Reel to Reel recording - I don't want tape delay!

[Rothchild]

Hi All,

I just fired up my TEAC 1230 with some new tape to do some 2 track mastering on a music project I'm working on. I'm hoping someone can help me overcome the delay/echo effect it's generating? I can hear a single tap delay coming through, it's as if I'm getting 'leakage' between the input monitor and the 'from tape' monitor (which is the bit I want to capture) It must be something like that as the delay time changes when I adjust the tape speed (dead giveaway really) It's probably some form of user error but it's a pretty simple machine (I'm hoping more simple than me!).

So I'm just wondering if anyone has experience with this particular machine and noted this effect before? and hoping that you might have some suggestions about how to get rid of it so I get a clean capture?

Other things of note, the sound is on the tape, although I'm really just looping the source through the tape and tracking it back from the monitor head to the computer, when I listen back to what's been printed to tape the effect is there too. I'm pushing the level to tape quite hard on purpose as I want that mid-range saturation to come through, at these levels it's making the synths sound amazing!

Any thoughts ideas or suggestions about how to get a cleaner capture on this machine gratefully received.

[PaulStewart]

Are you monitoring of tape or source while recording?

[Rothchild]

Hi Paul,

Off tape at the moment (because I'm tracking it straight back to the computer) I have a chain in my DAW that enables me to route the signal out to a spare output on the soundcard, through the tape deck and the 'from tape' return comes back to a spare soundcard input and is printed back to the computer.

As I mentioned above though I can hear the doubling / delay effect when I just listen to the playback of the tape as well as what's been tracked back to the DAW.

I will try recording to tape whilst monitoring the input to see if it still prints the echo to the tape I guess.

[Rothchild]

I finally got round to rearranging the process here and testing tracking to tape without monitoring from the tape.

Thanks Paul, it seems to work!

Although it's not as elegant as I'd like, because I have to track to tape and then track back in to the computer to access the rest of the (digital) mastering chain I'm using, at least it gets rid of the annoying echo effect.

So, the solution is to track to tape whilst monitoring the input and then play the tape back in to the pc and continue in there.

Cheers,
Marc

[PaulStewart]

glad it's working for you

[Rothchild]

Thanks, although I'd like to understand why so I think some more experimenting is afoot.

I know it's taboo around here, but when I was getting it setup and slated in the first instance I used a range of test tones through it with a spectrum analyser strapped to the output and there was some odd stuff happening, I're really like to understand what it it that's it's doing, particularly to the stereo image, that is so pleasing (and it is!)

[PaulStewart]

All tape/head/bias combinations have a hysteresis curve, also tape saturation is a form of compression that many find pleasing. You want to avoid all this when playing recorded music of course, but when recording, it's another matter, it's all part of the pallette of sounds. On my digital set up, I have a plug in that emulates saturated Ampex 456, in fact you can select the type of tape it dounds like. This is crazy to me, but nothing sounds as good as a really hot recording on a good reel to reel, the art is to reproduce that accuratley afterwards

[Rothchild]

the art is to reproduce that accuratley afterwards

That't what the computer is for

/coat