reel to reel to CD
What We Transfer
We can transfer all quarter inch reel to reel tapes to cd or other digital audio formats of your choice.
Mono, Stereo, Full track, half track, quarter track, 4 track multitrack, Dolby or DBX encoded tapes recorded at 1⅞, 3.75, 7.5 or 15 inches per second can all be transferred to any digital format.
Open reel tape can be quite old and be in poor condition. We can cope with broken, tangled, poorly stored tape and tape exhibiting the signs of ‘sticky shed syndrome‘.
How We Transfer
Quality is important to us and a good transfer starts with a good analogue playback machine, clean and calibrated. We use Studer A80 RC, Tascam BR20, Tascam 34, Teac and Sony machines for transfers. Tapes are checked for condition, and laced onto an appropriate machine and listened to. Playhead azimuth can be adjusted for the best quality plackback. Quite often tapes are sent where the owner has no information about the speed, track format or content. We are happy to view and assess tapes like this.
Tapes are recorded via a Focusrite multichannel 24 bit external audio interface into one of our G4 or Intel Core 2 Duo Macintosh computers. The files are trimmed, track split and normalized with our editor of choice Amadeus Pro. At this stage any other editing or digital processing for restoration of the tapes can be performed if necessary.
Costs
As there has been such a variety of tape reel sizes, speeds and tracks formats of the years, we charge by the hour for transfers. Costs can be higher for reel to reel transfers as the tape and transfer process often require more time to setup and supervise. Quite often old splices break due to the splicing tape breaking down which need to be respliced. Also we often receive reels in poor condition with twists, breaks, badly wound on broken reels in addition to the potential of some brands of tape to develop ‘sticky shed syndrome‘ over time which needs specific attention before a transfer can be made. These need to be fixed before a transfer is made which takes time and adds to the basic hourly transfer cost.
Please feel free to contact us for a free and friendly discussion about your tapes.