RCA “Sound Tape” cartridge and 1/4-track reel introduction dates
David Dintenfass kindly sent me an article from the October 1959 issue of Popular Electronics which says, in part, that RCA plans to have 65 titles in the stores in their new cartridges by Christmas...
View ArticleFive historic standards now linked from the history page
About two years ago, I asked the EBU to make available a copy of their historic document, Review of existing systems for the synchronisation between film cameras and audio tape-recorders and they...
View ArticleImages of Scotch (3M) tape boxes available
I was interested in the progression of the Scotch/3M tape boxes over the years, especially after someone contacted me because his father was in the picture on some of the 1960s tape boxes. Use your...
View ArticleMicrophone Powering Schema
In addition to my business of transferring tapes, I also record a few community groups for fun. Someone recently gave me an older Sennheiser MKH-804 interference tube (“shotgun”) microphone. Finding...
View ArticlePhantom powering of early proprietary- and T-powered Sennheiser mics
I finally figured out how to power the Sennheiser MKH-104, 404, and 804 from 48 V phantom power (P48) which is very common on professional and many prosumer mixers and recorders. The MKH-X04 series...
View Article40th Anniversary of Apollo 11 Moonwalk and the loss of data
There has been much discussion over the last few years about finding and saving original tapes of the Apollo 11 Moonwalk videos downlinked from the moon. There is also an exciting project going on to...
View ArticleCompander-type Noise Reduction Systems
Note: This information has been incorporated into this page which contains a more in-depth discussion. I received an urgent phone call yesterday from a man who had digitized several reels of 2″...
View ArticleCassette equalization redo
There has been much discussion on some web fora about the differences between different brands’ cassette equalization standards. As I stated here in 2006, there is a 4 dB ambiguity at 16 kHz. Many...
View ArticleIASA TC04 Guidelines on the Production and Preservation of Digital Audio...
The International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA) has released their landmark Guidelines on the Production and Preservation of Digital Audio Objects as a free web (HTML) edition,...
View ArticleObsolete data formats
This is a reminder that data formats come and go just like audio and video formats. On this, the 48th anniversary of the JFK assassination, this article was posted at the Library of Congress website....
View ArticleUS Music Media Statistics
Pete Hammar and Tom Fine came across a great site detailing 40 years of music statistics in a series of pie charts for each year. I thought it might be interesting to show this as a graph: (Click image...
View ArticleProtecting the container: Heritage Building Fire Safety
While this post does not specifically pertain to audio tape restoration, it does pertain to keeping originals and copies safe, especially in heritage buildings. This article is prompted by a...
View ArticleUS Music Media Statistics through 2016
This is the updated graph showing percent of music sales by format from 1973 through 2016. Click on the images for a larger view. Here is the updated total sales chart from 2001 through 2016. This post...
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More Pages to Explore .....