Topic: Metal tape masters

[balou2]

So, I was cleaning out my soundroom, and came upon a little stash of master cassettes that I never digitized.  Several are normal (high) bias tapes, but one in particular is a metal cassette (Maxell MX-S) from a Merle Saunders show I did about 10 years ago.  I popped it in to the deck, and it has a tremendous amount of noise - hiss, if you will. 

My original source was Soundboard > D5 master cassette.  I sealed all my master cassettes years ago to keep them free"ER" from air and moisture, and they are stored in a dark, dry area.

I no longer have the deck I recorded it on (go figure), but have a nice Sony ES 3-head deck that has been well-cared for and is not inducing noise on anything else.  A couple questions/facts/queries:

• I inspected the tape under an editing light, and see no noticeable degradation
• The recording itself is NOT the best.  Levels fluctuate as the guy running the board that night kept tweaking the matrix-out.  The highest peaks are at around +6db (which is fine for metal), but these are mostly drum snaps and bass bombs.  Overall tape saturation is relatively poor.  Do the properties of metal tapes demand greater saturation to reap the benefits?
• Is there any way to remove this? I'm guessing not, but maybe I'm missing some sort of filter

[balou2]

can you adjust the head?
I've found the slightest adjustment to the tape tracking path makes a big diff., almost more than the dolby use itself. By adjusting the head with dolby on, you can really maximize the frequencies available, and quite often get over that muffled effect that dolby casts on some tapes on playback.
A friend of mine was recently ranting about the use of the higher grade tapes that we used back in the day. He was finding in his transfers, that his older lower bias tapes sounded batter than the one made with the higher grade tapes that we used as technologies advanced. So maybe you're right on in your estimation?
I always rode the ragged edge of over-saturation, so I don't really have the s/nr thing to deal with.
:shrugs: I like em all.

Tried it.  That helped a slight bit, but in a different way.  I didn't use metal much when I was doing analog...not really sure why I used it for this show, other than Merle said I could patch out of the board, so I may have grabbed the best tape I could find.  C'est la vie.

[rocksuitcase]

Do the properties of metal tapes demand greater saturation to reap the benefits? [/li]

[/quote]
In my opinions:

YEs.  It turns out that the Metal tapes did need to be saturated as best as can be to have the signal to noise be greater than certain normal or High bias tapes. 

Playback technoilogy does affect it but I suspect you had a certain amount of SBD induced noise as well, every open channel of a SBD can add a small amount of noise and when some instruments are not playing or quiet in the mix the "noise floor" can increase.

My experience with my analog masters is that some metals do seem to be "noisier" than other tape types.  On the other hand, there is obviosly more bass and mid range signals on the tapes due to the metal  tape characteristics.  The tapes I made with no Dolby seem to have more dynamic range than the ones made with Dolby, but ymmv ( may have varied- in proper tense)

[balou2]

  Do the properties of metal tapes demand greater saturation to reap the benefits? [/li]

[/quote]
In my opinions:

YEs.  It turns out that the Metal tapes did need to be saturated as best as can be to have the signal to noise be greater than certain normal or High bias tapes. 

Playback technoilogy does affect it but I suspect you had a certain amount of SBD induced noise as well, every open channel of a SBD can add a small amount of noise and when some instruments are not playing or quiet in the mix the "noise floor" can increase.

My experience with my analog masters is that some metals do seem to be "noisier" than other tape types.  On the other hand, there is obviosly more bass and mid range signals on the tapes due to the metal  tape characteristics.  The tapes I made with no Dolby seem to have more dynamic range than the ones made with Dolby, but ymmv ( may have varied- in proper tense)
[/quote]
You know...as simple as it sounds, I didn't consider the noise from the board, though the true audible noise I hear extends past the music, so I know it's the tape.  Thanks for the insight Rock! +t

[Roving Sign]

I never cared for Metals...for the above reasons...

In fact - toward the end of my analog days...I was using NORMAL tapes...Maxell XLIS's

You could run them suprisingly hot and they would get this really nice, plump mid range...totally different animal than chome or metal formulas...

[rocksuitcase]

I Agreew ith the "warmness" of high quality ( Maxell or TDK) normal bias tapes.  I had a friend who went the same way with his D5M after a while.

balou2, maybe with this tape you can reduce the noise by compressing it just slightly.
also, what about runnig it through some sort of analog N.R.device such as an outboard dbX unit ( or Dolby SR etc)  some sort of more "studio" type of analog noise reduction.?? 

[RebelRebel]

Waves X Noise is great.

Algorithmix Noise Reduction is phenomenal. One of the best.