Next up we have a new old stock pancake of Quantegy 499 tape that we inherited from a recording studio that shut down a few years ago. Both are +6db tapes before saturation, and the frequency responses between it and the ATR Mastertape are very close to one another, meaning that if you want to swap between tape brands, you don’t need to change the bias and eq settings to get the same results from your deck. The RTM911 is the equivalent to the ATR Mastertape. Then I ran the RTM 911 tape through the Otari. The ATR MDS-36 tape is similar in frequency response to the MasterTape, so no bias or eq tweaking is required between the two tape types in order to get a very similar response. Since you can record a typical record album of 45 minutes on one side of an 1800’ tape at 7 ½ IPS, this was the preferred tape length back in the 60s to 90s for consumer machines. This is 1 mil tape, with 1800’ on a 7” reel, or 3600’ on a 10.5” reel.
That is pretty typical for an Otari 5050 deck with a high quality tape. The ATR MasterTape shows a flat frequency response +/- 2db from about 60Hz to 20Khz at 7 ½ IPS, and about 40Hz to 22Khz at 15 IPS. The scale used for our images below show clearly what each frequency response is. While 10db per vertical division seems to be a very coarse scale, keep in mind that typical tape deck measurements are done 20-20Khz at +/-3db, for a total allowable variation of 6db between the lowest amplitude frequency and the highest amplitude frequency. Each vertical division is 10db, with the frequency plot going from 20Hz at the far left to 20Khz at the far right.
TAPEDECK MAX HOW TO
All frequency response measurements were made at -20db.Īs a refresher, the picture to the right shows how to read our Soundtech 1510A tape analyzer. We then ran frequency response tests of the more popular brands of tape that we had on our test bench. We set the recording and playback to be as flat as possible at both speeds with ATR MasterTape, tweaking the bias and eq controls as required.
TAPEDECK MAX FULL
The tape deck is running at 7 ½ and 15 IPS, and is a ½ track machine, using the full width of the tape in one direction.
Our test setup is a good working Otari 5050 Mk 1 with good heads, and a Soundtech 1510A tape deck analyzer. Disclaimer: This is by no means a definitive test between tape brands and models, however it does show some of the basic differences between the various formulations.
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