[[email protected]]

I assume that the master tracks of the Beatles, etc. have all been
transferred to more durable optical digital - i.e. CD or DVD. But back
in the days when tape was all there was, what measures were taken to
protect/backup masters?

Seems precarious that hundreds of expensive hours of work for an album
were riding on a few mils of plastic tape coated with a few microns of
oxide.

And what about multiple takes - how many times could a tape be run
through the path before it shed enough to be audible?

[Eeyore]

wrote:

I assume that the master tracks of the Beatles, etc. have all been
transferred to more durable optical digital - i.e. CD or DVD. But back
in the days when tape was all there was, what measures were taken to
protect/backup masters?

They were kept in a cool dry place.


Seems precarious that hundreds of expensive hours of work for an album
were riding on a few mils of plastic tape coated with a few microns of
oxide.

That's the way it was. Even today there are a few 'computer tapes' still used
for archiving.


And what about multiple takes - how many times could a tape be run
through the path before it shed enough to be audible?

Many many times. Shed isn't a problem with good quality tape.

Graham

[Mike Rivers]

On Jun 23, 7:00 am, wrote:
I assume that the master tracks of the Beatles, etc. have all been
transferred to more durable optical digital - i.e. CD or DVD. But back
in the days when tape was all there was, what measures were taken to
protect/backup masters?

Protect? Put them in a closet and hope nobody steals or copies them
(you KNOW how effective that was)

Back up? Usually a copy of the mixed master. A few people backed up
multitrack tapes, but not usually and not frequently.

I think that the obsession with protection and backup of digital
recordings today is because it's easy and inexpensive, and because
it's easier to totally lose a digital recording than an analog
recording.

[Richard Crowley]

wrote ...
I assume that the master tracks of the Beatles, etc. have all been
transferred to more durable optical digital - i.e. CD or DVD.

I would bet on hard drives backed up to digital tape.

But back in the days when tape was all there was, what
measures were taken to protect/backup masters?

The usual. Dry, cool, dark, ventilated, carefully spooled
and tensioned.

Seems precarious that hundreds of expensive hours of work
for an album were riding on a few mils of plastic tape coated
with a few microns of oxide.

And here in the digital world, data is stored on hard drives
on microscopic tracks by a head flying at a remarkable speed
on a few microns of air. And optical discs store data by
discoloring microscopic pits in a dye that was applied to a
disc in a couple of seconds on an automated machine.

Digital recording has the advantage that checksums and other
error detection and correction can recover degraded information
that would otherwise be indistinguishable from noise. OTOH,
analog recording has the advantage of spreading the "data"
over a larger space which reduces the possibility of complete
loss.

Note that 99.999% of all the data on the planet is both
short-term backed-up and long-term archived on that same
few mils of plastic tape coated with a few microns of oxide.

And what about multiple takes - how many times could a
tape be run through the path before it shed enough to be
audible?

Shed was not a problem with multiple takes. It was a long-term
problem with the formulations of a few kinds of tape a few
decades ago.

[Romeo Rondeau[_2_]]

Eeyore wrote:

wrote:

I assume that the master tracks of the Beatles, etc. have all been
transferred to more durable optical digital - i.e. CD or DVD. But back
in the days when tape was all there was, what measures were taken to
protect/backup masters?

They were kept in a cool dry place.


Seems precarious that hundreds of expensive hours of work for an album
were riding on a few mils of plastic tape coated with a few microns of
oxide.

That's the way it was. Even today there are a few 'computer tapes' still used
for archiving.


And what about multiple takes - how many times could a tape be run
through the path before it shed enough to be audible?

Many many times. Shed isn't a problem with good quality tape.

Graham



Shed is a problem with all magnetic tape. The tape loses clarity over
time and many, many passes over the heads.

[Dobbin]

You don't get much more durable (in comparison to all the other formats)
than analogue tape, safeties were always one to one copies. The
recommendation for archiving audio is still analogue tape, whatever the
source. It should to be stored tails-out in a humidity and temperature
controlled environment and carefully wound every few years.
There have been problems with hydroscopic tape, binder breakdown and
shedding, particularly Ampex from the 70's and 80's, and sticky edits but
all these can all be repaired with careful manipulation. Analogue masters
are nowadays transferred to digits for working copies but the originals are
retuned to their archives.
You could run a 2" tape quite a lot on a well maintained machine, sometimes
when the degradation became audible, starting with slight top loss at the
edges first (put the bass on track one!) it gained it's own new quality - I
doubt Bohemian Rhapsody would have sounded so good and graunchy on radar.
Loose a bit of top, get a bit of hiss and maybe slight level dropouts on
analogue or you could get absolute silence (I.e. nothing at all!) back from
your digits.
One day the audio world will agree on a digital archiving standard; on
standardised retrieval machinery and then maybe process can begin to go
forward

wrote in message
oups.com...
I assume that the master tracks of the Beatles, etc. have all been
transferred to more durable optical digital - i.e. CD or DVD. But back
in the days when tape was all there was, what measures were taken to
protect/backup masters?

Seems precarious that hundreds of expensive hours of work for an album
were riding on a few mils of plastic tape coated with a few microns of
oxide.

And what about multiple takes - how many times could a tape be run
through the path before it shed enough to be audible?

[Scott Dorsey]

wrote:
I assume that the master tracks of the Beatles, etc. have all been
transferred to more durable optical digital - i.e. CD or DVD.

Sadly, CD-R and DVR-R are a whole hell of a lot less durable than
analogue tape. They are not acceptable for archival storage.

But back
in the days when tape was all there was, what measures were taken to
protect/backup masters?

Temperature and humidity controlled storage, just like we use today.
Usually a safety dub would be made too.

Seems precarious that hundreds of expensive hours of work for an album
were riding on a few mils of plastic tape coated with a few microns of
oxide.

Hundreds of expensive hours of work for an album are riding on the ability
of the songwriter to find just the right word too, and for the singer to
breathe at just the right time.

And what about multiple takes - how many times could a tape be run
through the path before it shed enough to be audible?

Thousands of times. If this is an issue (and it is for bin mastering
applications), there are lubricated tapes which can be run hundreds of
thousands of times. Zonal used to claim millions of times for their
loop bin mastering tape but by the time it made it into the US market,
loop bin machines were a thing of the past.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[[email protected]]

On Jun 23, 7:00 am, wrote:
I assume that the master tracks of the Beatles, etc. have all been
transferred to more durable optical digital - i.e. CD or DVD. But back
in the days when tape was all there was, what measures were taken to
protect/backup masters?

I can't speak for others, but I've studied the Beatles tapes...

Most of the recordings were done on reels of EMItape, either 2-track,
4-track, or 8-track. The short answer is that all generations of tape
(session, premix, mono/stereo masters and backup copies of masters)
were, from 1965-on, stored tails out in a played condition, in a
plastic bag inside a box in EMI's cool/dry tape library. At some
point, Beatles tapes were moved to a locked cabinet inside that
library.

The early sessions were recorded on 2-track. The group sometimes
"overdubbed" by recording across to another 2-track while adding live
instruments or vocals. The finished mono or stereo masters were
sometimes physically edited from the best parts of several takes.
While there have been very few dropouts on Beatles tapes, a few of
these edited masters show signs of dropout at the splice points. A
good example is She Loves You (for which the session tapes no longer
exist): The existing mono master, in addition to showing slight
changes in the balance of instruments, also has at least two serious
dropouts at the edit points.

At least one of the original session tapes, from the Please Please Me
album, is missing.

In the middle years, sessions were recorded on 4-track. These basic
tracks would be mixed across to one or two tracks of a second 4-track,
and the open tracks used for overdubs. And this process might be
repeated a second or even third time. It was these discrete 4-track
tapes which were "recombined" onto digital to make new 6-, 8-, 10-, 12-
or more track masters for the Yellow Sub Soundtrack and Anthology
projects.

Starting from the midway point of the White Album Session, it was 8-
tracks. On at least one occasion, the 8-track master was physically
spliced to use parts of two takes.

EMI did not use noise-reduction on the Beatles tapes. It is amazing
how well they have held up over the last 45 years, and how good they
still sound.

[Marc Wielage]

On Jun 27, 2007, commented:

EMI did not use noise-reduction on the Beatles tapes.
------------------------------snip------------------------------

Not during the original sessions, no. Dolby A NR started in 1966, but for
whatever reason, it wasn't used often at EMI until the late 1960s (and never
on a Beatles session, as far as I know).

But as far as computerized noise cleanup processing goes, EMI has used either
NoNoise or CEDAR for some of the remastered 1990s CD reissues, particularly
the "The Beatles: 1962-1966" and "The Beatles: 1967-1970" boxed sets, plus
the "Yellow Submarine Soundtrack," among others.

Fans have a mixed reaction to NoNoise, some citing artifacts and a loss of
ambience (particularly in some of George Harrison's and John Lennon's solo
albums on CD).

--MFW

[[email protected]]

On Jun 27, 8:37 pm, Marc Wielage wrote:
On Jun 27, 2007, commented:

EMI did not use noise-reduction on the Beatles tapes.
------------------------------snip------------------------------

Not during the original sessions, no. Dolby A NR started in 1966, but for
whatever reason, it wasn't used often at EMI until the late 1960s (and never
on a Beatles session, as far as I know).

But as far as computerized noise cleanup processing goes, EMI has used either
NoNoise or CEDAR for some of the remastered 1990s CD reissues, particularly
the "The Beatles: 1962-1966" and "The Beatles: 1967-1970" boxed sets, plus
the "Yellow Submarine Soundtrack," among others.

Fans have a mixed reaction to NoNoise, some citing artifacts and a loss of
ambience (particularly in some of George Harrison's and John Lennon's solo
albums on CD).

--MFW

Point taken, but beyond the official releases you mentioned, I also
reference some of the unofficial or bootleg releases, such as
Sessions, Ultra Rare Trax, Back Track, Unsupassed Masters and the John
Barrett Tapes. Of these, only Sessions was likely to have used
NoNoise. URT, BT and UM apparently came from "liberated copies" (and
possibly a pilfered session tape), and the Barrett Tape came from
cassette copies. I am STILL amazed at how well they've stood up, even
without NR. There is a small amount of hiss, but the fidelity is
phenomenal for tapes of this vintage.

[[email protected]]

On Jun 25, 12:36 pm, (Scott Dorsey) wrote:
wrote:
I assume that the master tracks of the Beatles, etc. have all been
transferred to more durable optical digital - i.e. CD or DVD.

Sadly, CD-R and DVR-R are a whole hell of a lot less durable than
analogue tape. They are not acceptable for archival storage.



I'm going under the assumption that they would be archived on stamped
media - ie. "real" CD/DVD's. You'd have a hard time convincing me
that magnetic tape is more durable than that.

Of course, wave a magnet across the studio master tape and across the
cheap Wal-Mart CD-R, which one loses?

:-)

[Scott Dorsey]

wrote:
On Jun 25, 12:36 pm, (Scott Dorsey) wrote:
wrote:
I assume that the master tracks of the Beatles, etc. have all been
transferred to more durable optical digital - i.e. CD or DVD.

Sadly, CD-R and DVR-R are a whole hell of a lot less durable than
analogue tape. They are not acceptable for archival storage.

I'm going under the assumption that they would be archived on stamped
media - ie. "real" CD/DVD's.

It's basically very expensive to press real CDs onsie-twosie. You could
do it, but people don't.

You'd have a hard time convincing me
that magnetic tape is more durable than that.

You can argue either way on that one. I can guarantee that Ampex 641 will
last fifty years if properly-stored, since I have reels of 641 that are fifty
years old. Beyond that.... nobody really knows.

We have already seen some interesting failure problems with pressed CDs, and
for the most part they have all been solved with higher purity materials and
better material formulations. Fifty years down the road we may find more,
but then again we may not.

Of course, wave a magnet across the studio master tape and across the
cheap Wal-Mart CD-R, which one loses?

Sure, but leave both in the hot sun for an afternoon and it goes the other
way. No matter WHAT media you use, you have to take care of them.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[[email protected]]

On Jun 28, 2:24 pm, (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

I'm going under the assumption that they would be archived on stamped
media - ie. "real" CD/DVD's.

It's basically very expensive to press real CDs onsie-twosie. You could
do it, but people don't.


Surely this would be a pittance to whoever owns the masters of the big
name acts, particularly to protect something that's probably very
valuable not to mention irreplaceable. Having multiple copies easily
stored in various places means no chance of being lost in a fire, etc.

As big as their catalogs are, I would think it would pay to have their
own in-house capability to do this. I assume it would also be more
practical to have them ready to go in a digital format.

[Richard Crowley]

wrote ...
(Scott Dorsey) wrote:

I'm going under the assumption that they would be archived on stamped
media - ie. "real" CD/DVD's.

It's basically very expensive to press real CDs onsie-twosie. You could
do it, but people don't.


Surely this would be a pittance to whoever owns the masters of the big
name acts, particularly to protect something that's probably very
valuable not to mention irreplaceable. Having multiple copies easily
stored in various places means no chance of being lost in a fire, etc.

As big as their catalogs are, I would think it would pay to have their
own in-house capability to do this. I assume it would also be more
practical to have them ready to go in a digital format.

But for less cost you could archive the data on literally a dozen other
media from four kinds of tape to writable optical discs to hard drives.
It just makes no sense no matter how much $$$$ you have.

[Dobbin]

Few pros record 44.1/16bit (store-bought CD) any more and who would
downsample their masters for archiving (and what about all the multitracks)?
The "literally dozens" of other media is the problem - which one to bet on
for a hundred years time. (I've just been restoring Caruso performances from
1907, pretty gritty but you can hear them fine and you can find the
metal-work from these masters and press them up onto vinyl they sound even
better than when they were recorded)

"Richard Crowley" wrote in message
...
wrote ...
(Scott Dorsey) wrote:

I'm going under the assumption that they would be archived on stamped
media - ie. "real" CD/DVD's.

It's basically very expensive to press real CDs onsie-twosie. You
could
do it, but people don't.


Surely this would be a pittance to whoever owns the masters of the big
name acts, particularly to protect something that's probably very
valuable not to mention irreplaceable. Having multiple copies easily
stored in various places means no chance of being lost in a fire, etc.

As big as their catalogs are, I would think it would pay to have their
own in-house capability to do this. I assume it would also be more
practical to have them ready to go in a digital format.

But for less cost you could archive the data on literally a dozen other
media from four kinds of tape to writable optical discs to hard drives.
It just makes no sense no matter how much $$$$ you have.

[William Sommerwerck]

Few pros record 44.1/16bit (store-bought CD) any more
and who would downsample their masters for archiving
(and what about all the multitracks)? The "literally dozens"
of other media is the problem -- which one to bet on for
a hundred years' time?

The belief that the formats of current digital recordings will unplayable in
100 years' time -- or 100,000 years' -- is absurd.

The ability to _read_ digital media is a different issue. Players tend to be
reverse-compatible, so barring a major technology change that causes all
disk players to become obsolete, there should be no problem.

[Six String Stu[_2_]]

wrote in message
oups.com...
I assume that the master tracks of the Beatles, etc. have all been
transferred to more durable optical digital - i.e. CD or DVD. But back
in the days when tape was all there was, what measures were taken to
protect/backup masters?

Seems precarious that hundreds of expensive hours of work for an album
were riding on a few mils of plastic tape coated with a few microns of
oxide.

And what about multiple takes - how many times could a tape be run
through the path before it shed enough to be audible?

Back in 1986 I had an original song recorded onto tape.
I kept it in a cabnet alongside of about 200 other tapes.
This cabnet was right next to my gun safe and display case.
I also owned a very ferocious alley cat who lived in the back yard (tried
but never could kill the basterd) and there was a medium sized dog inside
the house.
Should any intruder get past all of this security and camoflauge there was
the "lady of the house", a good looking but entirely evil human being who
took sadistic delight in seeing other people suffer.
Nobody ever touched my mess untill I was out of action for a few months in
late '96. When I returned it was to learn that the "lady" had pretty much
cleaned out all traces of my existance in the home. She liquidated what she
could. I guess the remaining items only proved to stand as a reminder of her
transgressions. She thought the meal ticket was gonna go bye bye.


In short, if you want to protect your taped originals, get an ugly wife, a
mean assed cat, a loyal canine companion and one of those walk in vaults. DO
NOT share the lock combination with the U.W.!

[Arny Krueger]

"Dobbin" wrote in message
o.uk

Few pros record 44.1/16bit (store-bought CD) any more

Saying this does not make it so.

[Mike Rivers]

On Jun 30, 8:49 am, "Dobbin" wrote:

Few pros record 44.1/16bit (store-bought CD) any more

Actually, many pros do (and 48 kHz, too - think film production). It's
the amateurs who scoff at it because they don't buy good equipment.
It's easier to to get better results from a poor 96 kHz 24-bit system
than from a poor 44.1 kHz 16-bit system.

and who would
downsample their masters for archiving (and what about all the multitracks)?

If the original recordings were at a higher rate, then there probably
would be a direct copy for safety. But it would also be a smart idea
to keep a copy in a more universally accepted, standard, and playable
format. It might be playable further into the future than the format
du jour. There are some recommended standards (AES and SPARS) for
storage formats, but sample rate and word length are not part of those
recommendations.

The "literally dozens" of other media is the problem - which one to bet on
for a hundred years time.

Exactly. While the fidelity may not be as good as what went into the
microphone, it's not difficult to play a phonograph disk or an analog
tape no matter the level of technology in the future. But how do you
read that ATA-100 disk drive ten years from now when all computers
have whatever has replaced SATA? And how will you know what RAID
format you have when you get a box of disk drives that supposedly
contain a project? It's bad enough to decipher what people wrote on
tape boxes 40 years ago.

[Paul Stamler]

"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
. ..
"Dobbin" wrote in message
o.uk

Few pros record 44.1/16bit (store-bought CD) any more

Saying this does not make it so.

We actually had an informal survey on this group a year or so ago. The near
unanimous reply was that most of us record 44.1/24 bit, unless recording for
video, in which case it was 48/24 bit.

Peace,
Paul