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In Reply to: What tapes stood the test of time best? posted by shpickering@yahoo.ca on January 23, 2007 at 21:58:56:
I use mainly TDK MA-R90 tapes from late 70's. These are comparable to other newer (1995) TDK MA-XG's and still sound awesome. Of course, Degaussing / Aligning decks properly and storage of cassettes away from magnetic sources is important as is keeping down the store tempearature / humidity. Nakamichi / Pioneer decks used. Ben
Follow Ups:
Hi All,I've read the original question and the responses up to this point.
Teresa is right - there should not be any significant degradation in instances of proper care: sound should be intact for a period exceeding the lifetime of one human at least - this is abundantly clear to many including me as many of my tapes now enter their 30th year with not one iota of fall-out, binder failure, other particle loss etc. Tapes of this vintage that sound as if they were recorded yesterday are BASF Chome Dioxid/Super, Maxell LN, UD-XLII, Sony UCX and UCX-S and many others. Highs are unaffected by age. If somehow they are exposed to a magnetic field, then there has been inappropriate safeguarding of the tape from this particular risk. Heat, wet and dirt are also probelematic as are solvents etc. The same applies incidently to optical media - do not expose them to similar contaminants - fortunately magnetism is not one of them but airborn pollutants and aerosols of various sorts are more problematic for CDs than tapes.
The better Pioneer decks feature FLEX circuitry which will accurately restore upper band frequency loss according to a standardised algorithm known as the 1-f frequency curve. This is based on the theory that all music signals amplitude drops in direct proportion to the increase in the frequency. NAD and Yamaha's play trim also attempts to manually provide correction for losses on tapes that fail to meet this curve by lifting upper frequency amplitudes variably in advance of the bais trap and NR circuits. This remedy is usually only necessary for those tapes damaged by ambient dirt, moisture, heat in cars etc - and in my experience these are almost always pre-recorded tapes.
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