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Author Topic: Is the Tape Project going digital???  (Read 8964 times)

Offline High and Outside

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Is the Tape Project going digital???
« on: February 20, 2017, 12:50:58 AM »
No.

You may have noticed that there is now a category in the Catalog section of our website called Digital Direct. We are offering one album there now which is sourced from a digital recording. We may offer others in the future, if people like them.

This does not affect in any fashion the process we use for making our other tapes. In case you're new here, I'll repeat the description of that process. This applies to every tape that has a catalog number starting with TP. We start from an analog tape, the original master tape. We go through a normal mastering process to make a running master on one inch two track analog tape. That running master is copied in real time to a bank of ATR-100 recorders which make the customer tapes we sell.

We have been talking with some digital labels about releasing their recordings on tape. The first to reach fruition is one we got from Gary Reber. He's quite an interesting guy. Gary's probably best known in the entertainment field as editor and publisher of Wide Screen Review. In another aspect of his life he has long been involved in promoting economic democracy. You can read his blog at http://www.foreconomicjustice.org. He's also a major fan of big band music. He used to go out on location recordings and help Wally Heider record big bands. I don't know whether that's a familiar name to you, but in my field, music recording, Wally is remembered as a giant. Gary eventually wound up producing recordings of big bands. That's how I met him originally, back in the 80's when he was producing one with Buddy Rich, who at the time was a fully mature artist at the height of his powers. That one came out as both an audio release and a video release. It's killer, I highly recommend it if you can find it.

For the last couple of years Gary has been working with a hot band in L.A., Bernie Dresel and the BBB. It culminated in a live recording which Gary produced. We got the 96/24 mixes and we copy those straight to our bank of ATR-100's. If you're curious about  how a good digital recording would sound on tape, here's your chance to find out.     
Paul Stubblebine
Managing Director, The TapeProject