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CREATING BACK UPS - MP3 AND TAPES - PROBLEMS WITH OLD TAPES - WHAT SOFTWARE

This page is unfinished and at the minute is more like a series of short stories. It will be updated though. Below is a collection of the various short articles I have written recently about archiving old cassettes and reels, and turning them into downloadable MP3 recordings. This page will focus on three main topics. Audio Quality, problems with tapes, and software requirements to create your archive.


CREATING AND STORING ARCHIVES ON YOUR PC:

Most people that are living in this modern age have some kind of digital archive. Be it music, movies, photos taken with that expensive digital camera, or scans of old family photos. Who want's to lose all that work and start again? You may replace music. But how about the kids first birthday video or photos?? Or that wedding in the sun?? It is a fool that would keep no back up copies of all their personal files.

I have been reading some comments on the web in late 2011, which inspired this article to be written up, and some sort of completion of the article made. My original OLD TAPES AND MP3 page has been on line for some time, but was more a collection of shorter articles copied and pasted from my logs and news pages over the years.

The original comment on the site I was reading concerned the age old problem of not being able to use disks after a period of time, as they wont read. Yes I know about writing at single speed, and transferring the tape contents to audio CDs. Why would you use this 1980's flawed technology anyway, when it is neither practical, nor safe (In the respect that your files are not safe, not that you should wear a yellow jacket and a crash helmet to work at your PC).

Much better options are now cheaply available. FORGET COMPLETELY about using cds or dvds as your only form of data back up, and stop kidding yourself. You will regret it. I am quite sure the folks that claim to have had no trouble with disks are either telling lies or have not had the years of experience with large capacity data storage that many of us have.

Flashing back some 10 or 15 years, do you remember how unreliable floppies were?? "Can not read from specified device" was a common message. That 10k text file or 70dpi scan was lost.

So what is the best option. Well at this time, 2011, the best option seems to be using multiple hard drives. Preferably removable USB drives. Yes hard drives do have moving parts. Hey Ho. Big deal.

 

HOW DO I PERSONALLY GO ABOUT MAKING BACK UPS:

Well believe it or not, it is not everyone that owns a PC that has even the basic ideas of it's operations. Simple copy and paste of files seems to be beyond many. It was not so long back I was called to a friends in the next village to help. They had spent a night trying to copy MP3 files from a disk, onto a hard drive. They had no idea, so they enlisted the help of a young computer whizz I later nicknamed Bill Gates!! He had no idea. I think some folks just use their PC to drift around the web and buy stuff from e bay, and have not gone through a learning curve of basic pc skills. Another friend was so paranoid about his work files, he paid one of these rip off companies to back up his PC every night on line. Gees. A few files??? It ain't rocket science. Well maybe it is.

So here is what I would do if I was starting off with taking back ups serious. Start off with a large secondary drive on your PC to hold your files. Then look at a pair of separate USB or Firewire hard drives, which are relatively cheap nowadays. Buy a couple of 2 TB drives, or be real mean and buy a pair of 1TB drives, and then next year sit moaning that you wished you had spent the extra 30 quid or so.. Keep second back up on a shelf completely disconnected till adding files to it. If you have a choice of storing at another location like the office, do it. Eg, I have 1 back up in the shack and one in the house. My local history project with over a decade of scans of material local to me is also kept on a drive that belongs to another member of the project, thus keeping a copy at a different location.

 

BACK UPS AND THE "RAID" SYSTEM

For anyone that takes back ups seriously, and I mean people with large amounts of data to look after, there are good reasons to keep completely separate back up drives, preferably at different locations. One of the web space providers I use has back up servers located some miles from the main servers. That is taking back ups seriously. What is the reason for this?? It is very simple and straight forward, and not difficult to grasp.

Some people use automated back up systems in a RAID configuration. This type of set up uses two drives, both connected live to the PC at the same time. (Correct me if I 'm wrong on this subject, as I have never used such a set up). This defeats the purpose of having a completely separate back up on a separate drive, physically unconnected to the main PC. What if there is a major blow up, or any of the other extreme cases listed below?? As someone also pointed out, an automatic back up system may copy a file automatically, but it will also delete files automatically if you mistakenly delete something. What if you come in drunk and start to mess around with your pcs!! It happens. Unless you are not like the folks I know, and are tea total, this is a possibility.

 

POWER SURGES:

Power surges can happen, especially during lightning storms. Don't expect complete protection from a 10 quid surge limiter to anything but minor surges.

 

LIGHTNING STRIKES:

I get paranoid when there is lightning around. I run around unplugging electrical gear, removing drives from pcs, aerials from receivers etc etc. You don't get second chances with lightning. So don't leave the back up USB drive connected and plugged in to the mains.... at any time!! And don't start making that weekly back up if there is lightning about. Common sense perhaps, but we can all be careless!!


MAJOR AND SUDDEN VIRUS OR MALWARE ATTACK:

It is not everyone that uses their main work PC standalone, and never ever has it on line. I do, and use a second basic pc with only e mail software and browsers etc on it for the web. I have too many years of archive work stored around the main drives to wish to be concerned about malware and virus attacks. If it ain't connected to the world, the chances of these problems are very much reduced.


OTHER MORE EXTREME POSSIBILITIES:

This may seem extreme to mention such events, but they do happen in the world. If you take backing up data seriously, these possibilities must have a place in your plans. They include...

House breaking / theft, flood damage, storm damage (including possible big tree down through the shack, a possibility in my own case), gas explosion, house fire, acts of war, plane crash, cops crash through the roof in their choppers, terrorist attack, drunken party and idiots spilling drink everywhere, drunken party and idiots using your pc to play music and end up deleting stuff by mistake, wife catches you with the woman next door and starts wrecking the place, irate husband from next door comes in and starts wrecking the place (LOL) etc etc.

 

PROBLEMS WITH ARCHIVING OLD TAPES:

It is easy to forget the technology we used 30 years ago. With cassettes, many drawbacks showed up.

The speed running fast or slow, which maybe wasn't even noticed till one particular record comes on, that doesn't sound right. Unmanned recording may not pick up on this, ie if you are running around doing other things and leaving tapes running, to copy to your MP3 file. But there is another possibility. If the record that sounds fast is the only one you noticed, was it the station that played a bum taped version?? If it was a Nova tape for example, chances are that the cassette machine the tape was recorded on was running off speed. If it was recorded from community radio xxxx, that had the most basic studio set up, any of the two options are possible!!!

Heads were not always alined identical on cassette decks. It is always advisable to peak the head alinement for every cassette being transferred to MP3. Especially if there were screwdriver experts around that made the original recordings!!!! (<redface></redface>)

There were so many different radios on the market. Many people would use a portable stereo radio cassette for recording, some would try and use a hi fi tape deck separate. But the radio source was vitally important as well. Some recordings made from FM sound very "sharp" and others can sound muffled, some even distorted. Some radios couldn't cope properly with heavy compressed and proccessed stations such as Dublin's Q102, and Sunshine 101. Often if recorded in stereo, even if the station audio was well proccessed and separated, many machines did not record well in stereo. Many did. Some caused excessive hiss, and audio sounded better in mono. Some stations may have lit a pilot light and ann stereo, but they were not always proper stereo. Many Irish country stations played recordings from local artists anyway, that may or may not have been true stereo.

Many recordings were made on the move between radio stations, and therefore there can be some fading and variable signals. But what I am saying is that recording from the radio in many cases resulted in variable quality of recordings. FM would become hissy. AM would become noisy. FM Stereo lights would flutter out and in!! Some recordings may even be made at the station QTH, and thus the expected distortion and overload on the radio is sometimes heard. But who else could supply recordings of these stations. One has to take it in the teeth, and record what we could while on holiday.

We can not turn the clock back and return to the 70's and 80's to re record with the top of range PC and SDR receiver.

One thing I see as obvious is probably not everyones idea of smart, but don't throw way your original tapes. You may want to re record one day with them!! Oh I know some people can't stand clutter, or maybe their long suffering wife is really calling the shots there. But maybe one day you will regret not having the old original. Especially these jokers that record at the shittiest bit rates, thinking they are saving electricity or something. If in doubt, send them to someone you know will be keeping a hold of them for a while yet!!

 

EVERY COPY LIKE THE NEXT:

But remember, the most significant thing that is easy to forget in these days of digital recording, is that each copy of an mp3 file is identical to the master. Unlike the 10th generation copies of 60's tapes that are doing the rounds. I often wonder who has the masters of these.

Who can remember these silly analogue video cameras that took small tapes. Two spring to mind. The Sony 8mm system and the VHS C format. Despite the relatively cheap cost of a tape, most people copied the contents of the small tape to a standard VHS tape and called that crap copy a master. The if someone wanted a copy of that beautiful wedding day, it was going to be a third generation copy. Clever eh?? Whenever I borrowed a VHS C camera, I always smashed the small tape and put the actual tape into a large shell, and that was the master!!

 

MOBILE PHONES:

Keep mobile phones and rf sources well away from the recordings. You know how many times you hear phones coming to life during live news reports on tv. Do you want the same noise coming through your recordings??

 

CREATING MP3 AUDIO CLIPS:

I often wonder why some dxers use such a really crap sample rate to create their MP3 clips. Many seem not to take advice, and bumble along with the most awful bitrates available, as though they are saving electricity or something by doing so.

The clips I have on line here are not really particularly large, and unless otherwise stated, and are generally no more than a few hundred k. Sure, maybe an 80k sound clip will download faster, but if it is a good clip, and is of a booming signal, then the clip is wasted if compressed so much that it sounds like a low bit real audio from 1998!! It is wasted also if it sounds like crap even if it is a dx signal. For what?? A few extra "k"??

CREATE A WAV FILE FIRST:

For the sake of a few kb, I use the so called standard "Cool Edit" CD quality of "44.1k 16 bit mono" when recording to a .wav file to begin with. There was a reason that I never used the save as facility to save as an MP3 directly, especially in later versions of the software (Audition). But the reason is lost in the mists of time. Of course if it is a good FM STEREO recording, stereo should be used, but for MW recordings, made in mono, why waste bytes when the MP3 could be mono. Many people don't seem to grasp that simple piece of advice either!!


CONVERT TO MP3:

I use the old tried and tested Audio Catalyst from Xing (old 1999 vs, but works great for compressing .wav files to MP3. I set the mp3 bit rate to flat out, but variable bit rate. The quality of the recording will determine how the software "takes the data required" from a MW clip. Often the final bit rate is only around 30-40kb/s, but for high quality AM recordings, the bit rate can be around 80kb/s, or 112, or sometimes even higher.

This shows that the people who record their old minging manky cassettes from the 80's onto their PC at a mere 64k fixed rate, could do with using a much higher bitrate. 64k is far too low, and many recordings of the old offshore stations have obviously been made from good quality recordings, but are spoiled by this crap bit rate. The phasey noise heard when played through an audio system is annoying. It may not be noticable on cheap £6 speakers or the tiny so called 500 watt speakers that come free with a PC, but on a pair of 15 inch band speakers, it tells!! For no extra cost and a little bit bigger file, the results could be virtually lossless.

Check some of my Radio Nova recordings from mid 1984 on this site as examples of high bit rate AM radio. Some of the Dave Christian recordings were particularly good. (I don't remember which radio recorded these originally, but I obviously hit it right with a good radio and good tape deck at that time) Or listen to 780 WBBM, or WCBS 880 or WFAN 660 from the audio clips 2009 page, and judge for yourself.

 

downloads_radio_nova.html

 

THE PROOF OF THE PUDDING:

I once challenged a hi fi buff, who runs the fancy speaker cable that costs an arm and a leg, on his Hi Fi. He said he could tell the difference between a cd/ .cda file, and an MP3. I voted the other way. But I suggested that the test had to be fair, and audio must come from the same source. So the only thing we had available was a PC, that could play an audio CD as well as an MP3 file. Results?? It was impossible to tell any difference between a CD and a high end MP3, created from the same CD.

I have to add that many dxers would never be able to tell the difference with their bitrate anyway, unless a really extreme example.

NB: I have lost track of the times I have read on line about the Perseus SDR sounding better after the release of a new piece of software. The truth is, the audio proccessing that is supposed to be "better" has never been altered!!

 

 

WHICH SOFTWARE?

There's a question with a thousand answers. There are many many applications available out there designed to record audio from line in sources.

Cool Edit was a popular application for many years, even since the first versions appeared on floppies. Adobe bought them out, and Adobe Audition 1.5 became a popular application. After that, the software went way downhill for single track recording purposes. It may have good multi tarck capabilities, I don't know, but for single track users, it became more clutter than anything else. Version 2.xxx was once tried, and it was found to take about 3 days to install, and just short of that to open up the application initially. So it was quickly dumped.

Many sound cards have their own sound recording software, Nero has it's own, and there are many other freebies available on the web. I wouldn't know where to start if I was using some of these freebies with no normalize function, adjust levels, editing facilities etc..

Audio Recorder Plus 4.0 is a real time MP3 recorder, though very simple compared to for example Cool Edit, Sound Forge etc. There are so many many recorders available, many freebies..

I have heard of those that buy a new USB package of either record player or cassette, to record their old media "automatically". Is using the LINE IN socket, and buying a twin phono to stereo 3.5mm jack beyond them?? The Adobe option above is as good as any for the initial wav file.

 

 

 

STORIES ABOUT ARCHIVING OLD TAPES - MAY 2010

 

What are the biggest pains in the backside to an enthusiast who finds historic radio recordings on line??

 

1. PLAYBACK ONLY MODE:

I think most people these days are aware what an MP3 file is and many folks have players in their cars, in their pockets, on their phones etc, so the most desirable idea is surely to download the file for playback at a time and place that suits the listener / enthusiast.

Finding a web site where files are made in some horrible non downloadable format is really such a pain in the butt. One example is a great American web site I found with horrible RAM files (something to do with the dreaded Real Audio).

Some web site owners seem to like making life difficult by having their MP3 files available only through some silly "playback only" audio player. Often these are controlled by a playlist file, which is usually a .m3u file. The file name of can sometimes be found in the properties or link paths etc. If this is pasted into the browser, saved and opened in notepad, the real mp3 file name can be found and pasted into the browser and downloaded. This of course is a long winded road around a problem that can be avoided by webmasters simply using direct and simple links.

 

2. QUALITY QUALITY QUALITY:

This is probably the biggest pain in the backside on the web. Many of the perfectly good offshore radio recordings have been ruined because they are simply recorded at such a pathetic bit rate.

I found out the hard way years ago, when I was copying a lot of my CD collection onto the hard drive that not only is an MP3 recording smaller than a .wav file, but there are small, smaller and "whats the point". Many seem to archive historical radio recordings in "what's the point" quality.

I had to re rip all my CDs at a decent bit rate some time afterwards, doubling my workload.

 

Also remember to create the MP3's at a reasonable bit rate. Many dxers ruin recordings whether it be through lack of knowledge about bit rates, or a misguided attempt to save "something". Many recordings available on line are made at a poultry 64k, which is certainly not enough for good quality AM. I have even had a former webmaster rip my decent quality recordings to bits and resave them at some inferior bit rate, for no reason other than save a few meg on a 30 meg file. I have no idea what these people think they are saving by destroying audio quality like this.

If you were to listen on a decent amplifier with half decent speakers the problem would be obvious. If you listen on a £5 pile of crap that came free with your PC amid claims of being 400 watt speakers, then you probably won't notice any difference.

 


Part of my tape collection, which I am working my way through

 

 

THE PHYSICAL SIDE TO OLD TAPES:


Yes, it is sometimes hard to remember the days when the tapes were the only media readily available for recording, and the reliability factor of them was questionable at times.

I have been archiving many of my old tapes of late. Many play fine after all these years. But I have been back in the 70's, and copying some of the older cassettes, which are more than 30 years old now. I had forgotton how I used to be plagued by the crap tape syndrom. Using the Pyral tapes, or the Pinnacle, I remember the mechanical jam ups. It still happens with these manky old cassettes. Some hi fi guys or guys involved in radio would say, yea, buy TDK tapes. But they were more expensive, and at the time, we didn't have a bottomless pit of cash for blank tapes, never mind good quality ones. Finding them to buy was no easy task at that time out here in the sticks either. The nearest town was 12 miles away.

It was years before I realised that good quality tapes meant "mechanicaly" good, not just "audio" good. Many tapes record OK, but the mechanisms used to jam easy, or somehow some tapes would chew up easily.

These Pyral things I am working with at the minute often stop half way through, because the tapes are well jammed. Trying to rewind with your finger shows the extent they are jammed. Often a good few bangs off of a hard surface, like the edge of the bench for example, will be enough to free the tape. In extreme cases I have to change shells.Something I always remember about those Pyral tapes too was their index cards. They had a real strong smell like some new books have of the inks used in them I suppose. Even after more than 30 years, some of them, especially those that have not been played as often, still have the same distinctive smell of "new book" from the labels after all these years.

A radio friend used to send BASF C60's, those orange ones you used to get, and they were shocking for chewing up!!! Even c60's!! Some were more guilty than others of the dreaded wow and flutter. I have had to swap shells of some old tapes just to get them to play properly.

And then of course some tapes I have dug out sound terrible, till it is realised the tiny square of foam that is at the centre of the tape to keep the actual tape against the heads has gone. Luckily I don't tend to throw out much, and therefore have plenty "spare parts".

Sometimes I have used a c60, giving obviously only 30m per side. But sometimes there would be some bad QRN from faulty power lines over a mile away that used to cause grief around here, and the tape would have to be stopped. Quite often I may only have a 10m clip of something or other, or maybe even only a few precious airchecks. Maybe signals were very poor. But these days, some of the stations which the recordings are of, may only have a few known recordings available, so a rubbish recording is better than no recording at all.

I recently suspected a cassette player of chewing tapes, and almost ripped it out and threw in another machine. After playing side A of a MEMOREX C90 first flawlessly, side B would not play without a lot of chewing and wowing. Tape path and heads cleaned to be sure. Still the same. Tried the first c120 I found lying around the shack, as they were REPUTED to be worse at chewing and wowing, although not in my experience. Played perfectly. Hmm. Tape Faulty?? I had a TDK SF cassette lying close by, so I changed the shells. The former chewer played perfectly. I guess the reason was inside the sticky shell?? That is the first time I have ever had to split one of these Memorex C90, MRX3 late 70's tapes. So confident were the manufacturers of the day that they had not even put screws in their tape housings / shells, so they have to be prised open.

I have also archived some old 8mm cine reels from the 60's of my local village. Some of the material that has been reproduced on DVD can be seen to stick and within seconds you can actually see the burn up, as the film melts by the heat of the lamp..lol. Then its out with the selotape and delaying production again!!

 

REEL TO REEL TAPES:

The time taken to record all these old 1980's triple play reels is quite alarming, so I am trying to time it so I can keep the tapes running when I am out the shack. Some nights I have been running the tapes overnight as well, due to the length of the tracks. For the record, I only have about 40 of the triple play reels, but that equates to 160 tracks, as there are 4 tracks on each tape, all at 6.5 hours at slow speed, which most of them are recorded at, over 1000 hours!!!

I have plenty of reasonable tape decks still working, but not reel to reels decks. I have one decent working machine, and wish to finish the job while it still runs smoothly.

 

OLD TAPES FALLING TO BITS:


Many people are complaining that their old tapes are falling to pieces when they are played back. I am one of them. Those old orange BASF cassettes haven't stood the test of time, and require continual head cleaning when trying to archive their contents.

I am surprised by the Maxell triple play tapes. Very thin tape, yet still playing like it was recorded last week, and not 20 odd years ago, and tapes kept in less than ideal conditions since. But anyway, while the enthusiasm is there for archiving old manky tapes, I would be better to keep at it. I am very easily distracted.

 

EVEN THE WORLD FAMOUS AMPEX TAPES:


As readers of this blog will have been aware in the last month or so, I have been quite active in archiving my old manky reels of tape as well as old cassettes.

Yesterday I had an odd reel that I must have been given by someone. I can't recall who, but I only ever bought the triple play reels that could record 6.5 hours per track. Each tape had 4 mono tracks, or 2 stereo tracks. These triple play tapes are all Maxell. They are playing as though they had been recorded yesterday, and playing flawlessly.

But I have 1 AMPEX tape which although on a 7" reel, is only 1hr 37m per track at slow speed. There are a couple of minutes at the start of each side of a test tone, then a second leader tape!! Odd. But despite the name AMPEX, a name well known in radio studios of the past, the reel is falling to bits. One play yesterday clogged up the tape path and heads to the extreme. No use. So that tape will be left until last, and I will have to record it bit by bit. Shocking that some of these tapes are now almost unplayable.

Also showing the same characteristics as the duff AMPEX are those orange BASF cassettes that you used to get in the early 80's. Even some C60's are no use, and have to be copied bit by bit!! But the dreaded rot doesn't seem to effect every cassette. Even though they have been kept all these years side by side in a box.

Some of the orange BASF c120's are full of plastic things to aid the mechanism. But after all these years being unplayed, they are also sticky in a mechanical way, and there are some amount of squeaks and whines coming through the speakers that are not on the tape. The way to overcome this is to change the tape housing whether briefly or permanently. I was given a box of old music tapes a couple of years ago that someone was putting out, and I also fell in with a box of sealed music tapes, some dance thing. So I have plenty shells lying around that I can use.

Many of my 1980's ID tapes are on these BASF c120's.

 

KEEP MOBILE PHONES AWAY FROM YOUR RECORDINGS:

If you do decide to start to archive your old tapes, remember to keep any mobile phones away from the recording equipment. There is nothing worse than the buzzing noise of mobile phones coming through a perfectly good recording. I had to restart a few recordings recently because of silly phones!!!

 

CREATING LISTS OF FILES:

There were often shouts years ago from PC users about the creation of lists of files, something that was desired for folders loaded with MP3's for example. Windows never had a simple solution. I am not sure if they do even now.

But I noticed that Firefox, the common web browser has the ability to create folder listings. Simply browse to the folder in Windows Explorer, and copy the address from the address bar. eg "F:\perseus files"

Paste in the address bar of FIREFOX, and you have a list which is printable.

If you try and do the same with Internet Explorer, at least the version I have on the PC, all it tries to do is log on to Microsoft.

With FIREFOX the "file - open file" command in the menu doesn't seem to work, and "file - open location" doesn't do much either. So the copy and paste method as described above seems to be the best option. Once you are in a folder, you can navigate the whole PC using FIREFOX.

I have noticed a drawback though with firefox, if the filename is particularly long. I must try a newer version.

For MP3 listings, I used to use (and still do) WINAMP. Again, I can't be bothered with the clutter of the newer versions of this software, and use version 2.65, which dates back to 2000. It is a quick and small and relatively unobtrusive MP3 player. I sometimes believe that the later versions also have something funny about the audio quality. It is as though it has built in "cheap" sound.. On e drawback with the old version of WINAMP is that it does not support ide2, which may contain info that is required, if you are using for example AZ Anorak.

 

OLD RADIO RECORDINGS AGAIN:

Isn't it great that these days we are all aware that an mp3 copy is exactly the same file as the 100th generation copy.

Isn't it great that if I wanted to record from the radio today, I set my record software on the PC and press go. In 6 hours time, I stop and save. Voila - 6 hours of station xxxx.

Most people will listen on FM these days to what little radio they listen to. Few use AM. There is little left worth recording, but sometimes there are the surprises. But anyway, if I want a few hours recorded from AM radio, I set up the receiver as best as possible, and press record.

I have in the past apologised for the quality of some of the old MW recordings I have shared on line. I did not have the best recording gear in those days. I did not always use the best quality radio available for recording. I did not always have a clue what I was doing, and often changed antennas and tuned up and down in the middle of a recording.

Too often that good recording which I thought I had on an old tape turns out to be of poor quality, but of course it is a sample of what we used to listen to all those years ago. Not only that, we were happy with the signal levels and noise from televisions, and fluorecent lamps etc.

Remember how the night time reception of Radio Luxembourg left it's mark on the transistor radio generation. Radio Luxembourg was a megawatt giant as far as signal strength went, but at night the reception on the humble transistor was prone to fades and distortion. This of course is still true to this day, for although the hits are long gone, the relays of China Radio at night, and Radio Korea, come from the old 208 transmitter. The same story of distortion went for Caroline or Nova etc. Long distance night time AM does fade and phase and distort.

So when I tried to apologise for a night time AM recording of Caroline to a Dutch chap I think from the Offshore Download Club, I was told that it was just the way that night time AM signals were, and I was still to copy the recording. It may be a unique recording, and the only one from that day.

We just can't take our modern PC and best communications receiver with the best audio to the Essex Coast, or the Dutch Coast and re record hours on end of our favourite offshore station of the 1970's. We can't take a hard disk and PERSEUS SDR to record the whole MW band from 1974 unfortunately. We have to archive the material that is left and still available if we want to preserve radio history.

I was recently sent a box of old tapes from a friend in Norway. This was a shoe box size, of many old recordings. As I began to play them back, I noticed one or two things. Svenn has had EXACTLY the same problems as I had with various equipment back through the years. I heard CW coming through one of his recordings, and some are plagued by QRN, and night time reception. The recordings, although unique in their own right, are very similar to my own!!

Also in the box, are copies of tapes that came from possibly Anoraks Ireland. In the early days, Tony at Anoraks Ireland also had many recordings which were of questionable quality. Many FM recordings sounded like very flat AM. So even people who were selling tapes, did not have pro equipment to work with in those days. Domestic equipment was expensive. Having one decent cassette deck was a big deal in those days, far less two, that could be connected up to copy tapes direct.

How times have changed, with the market flooded with gadgets that can play FM quality music etc. What would the web and ipod generation think of a weak AM signal from many miles away now???

 

SILLY SILLY YOUNG DXER:

I was such a silly young whipper snapper of a dxer back in 1983 which is the year the tapes I have been archiving are from. Some things stick out a mile in these 27+ year old recordings.

The most irritating thing that appears in some of the tapes, is something that may be compared to an active dxer. By this I mean a dxer who constantly twiddles with the controls, as though hoping to squeeze out a slightly better signal. Some dxers will sit on a channel and monitor, while others constantly mess around with tuning, bandwidth, atu, and anything that is adjustable. That is fine for live dxing, but sadly I had a silly habit of messing around with not only the tuner, but even changing over aerials during recordings.

It was not difficult to tune a radio in to a good AM signal from Radio Nova for example and then switch the recorder on, and leave it. Many of my tapes are fine, but if I was in the shack at the time, I couldn't resist the temptation to try for a better signal, even if the signal was fine in the first place!!! The result is that on some recordings, the messing around can be such an irritation.

But as I have said elsewhere, it is impossible to turn the clock back to a time 27 years ago, and re record these long gone radio stations. We must be content with the old tapes which are still around.

Many recordings and full collections will have been lost by now, perhaps because of death, moving house and losing tapes, irate ex wives throwing stuff out, etc etc. I remember speaking to a chappie at a radio meeting in London some years ago, who had been involved in the London pirates in the 70's. I asked if he had any old recordings of the stations of the time. "Yes", he said, "I once had quite a lot, but I put on my jacket and walked out one day and left the lot with the ex wife!!" (lol)

 

STINKING AUDIO FROM SOME RADIO SETS:

Something else that is such a shame, is the audio of some of the recordings. While I did not have the 15 inch woofers of the band/ disco speakers in the shack in those days which I have now, it is not difficult to tell what is good audio and what is bad.

I had by 1979, a Grundig Satellit 3400 (still have it) which is very good for recording from, and has really great audio reproduction.

So why o why did I believe that an old wooden philips radio gram from the 1950's offered better audio??? The old wooden philips wireless was of the type that sounded quite good, but every now and again on some channels, CW would break through from an unknown source.

 

CW BREAKTHROUGH ON MW:

There never were any hams living near me that were liable to break through in CW mode. However I overheard a couple of hams talking on 80m a couple of years back, just before I applied for my own callsign. They spoke about giant hogweed, which made me sit up and take note, as that grows locally here. I nearly fell off the chair when one of the guys said that he had lived in this area in the late 70's I think it was, and he mentioned my village by name. I e mailed him, and the fellow said he had lived at a remote farmhouse a few files out of town. I asked for the name of the place, only through curiousity, but never received a reply. The first response did however say the place was haunted!!

Anyway, I played an old Nova tape to a Ham friend that is fluent in CW, unlike myself. The QRM came from the MF/ LF Portpatrick Coastal Radio Station operating in the 400 - 500kHz range, maybe 50 or 60 miles distant.

 

Why o why did I think the sound of an old TRIO 9R59 with the wrong audio output capacitor sounded good?? The 9r59 was very tinny, and although changing the output cap would have given the set realistic sounding beefy audio, it was never done. It also was very unstable, and even AM stations had to be retuned after a time. SSB was a constant battle!! But was it good for MW dxing?? Wow, aye was it. Better than anything I had at the time. And I still have the set to this day.

There are some recordings made in mid 1984 that I think may have been taped from a Grundig portable Concert Boy, sat next to a frame aerial / long wire combi. This was I think the best audio, heard on some of the Dave Christian Nova tapes and many around that date. Or maybe I had discovered that the old 3400 was indeed of good quality for making recordings. I really don't remember.

I came into a TRIO 9R59DS as well in the mid 80's and the audio from that was rather good too. This is a completely different set to the 9R59. They are both on the photo on the home page of this site.

I also had a Chapman hi fi tuner which was quite good for recording, but again, it may have also had CW etc sometimes, and lacked selectivity, as one would expect from domestic junk. I am convinced it is the recordings from this set that I can't do much with, even through the ORBAN 642B!! For some reason, EQ in makes the sound go like I used to say in the early 1990's, like an Amstrad. Yes, I used to compare audio quality, and sometimes it had that cheap Amstrad sound!! Don't get me wrong, I am being picky, and the tapes sound fine. But whatever the radio I recorded the mid 1984 Dave Christian shows from, I should have stuck with it!!

In mid 1985, I added a fine Racal RA17 to my collection of radios. It had stable audio output, and is still a superb sounding radio today. I have a very good sounding example. I have also a second Racal RX, who's audio is nowhere near the quality of the first one, and I have heard other racal sets from the same era that are also a bit rough. I guess it was just luck that I found myself a good one. The Racal is still mounted into the bench, see photo of the shack on the front page.

The dreaded AGC on many cheaper made radios will sometimes give the wrong impression of levels on the transmission. Some radios will give out reduced audio if the signal weakens, giving the impression that the transmission audio was all over the place. In the case of NOVA and Caroline etc, it certainly wasn't, and they had better audio than ILR dross in the UK, due to their superior optimod settings.

So as a result of having a multitude of radio sets, the audio quality changes from recording to recording.

 

 

3 HOURS ON A C90:

I used to often record 3 hours onto a C90. How did I achieve this??

Simple. I used two receivers tuned to different stations, one recording in the right hand channel and one recording onto the left hand channel. A cheap and easy way to record different radio stations, and I am glad I did. Often I would record an obscure weaker station, and stick NOVA or Sunshine on the other channel.

However, (And I bet you were waiting for the negative "however"..lol), Well I have to say on playback, the desk I use does NOT work the way I think a decent desk should. OK I fell in with it for nothing anyway. It had been an old band mixing desk, and had been in a house fire. The channels all unscrew and unplug individually, so it was easy but time consuming to clean all the controls and the metalwork from the very bad smoke damage.

But when playing back in the three stereo channels (rest are mono) there is no decent balance control or pan as they say in the trade. Yes it does pan left or right, but not 100%. I have seen many examples these days in equipment, that doesn't give a proper 100% separation. In fact many of the sound effects on hi fi gear I believe to be made up by mixing left and right somehow. If you try a prerecorded separate left / right tape in this kind of gear, the end result is a mess. But that is OK, I have simply made a Y split, and feed one channel at a time into the two channels on the desk from the cassette machine. It is the best results. If I try and save time and record both channels at once into the PC, there is more breakthrough from the other channel.

I think some Americal dxers used to use this format and record WWV on one channel and the dx on the other, so as to have a time on dx tapes. I was always envious of the excellent service WWV offered to US dxers, both as a time reference in voice, as well as the regular solar indicies. We had nothing like this in Europe, and WWV reception was not reliable.

 

STEREO ON MW:

I used to record a kind of a stereo effect from an old wooden radio gram. I had found that two wires coming out of the set that had been soldered in for headphones at one time, actually gave more bass from 1 side, and much more top end from the other end. In my youth, again, I thought this sounded great, even though I had a perfectly good grundig to record in good quality from.

 

I have noticed that using the y splitters for audio / phono plugs, I can get a slightly better sound with either 1 or the other channel connected. If the two channels are connected, then "mono"ed up, it can take away from the top end a little. With old clatty manky cassettes of that era, any improvement is worth doing.