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Author Topic: Zero bit recording  (Read 17263 times)

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Offline Gutbucket

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Re: Zero bit recording
« Reply #45 on: July 31, 2024, 05:42:24 PM »
Agreed that three cards is the safer bet and probably the best way way to go.  If you weren't mixing down to 2-ch stereo until later I'd suggest an omni in the middle, as i suspect that would make for a better addition to a standard NOS pair, providing low-frequency extension and weight on the low-end and some openness up top without collapsing the stereo image as much in the cardioid "presence region" when blended in at the same level as a cardioid.

From my own experience with dialing in the level of the center vs the L/R pair afterward by ear- it's very satisfying to do, but usually a bit of fidgety thing to get perfect, so probably best to go with a safe, somewhat lower level from the center mic. Without playing around with it via trial runs in that venue or one similar it'll be difficult to nail perfectly, and even then the optimal mix will vary from performance to performance.  Too much center will make the resulting recording overly mono and sort of boring, while none at all will just revert to standard NOS (or whatever config you setup the outer pair as), so the safer bet will be to use a bit less center "blend" than you might otherwise be tempted to use.  Obviously nothing you don't already know here.

Ideally, the presence of that center microphone allows you to space the L/R mics farther apart, or angle them more widely, or a bit of both, but that's counter to the needs of the situation you describe, so just plan to use less of the center.  If you were in a situation where you were able to space them or angle them more widely, you could expect to be abler to use more level from the center mic.  For example, the 3 supercardioid channels that make up the L/C/R center portion of my current arrangement usually get mixed down to stereo with C at around the same level as the L/R pair.  But while the angle between the L and R mics is the same as NOS (90 degrees), the spacing between them is around twice NOS spacing, which accommodates the center microphone while keeping the L/R pair angled forward as much as I like.  Without the center channel, that wider arrangement would produce a weak center, but with the center mic in use that change allows more room for it in the mix.

But you might consider widening the L/R angle a bit, even if that will point the L/R pair somewhat farther off-axis from the PA.  Doing that won't make the array any wider physically so it wont impact sightline concerns, and a wider angle is likely to be less of a potential problem outdoors than it might indoors.  A wider ORTF angle of 120 degrees while retaining the NOS spacing of 12" would be a safe bet and allow the 3-mic arrangement to differentiate itself a bit more in comparison to the typical 2-channel mic setups.   But just an idea, you know the venue and the sound you like the best.
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Offline Chanher

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Re: Zero bit recording
« Reply #46 on: July 31, 2024, 11:06:42 PM »
...it would be easier to take any of the alternate digital recordings and transfer them to tape afterward.. at leisure, with levels set perfectly and side-flips figured out.  Doing that would make for a good direct comparison against the original digital recordings, and a secondary fun comp with Goodcooker's straight to analog recording.

I reaally wanna hear never-digitized audio, using [insert favorite mics] > Sonosax/ V2  > cassette recorder. :) Then listen to the master cassette on my home playback! Would I be able to hear the difference between that and a digital > analog transfer? Honestly, probably not haha.

I'm thinking three cards.

A 3-mic LCR with 3 cards will sound juicy. I've done a few LCR's this year and I really liked moving the center mic forward (recommended by gut) about ~4-5 inches but I was really close to the stage at a medium loud jazz show. YMMV

Hopefully a living room test will reveal at least a starting point of the amount of center mic to mix in. With your experience, you should be able to get it close.
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Offline Ozpeter

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Re: Zero bit recording
« Reply #47 on: August 01, 2024, 06:54:35 AM »
Perhaps a bit off topic but maybe a musical interlude is needed at this stage of the thread.  Here's a recording which had to be 'bitified' for distribution, but it started off as a recording on a Yamaha 4 track cassette deck which is still beside me as I type after all those years.  The "MT44" ran at normal speed, none of that double-speed cheating.  The event was a public concert, for schoolchildren would you believe, and was properly mic'd rather than it being any kind of stealth cassette thing, so maybe it's kind of cheating.  But never mind the non-technicalities, it's such a great performance.  Enjoy! (I hope).

https://youtu.be/bROAcMwL3Bs?si=_aQ38sdwooWvRIGB

Offline Gutbucket

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Re: Zero bit recording
« Reply #48 on: August 01, 2024, 09:43:04 AM »
^ Small world. I still have my MT44 I bought back in the mid-80's that I should get working again to transfers some 35+ year old tapes.  Needs a little adhesive sticker on the cassette to put the deck in 4-track mode instead of 2-ch stereo mode.
musical volition > vibrations > voltages > numeric values > voltages > vibrations> virtual teleportation time-machine experience
Better recording made easy - >>Improved PAS table<< | Made excellent- >>click here to download the Oddball Microphone Technique illustrated PDF booklet<< (note: This is a 1st draft, now several years old and in need of revision!  Stay tuned)

Offline rocksuitcase

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Re: Zero bit recording
« Reply #49 on: August 01, 2024, 10:45:21 AM »
ozpeter- listening now   thanks

...it would be easier to take any of the alternate digital recordings and transfer them to tape afterward.. at leisure, with levels set perfectly and side-flips figured out.  Doing that would make for a good direct comparison against the original digital recordings, and a secondary fun comp with Goodcooker's straight to analog recording.

I reaally wanna hear never-digitized audio, using [insert favorite mics] > Sonosax/ V2  > cassette recorder. :) Then listen to the master cassette on my home playback! Would I be able to hear the difference between that and a digital > analog transfer? Honestly, probably not haha.

chanher, I've been taking off cassettes since 2019 using Nakamichi 680ZX or LX5 > Benchmark AD2k > Marantz PMD661 digi in. (24/48 as I do not have the server space to work with 96 kHz files)
I've told many friends that listening to the tape off the deck via headphones is the closest thing to "being back there" that I have experienced.
There are times when I would swear the digital copy is almost as good as the master.
I was gonna PM you with my GD links, but here is one using that set-up   It is an early Blues Traveler recording
https://archive.org/details/bt1989-11-27.aud-holbrook

and here is a Edie Brickell and New Bos using Beyer M201's AUD
https://archive.org/details/losbuttex1989-07-31.beyer

« Last Edit: August 01, 2024, 10:48:10 AM by rocksuitcase »
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Offline Chanher

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Re: Zero bit recording
« Reply #50 on: August 02, 2024, 12:30:09 AM »
Ozpeter, I've never heard of The Michael Garrick Trio but what a lovely recording (and performance). That piano intro is sooo smooooth. Listening on studio monitors at high volume, I love how you can suddenly "hear the room" on those first snare hits. I've been trying to do jazz multitracks for a while now and that's the vibe I'm going for. Too bad you can't really do analog multitracks but I definitely want to try some stereo onstage jazz recordings on cassette. Kinda stating the obvious, but analog just smooths everything out, particularly hihat/cymbals.

rocksuitcase that Edie Brickell recording is excellent. So punchy and smooth. Am I crazy or does the 24-bit flac stream sound significantly better than the mp3's (that you can stream from the top of the show's home page)? It seems a much bigger difference than our digital recordings.
The Blues Traveler recording is cool seeing how goodcooker will be capturing them on cassette some 35 years later.

rocksuitcase also pointed me towards some of his GD recordings with Oade mod cassette decks and when I get a chance to go through some I will post the links here.
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Offline Ozpeter

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Re: Zero bit recording
« Reply #51 on: August 02, 2024, 01:22:06 AM »
^ Small world. I still have my MT44 I bought back in the mid-80's that I should get working again to transfers some 35+ year old tapes.  Needs a little adhesive sticker on the cassette to put the deck in 4-track mode instead of 2-ch stereo mode.

My MT44 machine seems to have a bit of something like insulation tape inside the cassette compartment between the spindles.  I suspect that under that is one of the magic stickers permanently in place, to avoid the need to stick one on each cassette.  And presumably having it in four track mode all the time just means not record-enabling the unrequired tracks when only stereo mode is needed.  But I think I probably only used it for four track stuff, having a plethora of normal cassette decks for two track recordings - the best of which is on the same rack as the MT44 and the rest are in the garage (in plastic crates).

Offline Ozpeter

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Re: Zero bit recording
« Reply #52 on: August 02, 2024, 01:32:18 AM »
Ozpeter, I've never heard of The Michael Garrick Trio but what a lovely recording (and performance). That piano intro is sooo smooooth. Listening on studio monitors at high volume, I love how you can suddenly "hear the room" on those first snare hits. I've been trying to do jazz multitracks for a while now and that's the vibe I'm going for....

I used to be a classical music recording engineer for a living and when Michael used to ask me to record jazz - for free! - I tended to take a minimalist classical approach.  For this recording I may have only had a stereo mic on the piano, and a single mic each for the bass and drums.  Just possibly the bass was a direct feed from a pickup on the instrument supplemented by spill into the piano mic nearby.  Sometime simple is best!

Dear Mike was a great musician and jazz teacher and friend.  One of his sons is Christian Garrick, jazz violinist, who happened to play the violin solo on the theme tune for the TV series "Poldark" which was big in the UK.  I have a photo of Mike with Jaco Pastorius and little Chris as a child, taken in Mike's garden.

OK, I'm rambling.

Offline Gutbucket

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Re: Zero bit recording
« Reply #53 on: August 02, 2024, 09:50:29 AM »
^ Small world. I still have my MT44 I bought back in the mid-80's that I should get working again to transfers some 35+ year old tapes.  Needs a little adhesive sticker on the cassette to put the deck in 4-track mode instead of 2-ch stereo mode.

My MT44 machine seems to have a bit of something like insulation tape inside the cassette compartment between the spindles.  I suspect that under that is one of the magic stickers permanently in place, to avoid the need to stick one on each cassette.  And presumably having it in four track mode all the time just means not record-enabling the unrequired tracks when only stereo mode is needed.  But I think I probably only used it for four track stuff, having a plethora of normal cassette decks for two track recordings - the best of which is on the same rack as the MT44 and the rest are in the garage (in plastic crates).

Don't mean to take this too OT, although the MT44 certainly qualifies as a zero-bit analog tape deck!

Yes pretty sure that insulation tape is holding one of those magic stickers in place.  They used to come with a bunch of them on a sheet, rectangular silver stickers with a little magnetic strip on them that were intended to be stuck over the tape window on the back side of the cassette. To avoid running out of them I taped one between the spindles similar to yours.  I also never used that deck in 2-track mode.  I think I still have some if you ever need a few, but I'd just leave the one you have taped on there in place if its doing the job.
musical volition > vibrations > voltages > numeric values > voltages > vibrations> virtual teleportation time-machine experience
Better recording made easy - >>Improved PAS table<< | Made excellent- >>click here to download the Oddball Microphone Technique illustrated PDF booklet<< (note: This is a 1st draft, now several years old and in need of revision!  Stay tuned)

Offline Ozpeter

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Re: Zero bit recording
« Reply #54 on: August 02, 2024, 07:01:30 PM »
Thanks Gutbucket.  We seem to have followed similar MT44 paths!  I think I do have one or more sheets of stickers if the permanently installed one ever failed - but where are they?  I have recently moved house... gulp...

Offline Gutbucket

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Re: Zero bit recording
« Reply #55 on: August 03, 2024, 01:30:23 PM »
^ Same!
musical volition > vibrations > voltages > numeric values > voltages > vibrations> virtual teleportation time-machine experience
Better recording made easy - >>Improved PAS table<< | Made excellent- >>click here to download the Oddball Microphone Technique illustrated PDF booklet<< (note: This is a 1st draft, now several years old and in need of revision!  Stay tuned)

Offline Chilly Brioschi

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Re: Zero bit recording
« Reply #56 on: August 03, 2024, 03:22:17 PM »
^^ interesting trick, I would have over-engineered it with shim stock in brass or delrin!


OK, going for zero-bit overkill here:

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Offline Ozpeter

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Re: Zero bit recording
« Reply #57 on: August 04, 2024, 03:29:24 AM »
Excellent!

Offline DSatz

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Re: Zero bit recording
« Reply #58 on: August 04, 2024, 07:48:33 PM »
I recorded documentary audio and music in Europe with a Nakamichi 550 for a summer in the 1970s, and the 500 is the two-head, AC-powered unit from the same generation. But ISTR that it had an additional feature: a switchable anti-distortion circuit that could be used in playback to reduce IM distortion at high recording levels. Am I remembering correctly, and if so, have you tried that circuit? I never managed to find out how it actually worked, and it wasn't carried over to any other, later models that I know of.

The 550 was a nice unit with excellent (though unfortunately unbalanced) mike preamps, but it was very difficult to set up for any particular type of tape, and mine had a problem with stray, low-level, high-frequency tones getting into the recording. Eventually a technician was able to mitigate that to where the deck was usable.
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Offline goodcooker

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Re: Zero bit recording
« Reply #59 on: August 05, 2024, 12:39:56 AM »
very difficult to set up for any particular type of tape

If you mean the wonky way they have the Dolby NR level calibration trim pots for each type of tape to match the test tone then yes, it's a bit of a process. It's not incredibly complicated but it took an additional read of the manual to realize that you put in a tape, select the  type, record the test tone, play it back while checking the meters, then adjust the LR pots for the test tone playback to hopefully hit 0, rinse and repeat.

I'm not catching on to the switchable circuit you mentioned - there's no switches that I can see either on the unit or in the manual that would be what you describe. Maybe the 550 had such a thing and the 500 doesn't although they seem to be the same except for powering and the arrangement of the controls to aid in portability of the 550.
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