows 3.1, 95, 98, Millenium, NT 2000, XP, Windows 7, Windows 10.
The machines would have to have all the original versions of plugins to playback the sessions properly - what an impossible and impractical bunch of bull****!

In the old analog days, you put the tape on the right machine and play it back.
No, it wasn't perfect but at least the machines had a set of standards they went by.
All I can say is make sure to keep backing up every time a new generation of hardware and software becomes the next new thing.
Afterwards make sure the stuff plays back on the new machine.

I've been trying to mix a back log of original songs that goes back to the mid 70s.
About 15 years ago I transferred all the multi-track analog stuff to digital.
Unfortunately, those transfers were done in SawPro and on IDE drives.
Last year I transferred the stuff on the IDE drives to SATA Drives.
The old SAWPro stuff got reset in Saw Studio and then more recently to Saw Studio 64 bit.
The whole thing is very time consuming.
At this point I am doing all my recording in Saw Studio 64 bit, and I'd like to stay right here.
The only reason I moved from XP to Windows 7 to Windows 10 was machine failure.
I'm still doing most of my processing with my old analog processors.
I've grown tired of re-buying plugins every time a machine and/or OS goes south or obsolete on me.

Yeah, digital has so many pluses and the results are wonderful but somewhere along the line we need a set of standards, so our life's work does get lost forever with no way to retrieve it.