Ideal upper frequence response.........

[Red Grant]

Would there be such thing as ideal upper frequency response for tape machines depending on music?

Doc's comment regarding 15ips sounding beefier than 30ips for rock made me reflect my recent experience on my test including BC9000 and Tandberg 310MkII.

Test tapes were normal cassettes including rock, and classicals.  BC9000 has upper frequency limit of 20k for normal.  310MkII has 16k.

For rock, 310 sounded a lot better to my surprise.  I always thought that high frequency response limit would sound better.

For classical, BC9000 sounded more refined.


Does this mean, depending on music selection, going higher ips may not necessarily improve the sonic quality, in fact, might even "degrade" the perceived sonic quality, depending on the kind of music?

[Tubes n tapes]

At 30ips the bottom octave of any tape machine is pretty severely compromised compared to 15ips. In fact some bass response degradation is already noticeable between 7.5ips and 15ips.

Tape formulas of the 1950s and 1960s would saturate substantially at higher frequencies. By running the tape at 30ips most of this saturation effect would be shifted above 15kHz. A very useful tradeoff against the loss of bass response for that time.

The 'modern' tape formulas show very little saturation below 15kHz even at 15ips (only with good recording heads!). So running the tape at 30ips doesn't really help anything in that area, but it still compromises the bottom octave.

With modern tape like the RMGI468, 15ips will give you a better copy of the original signal than 30ips will.

[Red Grant]

Great!  Thank you.