Master Tapes: Why Azimuth Alignment Tones Are important
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- čas přidán 11. 09. 2024
- In this video I compare 10 K Azimuth Alignment tones from 6 different sources. Two are well-known Manufacturers of Master Tapes and four are different trading partners that i work with. The main takeaway is that with alignment tones, you have a chance of matching your machine as closely as possible to the machine that made the tape. Without, theres no way to really know if you're right.
I purchased a tone tape and aligned my heads. Then recorded a new tone tape. Just to find out it was still out of alignment. Its best to record the tone yourself and align the heads until you get it right.
Great info!
Wow you align to another machines calibration? That’s very interesting. Do you have a scope hooked up at all times?
I have it available via a switch box, so I can bring it in when I need to. Thanks for watching!
I have some different 3k Test Tapes, I was surprise how the speeds were way off from each other, and the X-Y.
I align my tape head by ear by listening for the best treble in mono, no reason to use alignment tapes as noone records anything on tape nowadays.
Hi thanks for watching. Certainly that way works, but I prefer the visualization on a scope. You’d be surprised a number of things are still recorded onto tape if the artist wants it that way. Take care!
How do you know yours is right
As I explained in the video, I used a MRL Calibration tape as the baseline. As far as "What's right"; thats sort of the point of my video. Different machines can be properly aligned individually, but still show differences between them because of head geometry, different low-end head bumps, etc. Having tones from the machine that did the recording, allows the end user to adjust for those differences. Hope that makes sense. Thanks for watching!
@@JeffersonDD do the other head alignment parameters remain set when you adjust azimuth
@@ColocasiaCorm It sort of depends on how big the differences between the machines are. Usually Gain is first then 10K for azimuth and then back to 1K to see if there are differences between left and right. USUALLY, with the folks i trade with or vendors I buy from, once Gain and azimuth are set, the other parameters don't drift too much. I'm probably more anal about this than most. And as I learned recently, sometimes its best to just stay with your own MRL alignment, especially at the low end. I had a tape that was 2 dB "Hot" hot on my machine at 50 hz, and everything else matched. It was because Our machines were THAT different at the low end. It was an important lesson learned.