Reel to reel tape discussion

paladin shredder

paladin shredder

Member
Feb 8, 2008
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Ft Worth, TX
Seems like all the newer engineers these days has never had to record to tape. We are totally spoiled with digital editing with all of it's capabilities. I personally have never used tape myself, but i'm sure there are a few people on here that have. I am told it's a completely different world, and that tape adds a nice character to recorded music.

What I would like to know is who on this forum has had experience with it, whether they still use it or not, and if they think tape still has it's place in the recording industry today?

I've also heard of people recording their masters to tape for the desired compression it has. It might be a neat idea for anyone that still uses tape to do a shootout of a mix that's completely digital, compared to one that is recorded to tape and back into their daw.
 
I think CLA uses tape quite a bit still these days. Running it from tape into his SSL and then into PT.

I've worked with tape only a couple of times - it sucks lol.
 
yea you could digitally record everything and then run it through a reel to reel to give it some character and warmth. Then you get the best of both worlds. Ive had some experience with tape when i was in college. It still has a place in recording cause nothing has replaced what it does yet. The plugins that are supposed to give it that "tape feel" are not very good.
It really depends on the type of music. I dont think any metal would sound good going through tape unless it was some stoner rock or somethin. We recorded this rock band to tape and the singer had a nice soulful voice and there was some organ going through a leslie and some nie dirty gritty guitars. sounded great.
 
We are not spoiled with digital editing. It's evolution, baby. In fourty years we will be treasuring our obsolete CD collections 'cause they just have that vibe, looking down to the new AE's and rant about how we never had the possibility to use neural implants which make you taste and smell the music :)
 
We had an old Studer at the studio until a few years ago, did some hybrid recording:

Record to tape --> edit digitally --> bounce to tape

Never with über-technical metal tho, that would have been to much hassle...

ITE time and budget made it less and less worthwhile.
 
I’ve used tape a couple times in the past. Quite cool, but very problematic as a medium.
 
Tape is fun, but I'd much rather work in digital. I like bouncing to 1/4'' for some tapey goodness. Also tape hiss hasn't been as big of an issue for me as it sounds like it is for others.
 
006 said:
I think CLA uses tape quite a bit still these days. Running it from tape into his SSL and then into PT.

I've worked with tape only a couple of times - it sucks lol.
Click to expand...

Actually what CLA does is get the assistants to dump the PT session down to ADAT. The tape the multis are coming from is in effect digital - at a lower resolution than the PT session.

When it comes to mixdown he'll reportedly print to a number of mediums, one of which is half-inch analogue tape.

Anyway, my only experience with 'tape' was with ADAT sadly, which generally just sucks at a medium all round. Never quite had a chance to operate 2", but was at a session or two where it was done. The operator was printing in parallel to PT and 2" at the same time. The differences were negligible enough for me to realize that the whole 'analogue days' romanticism was just rose-coloured glasses, as most other things are in the industry. We've moved on to a better and much more flexible medium. Now all that's left is to adequately emulate some of tape's more desired, musical saturation effects, and we've got the best of both worlds.
 
there's more to tape then just tape. Alot of the Love of tape is the love of analog recording altogether; which means tapes machines, big analog consoles, outboard and vintage mics. Combine all those things and you get that classic sound everyone loves. If you have all those things but you switch tape out for pro tools you will still get great results.
 
I think tape machines are great, but with every pass you lose a little bit of quality. It takes skill to make edits because you can't undo.

006 said:
I think CLA uses tape quite a bit still these days. Running it from tape into his SSL and then into PT.
Click to expand...

He might mixdown to tape, but he transfers his tracks from Pro Tools to a Sony 3348 DASH machine.

bryan.batiste said:
with todays modern metal recording to tape is a horrible idea. tape hisssss chug chug tape hissss
Click to expand...

Signal to noise my friend. It's an issue with noisey machines and low signal levels going in, but it isn't really any issue on a good machine and a loud input signal.

Ermz said:
Actually what CLA does is get the assistants to dump the PT session down to ADAT. The tape the multis are coming from is in effect digital - at a lower resolution than the PT session.
Click to expand...

His assistants comp/edit everything down to 48 tracks and dump it to a Sony 3348 DASH machine.
 
As TRA stated, a good Studer or Otari running at 30 inches per second has a totally acceptable noise floor. You'd be surprised.

The actual tape editing process is rather tedious. The cutting and splicing take no time at all, but rocking the reels back and forth to find edit points can be annoying.

I think recording to tape and importing to PT to edit is really the way to go if you're using tape nowadays. You get the nice low end but you don't have to fuck with razors and leader tape.
 
NickL said:
As TRA stated, a good Studer or Otari running at 30 inches per second has a totally acceptable noise floor. You'd be surprised.

The actual tape editing process is rather tedious. The cutting and splicing take no time at all, but rocking the reels back and forth to find edit points can be annoying.

I think recording to tape and importing to PT to edit is really the way to go if you're using tape nowadays. You get the nice low end but you don't have to fuck with razors and leader tape.
Click to expand...

This.

I've worked on 1/2 inch 16 track and 2 inch 24 track. I love and miss the analogue tape days...but it's also a pain in the ass. The hybrid approach seems to be the best of both worlds.
 
I enjoyed tracking to tape when I got to use the machine. At school we had an Otari MTR-90 II. I got to set the bias and calibrate a few channels of it as well. They are definitely more tedious to work with, but they are fun as well. I cannot imagine doing really technical music with them though.
 
the cost of tape is insane right now. I think at school they ordered two 2" reels and it was around $600 or something insane like that.
 
I'd love to be able to go hybrid
Record to tape then into DAW of choice would be awesome, but it's a distant pipe dream at the minute for me.
 
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