Post by thread:Webster, was [OT]: Anyone wants my old penplotter

A few years ago, I found a reel of recording wire in the garbage room (hmm, what do people think of ??...) I took it with me to a friend who had, guess what, a Webster. The recording quality was still enjoyable, some jazz music. Unfortunately he sold the Webster :-(. Hmm, would a thin copper or brass wire work as recording wire, or would any iron wire do ? Attila - SM4RAN ______________________________________________________ Gratis visitkort - klicka här ! Allt inom e-handel! http://www.torget.se -----Ursprungligt meddelande----- Från: Harold Hallikainen <spam_OUTharoldTakeThisOuThallikainen.com> Till: Microcontroller discussion list - Public. <.....piclistKILLspam@spam@mit.edu> Datum: den 29 mars 2005 23:25 Ämne: Re: SV: [OT]: Anyone wants my old penplotter ? {Quote hidden}>That's the one! It came with four one hour reels of wire. > >Harold > >>> >>>My latest acquisition is a Webster Chicago "electronic memory" (wire >>>recorder). Works great! >>> >>>Harold >>> >> >> You mean the one with a dark red/purple cabinet ? >> >> Attila - SM4RAN >> > >-- >FCC Rules Updated Daily at http://www.hallikainen.com >

On Thu, 31 Mar 2005, Attila Muhi wrote: > Hmm, would a thin copper or brass wire work as recording wire, or > would any iron wire do ? Afaik it has to be steel of a certain kind. If you could buy diamond litz somewhere it would be worth trying (similar to what used to be used for control cable model airplanes). the hysteresis of the recording wire is optimized for low distortion (= low but defined hysteresis), just like for analog recording tape. F.ex. using backup tape (Teac etc) for audio recordings causes huge amounts of distortion regardless of the bias current and record level settings. ymmv. Peter

Ï agree with you about the backup tapes. Hmm, a videotape should be better for audio reproduction ?!?? But a good pro quality reel tape and a good recorder, you get pretty close to digital quality.... Attila - SM4RAN ______________________________________________________ Gratis visitkort - klicka här ! Allt inom e-handel! http://www.torget.se -----Ursprungligt meddelande----- Från: Peter <plpKILLspamactcom.co.il> Till: Microcontroller discussion list - Public. <.....piclistKILLspam.....mit.edu> Datum: den 1 april 2005 08:50 Ämne: Re: Webster, was [OT]: Anyone wants my old penplotter ? {Quote hidden}> > >On Thu, 31 Mar 2005, Attila Muhi wrote: > >> Hmm, would a thin copper or brass wire work as recording wire, or >> would any iron wire do ? > >Afaik it has to be steel of a certain kind. If you could buy diamond >litz somewhere it would be worth trying (similar to what used to be used >for control cable model airplanes). the hysteresis of the recording wire >is optimized for low distortion (= low but defined hysteresis), just >like for analog recording tape. F.ex. using backup tape (Teac etc) >for audio recordings causes huge amounts of distortion regardless of >the bias current and record level settings. ymmv. > >Peter >

part 1 1041 bytes content-type:TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=X-UNKNOWN; FORMAT=flowed (decoded quoted-printable) On Tue, 5 Apr 2005, Attila Muhi wrote: > � agree with you about the backup tapes. Hmm, a videotape should be > better for audio reproduction ?!?? Video tape and backup tape have a lot in common. Both are recorded without bias (the bias is the signal itself) and aim for maximum density and energy as opposed to maximum linearity and low noise afaik. > But a good pro quality reel tape and a good recorder, you get pretty > close to digital quality.... A 38cm/s studio tape in brand new condition with a near perfect recording will sound bad to most people when compared to a cd, even with dbx and other noise canceling schemes. There are some valuable recordings (like early Beatles tracks) which sound really bad on modern cd because the original tapes were not good enough, for example. I know from experience that data tapes do not mix with video recorders (Hi8 etc) and the same applies for open reel data tapes and audio. By not mixing, I mean in both directions. Peter part 2 35 bytes content-type:text/plain; charset="us-ascii" (decoded 7bit)

Peter writes: > A 38cm/s studio tape in brand new condition with a near perfect > recording will sound bad to most people when compared to a cd, even with > dbx and other noise canceling schemes. There are some valuable > recordings (like early Beatles tracks) which sound really bad on modern > cd because the original tapes were not good enough, for example. I disagree. Most people can't tell the difference between an mp3 and a CD. Digital is not necessarily better than analog. 44100 samples per second with 20000 Hz bandwidth is a serious compromise. DBX on analog tape doesn't make the recording quality better. It makes it worse. It only reduces the noise. Very few major albums were recorded with noise reduction. Good engineering practice, noise gates, and fast board work are used instead. Best regards, Bob

On Wed, 6 Apr 2005, Bob Blick wrote: > Peter writes: > >> A 38cm/s studio tape in brand new condition with a near perfect >> recording will sound bad to most people when compared to a cd, even with >> dbx and other noise canceling schemes. There are some valuable >> recordings (like early Beatles tracks) which sound really bad on modern >> cd because the original tapes were not good enough, for example. > > I disagree. > > Most people can't tell the difference between an mp3 and a CD. At what data rate ? A mp3 needs to be beyond 256kBps to sound reasonable. If you compress 44.1kHz (=705.6kBps) cd quality audio 2:1 (easy) using something lossless you get something like 350kBps lossless cd quality data. Thus if a 256kBps mp3 does sound as good as a cd then the size gain from using mp3 is only 350/256 ~= 36%. And a 256kBps mp3 does *not* sound like a cd, at least not to me, although I have to listen carefully to a part I know well to discern them. And there are lossless sound compression algorythms that go way beyond 2:1. Oh, and usually the non-mp3 compressors (that I know of) require a peanut-sized integer dsp as opposed to the pentium-class processing required to do mp3 decompression in real time. > Digital is not necessarily better than analog. 44100 samples per second > with 20000 Hz bandwidth is a serious compromise. I agree. But most people can't hear much beyond 12kHz anyway. On the other hand, munging the available information using mp3 in the upper midrange where it matters most for sound coloration is not such a good idea either imho. Good that most people don't care. > DBX on analog tape doesn't make the recording quality better. It makes it > worse. It only reduces the noise. Very few major albums were recorded with > noise reduction. Good engineering practice, noise gates, and fast board > work are used instead. I agree, but someone must have botched the originals or used poor quality materials (or the tapes were not stored properly). Peter

On Thu, 2005-04-07 at 20:42 +0300, Peter wrote: > At what data rate ? A mp3 needs to be beyond 256kBps to sound > reasonable. If you compress 44.1kHz (=705.6kBps) cd quality audio 2:1 > (easy) using something lossless you get something like 350kBps lossless > cd quality data. Thus if a 256kBps mp3 does sound as good as a cd then > the size gain from using mp3 is only 350/256 ~= 36%. And a 256kBps mp3 > does *not* sound like a cd, at least not to me, although I have to > listen carefully to a part I know well to discern them. And there are > lossless sound compression algorythms that go way beyond 2:1. Oh, and > usually the non-mp3 compressors (that I know of) require a peanut-sized > integer dsp as opposed to the pentium-class processing required to do > mp3 decompression in real time. I think you've confused some numbers. First off you are listing kBps when I think you mean kbps. Also, you quote CD audio at 705.6kbps, I think you've forgotten that almost everything music wise you listen to is in stereo, so that number should be 1411200bps. Now, what sounds "reasonable" to someone's ears is a debate that would NEVER be resolved. For many people 128kbps sounds good enough. For me I usually encode at 192kbps if space is important. For areas where I want max quality I encode at 384kbps. But there's more to this then just a raw bit rate. MP3 (and other formats) give you the ability to use VBR. Often music doesn't NEED a high encoding number for certain times (i.e. very loud sections of a song can drop info about quieter stuff), this allows MP3 to become much more efficient then raw numbers would indicate. Another good example is correlation between channels, a good amount of data in a song is common on both channels (i.e. the singer's voice). There's no doubt that lossy techniques "cost" more in other areas, but the market has pretty much decided that it's worth it. And to top things off, you are talking mp3, some of the newer compression formats out there VASTLY outperform MP3 (MP3 being a REALLY old technology in the grand scheme of things). TTYL ----------------------------- Herbert's PIC Stuff: http://repatch.dyndns.org:8383/pic_stuff/

At 06:11 AM 3/31/2005, Attila Muhi wrote: >A few years ago, I found a reel of recording wire in the garbage >room (hmm, what do people think of ??...) I took it with me to a >friend who had, guess what, a Webster. The recording quality was >still enjoyable, some jazz music. Unfortunately he sold the Webster :-(. > >Hmm, would a thin copper or brass wire work as recording wire, or >would any iron wire do ? The wire does have to be magnetic, kind of leaves brass and copper out..

> > I vaguely remember something about somebody using a > > bandsaw to record sound > > "Aaaaaarrrgh my hand!" perhaps? Oh yeah. That was it ;-) (I was looking around a gory pictures group once, as you do, and saw a police photo of someone who allegedly commited suicide by hopping up into a commercial bandsaw. There wuz two halves of a body and guts everywhere there wuz. yumyum) But....the very earliest recorders were metal tape

LOL Not if you've got one of these. Pretty neat video. Uses a TI dsp. http://www.sawstop.com/video.htm -Dal Tony Smith wrote: {Quote hidden}>>>>Hmm, would a thin copper or brass wire work as recording wire, or >>>>would any iron wire do ? >>>> >>>> >>>The wire does have to be magnetic, kind of leaves brass and copper >>>out.. >>> >>> >>I vaguely remember something about somebody using a bandsaw >>to record sound >> >> > >"Aaaaaarrrgh my hand!" perhaps? > >Tony > > >