Good evening everybody,
In the mid seventys here in Ireland I recorded music on an AKAI REEL TO REEL TAPE RECORDER in several concerts and folk clubs of that time I think now that these tapes could be of historical importance as many or these artists have passed on. these tapes have been sitting in their boxes on a book shelf since that time I have know idea of their condition. I did hear several years ago that you might only get one shot at copying them before they disintigrate ,so I would not go at them myself .could anyone in this fourm advise me on were to go with this project
regards
ogill

This person is an expert at handling all sorts of media. He can also probably put you in touch with other professionals if he can't handle it himself.
http://personal-cd.com/bouteng.htm


another professional
http://www.pristineaudio.com/

It is true that certain brands of tape may develop a condition where the magnetic material loses its bond with the underlying material. In such cases, I've heard of people 'baking' the reels at a very low temperature to create a temporary bond. I think it can only be baked once. See here for some background reading.

You might try and ask around some of your local music studios first. They may have the knowledge and be as enthusiastic as you to see the music preserved.

Another thing that will ensure an optimal transfer is to play the tape back on the same deck that it was originally recorded from (if you still have it).

Best of luck!

I'm not an expert, and I haven't had my hands on any tapes (other than VHS tapes) for many years. But, the only time I've seen tapes with serious damage/deterioration is when they were damaged by mishandling, or they had been "eaten" by the tape player/recorder.

In fact, I'd be equally concerned about that... If you still have your AKAI, and you haven't been using it, I'd suggest you try it out on a non-important tape... Just in case it's now eating tapes.

If cost is not an issue, I guess there's no harm in taking them to a professional.

I suggest you open the box to check if they appear to be disintegrating. If the tapes don't flake apart and the oxide doesn't come off when you handle them, I wouldn't expect excessive deterioration from one or two plays. (I think there is some finite degradation every time a tape is played.) If they are really falling apart, they may disintegrate on the first playback, and it may be impossible to get a copy at all! But, I've never seen a tape "fall apart" like that.

I have had reel-to-reel tapes that were many years old and have yet to see one in which the oxide or its bonding to the base were badly deteriorated. What I have seen is tapes that were stored in the wrong position - flat instead of on edge. In this case the tape warps due to gravity and plays back very poorly.

Where I work we play old 2" quad video tapes and have had to bake virtually all of them. We bake at 135 F for 13 hours and they almost always play fine after that. When they still don't play, they get another bake session. We have not had _any_ tapes ruined by this process and have likely baked 500 plus rolls plus some 1/2" and 1/4" audio tapes. The oldest tape we've run was recorded in 1969 with the bulk of them from the mid '70s. I KNOW this is OK for polyester based tape but I have no idea what might happen with acetate.

After baking they handle just like new with no problems with multiple passes. Putting the tape back up a month after the bake process still works fine.

The 'oven' we use for this is a commercial food dehydrator with a 1600 watt heater, circulating fans and a microcontroller to control temperature and run time. Using a plain electric oven could work but they're not designed to control such a low temp and you really should have a fan to keep it stirred up. Gas oven would be undesirable as the combustion creates water vapor, the thing you're trying to get rid of.

As far as the original deck thing goes, the main adjustment to need a tweak would be the azimuth for best high end and under ideal conditions, minimum interchannel phase shift. DON'T FIDDLE WITH IT FOR FUN as it's 'fun' to put back if you don't have reference tapes and scopes. If the tapes have Dolby tone (or just level reference tones) that could get very close for azimuth by looking at phase compare. This could be done with a scope in X-Y mode or in Adobe Audition under 'phase analysis'. Minor EQ fixes can be done in Audition or similar software.

Now, does anybody know of a virtual 'Dolby-B' plugin for Audition ?

G²

I would like to thank everybody for responding to my question .and for all the info...thanks again
ogill

Just to add...

If they are not from the era of tapes which soak up water from the atmosphere (the ones that need baking to play!), then with luck they are likely to outlive whatever digital format you copy them on to.

Of course, before it dies, the digital format can be copied perfectly onto a new digital format, and this process repeated over and over, for as long as you want.

The "problem" with digital copies is that, unless you rescue them before they rot, crash, or become obsolete, then you'll be left with nothing - whereas most analogue recordings can be left in a cool cupboard for 50 years and still play fairly well, if you can find something to play them.

So, if you do copy them, keep the originals too.

Cheers,
David.

So can an optical disc.

I don't know the extent to which this applies to audio tapes, but I have a lot of video tapes (VHS and Beta) less than 25 years old that will no longer play because the VCR is unable to track them properly.

You may be that lucky. I have not been.

I am amazed at the trouble I have had with CD-Rs and even DVD-Rs. They don't like light (some really don't like light), some don't like the paper of their inlays, some don't even appear to like being touched.

For a long time I thought people reporting problems with optical discs must be doing something very wrong - but now that I have 10+ years worth of CD-Rs and actually need to go back to them, I find that some of them are not fully readable.

HDDs start to look like a good "archive" option!

I know it's a debate we've had on HA before, and I'm not trying to re-open it. The point I'm making is that digital data is not necessarily going to look after itself in the way that photos or LPs or tapes left in a cupboard sometimes will.

Cheers,
David.

Burnable optical discs are a poor choice of backup medium ("silvers" fare better), but don't lump everything digital in with them. There are tape drives, too, remember. That's really the proper way to back up digital data for the long term.