Audio Concepts 107: Analog Tape Recording - 3. Physics of Tape

[@pendulumdistinction2494]

Pure magic. We all can't have spaceships, but we can admire them. Maybe we can have one. The possibilities are endless, the concept alone is inspiring to last a lifetime.

[@konigeurichderwestgoten4460]

You know, I still feel like an archaic barbarian from the Antediluvian age. To me, to be able to record all these sounds on a thin strip of plastic, is... Magic. It amazes me.

[@dk2853]

Any technology which is advanced enough is indistinguishable from magic.

[@carlosaugustofernandesdagn7935]

Not magic. Only science.

[@konigeurichderwestgoten4460]

Magic is a kind of science. It's energy. Pure raw creational energy. If you think about it, it's pretty amazing just to exist. To see, smell, hear, and touch. These carbon-based bodies we inhabit aren't as strong as they were in previous incarnations of Earth partly due to many forms of pollution, laziness, all around bad habits and bad diets. Too much sugar. On top of that, the Earth itself is an organic being. I can feel it is as weary as we are. It has been put through much stress. If our home-world is sick, makes sense every living being on it and within it should be sick and weakened. But in spite of everything, we still exist. Able to survive and thrive. Though... It seems thriving too much can be really bad. Scares me to see a family or friends at a diner buried in their phones instead of talking to each other.

[@jturquoise]

@@carlosaugustofernandesdagn7935cultist

[@OnlyTheGodsB]

Both🪄🧩

[@ricardoflot2787]

I grew up when the transition from 4trk to 8trk happened, and my first stereo system was based around a car stereo that played both, powered by a 12V power supply I bought from radio shack! I found out why 4 trk tapes sounded better than 8 trk, when i discovered what dynamic range and tape width mean. When cassettes arrived, I went nuts and remember the first cassette car stereos SUCKED, so in order to compensate for freq loss because of tape speed reduction, the electronics had to be improved, then cassettes took off.

[@oinkooink]

My digital recordings always sound simultaneously muddy AND harsh. Tragic.

[@5urg3x]

This is so much easier to understand in comparison to vinyl. It’s analog, but it’s electricity. It’s all electro magnetism, fundamentally. It’s something else entirely to grasp how tiny grooves in a piece of plastic can translate into an entire symphony!

[@5urg3x]

@The Best Western It’s not similar at all. Also, the original vinyl record players didn’t have electro magnetic styluses. They were acoustic.

[@NoTengoIdeaGuey]

IMO vinyl makes more intuitive sense than anything that came after it. Like if you put a pencil on the end of a stick and dragged paper under it across the table while making really loud noises, that pencil would vibrate and draw a line in a specific way that was caused by the sound waves that hit it. Then if you developed a machine that could basically look at the pencil line and convert the line back into a vibrating speaker cone then you would basically have a vinyl record player. The only difference is it's resin instead of paper and a stylus instead of a pencil.

[@mycosys]

Partly thats because this video is just kinda plain wrong, beyond being over-simplified. Though honestly a phono system is identical to a microphone or speaker so if you cant understand that you really dont understand this,

[@dk2853]

@@mycosys What is wrong about this video?

[@mycosys]

@@dk2853 IIRC (its a while now) watch "you dont understand saturation" by sseb. Clipping is only one type of saturation and not the type on a tape or transformer. The physics of magnetic saturation also means there is 'hysteresis' as well in any tape or transformer system.

[@calderarecords]

The Bias Frequency is the require result of a process called "Dithering" which sets the Floor & Ceiling limits.

[@AntiqueClassicArt]

Excellent

[@sodajinx9938]

Love this, thank you for sharing!!

[@Willtokush]

Great simple explanation, thanks.

[@jeffm2787]

Dolby HX Pro licensed from Bang and Olufsen did a good job with the bias problems later on. Not sure if this made it to open reel or not.

[@DeathWolfSaint]

This is more impressive than modern day tech

[@dkdanis1340]

First of without it you couldn't write this comment. Modern tech has elements that are less than 10 nanometers big newest flagships have 5nm for comparison covid 19 is 125 nm big.

[@aidannbrownn]

how the hell did we figure this shit out like what🤣

[@henryyepez9134]

That's why we keep recording on tape...right.

[@barkatullah9720]

@@dkdanis1340 Mr! No doubt you are correct in all your conversation but it will not wrong to say that this modern technology changes the whole world in such a way that all of us use these equipments like smart phones etc,and they have become a hobbies nowadays while we have almost lost our conventional hobbies like playing games etc. Shortly, in my view all these technologies have no big importance.🤫🤫🤫

[@NoTengoIdeaGuey]

Modern tech is literally this exact process except happening on a nanoscopic level several billion times a second, but okay.

[@turbodrawspeed]

great explanation.

[@rafiqjani2109]

Hello guys I found some of old tapes like that also some recording things which I found some other things that might be very useful

[@FisherKot]

I love analog so much. I kind of think digital is the devil tbh

[@nyceflix]

Fundamentally, it's easier for me to comprehend vinyl records. This construction, contemplation, actuality is complex.

[@sb848]

4:08 Hysteresis ?

[@Damnzz]

where can i buy?

[@yalahabibi8789]

13 reasons why brought me here.

[@gabex2331]

Great video pls heart

[@mycosys]

So much of this is just plain wrong. Its near impossible to 'clip' tape, because its near impossible to completely align the magnetic domains in the tape. As they align they start acting on each other, like poles repel. They also experience a centripetal moment force normal to both the applied and exiting magnetic spins, or 'precession'. This means that as you add more magnetic field, the effect on the alignment of particles diminishes leading to a non-linear 'saturation' area or in effect compression of the waveform, or if you want to look at it another way a logarithmic transfer function. NOT the discontinuous clipping function you repeatedly show to represent saturation. Unlike clipping this means that data in this region is not completely lost, just a bunch of other stuff added. Its VERY different to clipping (though clipping is a type of saturation, it has a hard knee (a discontinuous function) rather than the soft knee of what is traditionally called saturation).