EMUSIC-L Digest Volume 53, Issue 13 This issue's topics: DAT/CD digital audio interfacing Digital DAT/CD interface specification Digital Recording on a Mac (3 messages) Last call for the 4-track/8-track cassette tape survey The Great 4/8-track Tape Survey -- Results The great tape survey Your EMUSIC-L Digest moderator is Joe McMahon . You may subscribe to EMUSIC-L by sending mail to listserv@american.edu with the line "SUB EMUSIC-L your name" as the text. The EMUSIC-L archive is a service of SunSite (sunsite.unc.edu) at the University of North Carolina. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1993 19:16:55 BST From: S L Gilbey Subject: DAT/CD digital audio interfacing > does anyone know something about how does the digital optical or >coax input/output on audio DAT/CDs work ? I'm thinking about storing >data on my PIONEER D-500 DAT machine, but I don't know anything about >HW specification or data protocol on either coax or optical cable. Sounds like you're going to need a very fat technical manual and a lot of determination! There is a document giving _some_ details of the data protocol for CD available on anonymous ftp from : ftp.cs.ruu.nl (Utrecht) file is called : digital-audio-format in directory : pub/MIDI/DOC I suspect the SCMS copy protection built into most DAT systems, much to the chagrin of electronic musicians wanting to make quite legitimate digital copies of their work, may cause you extra problems when you read back your data? Perhaps someone more knowledgable about DATs can confirm this? However, SCMS-defeat devices do exist so it must be possible. Good luck! --------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | email: Steve.Gilbey@bristol.ac.uk | | Steve Gilbey | ----------------------------------------------- | | Bristol University, UK | 'They were all of them fond of quotations' | | | Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark | --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 17 Jun 1993 23:25:23 +0200 From: Martin Grecner Subject: Digital DAT/CD interface specification Hello, does anyone know something about how does the digital optical or coax input/output on audio DAT/CDs work ? I'm thinking about storing data on my PIONEER D-500 DAT machine, but I don't know anything about HW specification or data protocol on either coax or optical cable. I'm asking before starting with data analyzer/osciloscope. ;-) Or if there is a commercial interface to PC available, please drop me a line about it. Thank's in advance. Martin Grecner martin@elf.stuba.cs Bratislava Czechoslovakia ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 26 Jun 1993 12:45:01 -0500 From: Townsend Subject: Digital Recording on a Mac Are there any users of Sound Tools or Audiomedia out there who have tried to use a direct-to-disk recording card and a midi interface together to make a mac function as a sampler? If this works, it seems like a less expensive option than buying a dedicated sampler... ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 27 Jun 1993 00:02:15 EDT From: Sean Henriques Subject: Re: Digital Recording on a Mac I believe Thomas Dolby recorded his entire last album totally direct to disk on a MAC using one of the packages you mentioned. There have been more than a few accounts of this process, but the most comprehensive one was in Keyboard Magazine about 1 year ago. I believe the cover story was on Cyberpunk. Its worth checking into if you are seriously considering recording direct to disk....... ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1993 10:32:39 PDT From: Casey Dunn Subject: Digital Recording on a Mac You said (Re: Digital Recording on a Mac) > Are there any users of Sound Tools or Audiomedia out there who have tried > to use a direct-to-disk recording card and a midi interface together to > make a mac function as a sampler? If this works, it seems like a less > expensive option than buying a dedicated sampler... "It" works. well, to a degree. 1) how fast is your disk & SCSI combination... 2) how much ram do you have... How macs do you have? c a s e y ps: I've low-balled this on 8 bit-sample macs. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1993 13:06:00 CDT From: crispen Subject: Last call for the 4-track/8-track cassette tape survey Thanks to all who have responded so far: "A.W.N Large" David Malbuff wbf@aluxpo.att.com (William Fox) Ed.Fleschute@Corp.Sun.COM (Ed.Fleschute@Corp.Sun.COM) metlay@netcom.com (metlay) scott@psy.uwa.edu.au (Scott Fisher) Adam Levin secretary@csvax1.ucc.ie (A. O'Brien) AISRILEY@ACS.EKU.EDU (Ed) Marco Olivotto If you've sent in a response and your name isn't here, then I've lost it, so please send it again. The deadline for responding is this Monday, 28 June 1993, and I'll post responses to all the lists I've annoyed with this survey pretty soon afterward. Here are the questions again, about what you use on a cassette-based 4-track or 8-track recorder. If you haven't got one of those, sorry for the wasted bandwidth. (1) Brand and model number of machine (e.g., Yamaha MT120): (2) Brand, type and length of tape you usually use when good sound is important (e.g., TDK SA-X, C-100): (3) How happy you are with that tape, 1-7 (1 = it sucks, 7 = it's wonderful): (4) How confident you are that this tape is the best for your machine, 1-7 (1 = not confident, 7 = I've tried ALL the others and find this one is best): (5) How long have you been recording on a 4-8 track machine? Please send all answers to me, NOT the list: crispen@foxy.boeing.com Thanks, Bob ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1993 16:21:39 CDT From: crispen Subject: The Great 4/8-track Tape Survey -- Results Here's the results of the great 4-track/8-track tape survey. Briefly, we asked owners of 4-track and 8-track cassette-based tape machines which tape they used, how they rated it, how confident they were in that rating, and how long they had been using a 4/8-track. Thanks to all our responders: "A.W.N Large" David Malbuff wbf@aluxpo.att.com (William Fox) Ed.Fleschute@Corp.Sun.COM (Ed.Fleschute@Corp.Sun.COM) metlay@netcom.com (metlay) scott@psy.uwa.edu.au (Scott Fisher) Adam Levin secretary@csvax1.ucc.ie (A. O'Brien) AISRILEY@ACS.EKU.EDU (Ed) Marco Olivotto Simon Weatherill Mario Vergona Sonia Kovitz hedberg@inference.com (James Hedberg) SHRINER@Butler.EDU (charles shriner) mifriese@cln.etc.bc.ca (Michael Friesen) Eric Stratton Moseley Bob Crispen who have 84.58 years of combined experience among them! Here are our raw results, for those who want to do their own statistics. There were multiple responses from some folks, and these were counted, too. Thus, there were 21 responses from our 18 respondents: ----- Recorder ---- --------- Tape ------------- Expr. Mfr Model Brand Type Length Rating Conf Months --- ----- ----- ---- ------ ------ ---- ------ Tascam 144 Maxell XLII -- 6 4 108 Yamaha MT120 Maxell XLII C-60 7 6.5 1 Fostex X-28 Maxell XLII C-90 4 4 120 Tascam 238 Maxell XLII C-60 5 6 60 Fostex X-26 Maxell XLII-S C-60 2 4 24 Tascam Porta-03 Maxell XLII-S C-90 6 5 3 Tascam 424 Maxell XLII-S -- 6 7 120 Fostex X-26 TDK SA C-60 5 4 24 Fostex X-15 TDK SA C-60 7 5 108 Fostex X-15 TDK SA C-90 6 6 84 Tascam 688 TDK SA C-60 5 4 9 Tascam 234 TDK SA-X C-60 7 6 132 Tascam 238 TDK SA-X C-60 7 7 24 Fostex X-15 TDK SA-X C-60 7 5 108 Fostex X-15 TDK SA-X C-90 6 6 84 Tascam 238 TDK SA-X C-60 6 6.5 72 AT RMX-64 TDK SA-X C-60 6.5 7 96 Yamaha MT120 TDK SA-X C-60 6 5 6 Fostex X-26 Sony UXS C-60 6 4 24 Tascam Porta-02 Sony Metal Master -- 7 5 48 Tascam 424 Maxell Vertex -- 7 7 120 Let's start with size. 13 of our respondents said they use C-60s. 4 use C-90s, and 4 didn't give a size. Multiplying this by months of experience, we get 29,404 months of experience in favor of C-60 versus 6,258 hours for C-90. Conclusion: use C-60s. Now let's look at tape brand. The first measure is pure popularity: number of mentions divided by total number of responses: TDK SA-X 33 TDK SA 19 Maxell XLII 19 Maxell XLII-S 14 Sony Metal Master 5 Maxell Vertex 5 Sony UXS 5 Those figures certainly don't take into account that some people think a tape is wonderful and others think it sucks. Let's start with the simplest average. Add the ratings (from 1 to 7) for each tape and divide by the number of people who rated the tape. Normalize by dividing by 7 and multiplying by 100: Sony Metal Master 100 Maxell Vertex 100 TDK SA-X 93 Sony UXS 86 TDK SA 82 Maxell XLII 79 Maxell XLII-S 67 Let's try it another way. Let's add up the ratings multiplied by the confidence factors for each tape and divided by the number of people who rated the tape. Normalize again by dividing by (7 * 7) and multiplying by 100: Maxell Vertex 100 TDK SA-X 81 Sony Metal Master 71 TDK SA 57 Maxell XLII 57 Maxell XLII-S 54 Sony UXS 49 Somebody else can do the business about months of experience times rating times confidence. It doesn't look like we're going to get results that are any different if we give experience weightings to our responses. I didn't do the correlation coefficient between brand of tape and brand of recorder, either, but my eyeball guess is that our sample size is too small to get anything at the 0.05 level. Let's just say that by all the measures I'm not too lazy to do, the winner is TDK SA-X in the C-60 format. Lots of people use it; people who use it like it; and people who use it and like it are confident that it's the best. And I'm going to steer clear of the Maxell XLIIs. However! If I see some Maxell Vertex (which I've never seen before), I'm sure going to give it a try, based on the high ranking it got. I'm also going to try some of the "illegal" tapes like MA, Metal Master, etc. to see what they sound like. Here's some of the comments our respondents made about various tapes: SA - Quite good for treble on my machine and quite Dolby B compatible. - Dave thinks TDK sucks. - AT said they adjusted the bias for TDK SA tapes UXS - The best I have used. Very predicatble and full at both ends. Seems very unsusceptible to wear also. XLIIS - The only good thing I can say is that it does not drop out too bad. - I've found these have good sound reproduction for normal recording, so I didn't even think about buying any other type of tape. XLII - This tape was recommended in the users manual because it somehow is suppose to set certain things up in the machine (Tascam 144) - It's adequate - use it because of reputable dealer suggestion Sony Metal Master: - This stuff is unbelievable. Throw the kitchen sink at it and it won't even blink. Run the tape over the heads a few dozen times . . . no signal loss! Various Metal Tapes: - Although the PortaTwo isn't set up for metal tape, he feels that he gets a better high end with metal. - Dave tries everything, including so called "illegal" combinations (like metal tape that his machine shouldn't handle). C-60 vs C-90: - One should ALWAYS use 60 mins or shorter in multitrack decks since the tape is that bit thicker and therefore overdub wear is less of a prob. - [I use] C-60 if I can find it - otherwise C-90 +-------------------------------+--------------------------------------+ | Rev. Bob "Bob" Crispen | Music should not be held responsible | | crispen@foxy.boeing.com | for the people who listen to it. | +-------------------------------+--------------------------------------+ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1993 14:00:13 CDT From: crispen Subject: The great tape survey I'm about to break every rule of etiquette and cross-post to three musical groups. The reason is this: I'd like to see what the consensus is on brands of tape for cassette-based 4-track or 8-track recorders. If you haven't got one of those, then you needn't read any farther. Those of you who are left, please email me the answers to the following at crispen@foxy.boeing.com, and I'll summarize: (1) Brand and model number of machine (e.g., Yamaha MT120): (2) Brand, type and length of tape you usually use when good sound is important (e.g., TDK SA-X, C-100): (3) How happy you are with that tape, 1-7 (1 = it sucks, 7 = it's wonderful): (4) How confident you are that this tape is the best for your machine, 1-7 (1 = not confident, 7 = I've tried ALL the others and find this one is best): (5) How long have you been recording on a 4-8 track machine? Thanks very much. In case you need to know, I'm not affiliated with any tape or recorder manufacturer; I just want to find out what everybody's using, and figured some others might like to know, too. +-------------------------------+--------------------------------------+ | Rev. Bob "Bob" Crispen | Music should not be held responsible | | crispen@foxy.boeing.com | for the people who listen to it. | +-------------------------------+--------------------------------------+ ------------------------------ End of the EMUSIC-L Digest ******************************