Predicted life of audio recorded on magnetic tape

[Andrew2]

I have a number of the old 'brown' acetate(?) EMI r/r tapes which date back to the mid 60's and without exception they seem to be getting brittle and snap very easily. The sound quality is still OK though and there's very little shed.

[andrewferguson]

Would anyone be able to link to the Radio 4 clip on iPlayer* ? I'm curious to see what was said, but when looking through today's listing nothing jumped out as likely to contain the clip of the British Museum archivist.

* Technically BBC Sounds, the re-branded iPlayer-for-radio, but I still think of it as iPlayer.

[GeoffB17]

Andrew,

I think the piece was actually a segment within 'Broadcasting House', 9:00 to 10:00am Sunday Morning. You maybe need to look for this, rather than something more specific?

Geoff

[GeoffB17]

Andrew,

Yes, go into the section for Radio 4 for today, and the Schedule for today, which is still there. There is a 'Download' option, and a Podcast option, but these may well be available for the next 1/2 hour only? I've saved the LowRes download (26+ Mb) just in case you don't see it in time. I may still have your email addr from discussion re Amstrad PCW some time back

Geoff

[hamid_1]

I have quite a lot of 8 track cartridge tapes from the 70s. Despite being 40-50 years old, they still play. Nothing seems to go wrong with the tape itself. The main problems with 8 track tapes are the foam pressure pads disintegrating and the end-of-tape splice coming unstuck; both of these issues can be fixed resulting in a playable tape again.

As for CDs, I have had a couple of commercially pressed discs go bad. One of them was this one: https://www.discogs.com/Various-Hits...lease/14016090

If you look at the photo of the CD itself, the normally silver surface has started to darken. My copy has turned into a gold / bronxe colour and is now pretty much completely unplayable. The disc was pressed at Philips Dupont Optical (PDO) in Blackburn. They admitted that some discs suffered from this manufacturing defect and offered to replace faulty discs, though that's no longer possible as the factory has closed. So I'll have to search for another copy from a different pressing plant.

Out of my collection of over 400 CDs, some going back to 1987 or even earlier, I'd say the failure rate is less than 0.5% apart from scratched / physically damaged discs. Even then, I've salvaged some scratched discs by polishing them with a scratch repair kit.

Home recorded CDs haven't done too badly for me either. A few CD-Rs from a batch I bought in 1999 are flaky now, but amazingly I haven't had a CD-RW or DVD+RW go bad other than through scratching. I did have a flaky Philips DVD recorder at one point which kept coming up with disc errors, but I got the recorder exchanged with another one. The same rewriteable discs worked with no problems in the replacement recorder, so there was nothing wrong with the discs.

I recently dug out my Commodore Amiga 1200 computer which has a magnetic hard drive and floppy disk drive. The hard drive, about 25 years old, was still working a few years ago but making a noise like an aeroplane about to take off, so I copied it onto a CompactFlash card and used that copy instead (putting the flash card into an adaptor that makes it appear like a hard drive). This solved the potential hard drive problem but the floppy drive had errors reading a 25 year old disk. I tried to reformat the disk, both in the Amiga and on a PC with a different floppy drive but in both cases it failed, the disk was unusable.

Flash memory lifetime is a bit unknown. I have a 20 year old DVD player which uses a flash memory device. I re-flashed it last year, even though it was still working. Perhaps it will last another 20 years, but who knows?

The oldest audio player I have is a wind-up gramophone and some records which still play even though they must be nearly 100 years old. The old shellac records are quite brittle - I've had a few crack and break.

So I conclude that magnetic and other media can be a bit hit-and-miss. The advantage of digital media is that it can be copied quickly and easily from one medium to another with no loss of quality. Copies can be stored on multiple formats which reduces the risk of losing the data. And although I'm sure digital files won't last as long as a gramophone record, they can at least be re-copied every few years to extend their life.

[Richard_FM]

I heard that some tape made just after the ban on whale oil can give trouble, as manufacturers were having to find different formulations of coating & some worked better than other.

Almost all the CDs in by collection seem to work fine apart from the odd one cheaply pressed one, or second hand one with a scratch.

I've had a DVD recorder since 2007 & I've not so far had a disc go faulty though I've not tried too many. Originally I used it as a "watch once & wipe" format before permanently recording things.

[MrElectronicman]

I have some no brand tape that I think was from some unused computer tape cut to 1/4 inch. I used it to record That-Was-The-Week-That-Was from BBC FM along time ago now. Last time I used it, couple of years ago it still sounded very good and still looked in good condition.
Cannot say the same for my Truvox tape recorder, the Bogen heads have started to fail from the green disease.

[jamesperrett]

Most of the problem tapes are back coated - I can think of only one tape that wasn't back coated which seemed to respond to baking and this tape was a Realistic tape sold by Tandy in around 1980. While a few early to mid 70's Ampex tapes suffer from binder that seems to totally disintegrate, most Ampex tapes play very cleanly once they've been baked and it seems possible to repeat the process a number of times over a long period.

[andrewferguson]

Originally Posted by GeoffB17

Andrew,

I think the piece was actually a segment within 'Broadcasting House', 9:00 to 10:00am Sunday Morning. You maybe need to look for this, rather than something more specific?

Geoff

Thanks Geoff, I've found it now.

For anyone else interested, if you download the 'Broadcasting House' 0900 to 1000 clip from BBC Sounds, the exact clip can be found from 41:38 to 48:23 in the downloaded recording.

[Paul Stenning]

Originally Posted by paulsherwin

CD-Rs used to be very variable, with some failing within a few months for no obvious reason. Brands were no guide, as brand owners seemed to be subcontracting to factories all over the world. The quality seems to have improved over the last few years, and I haven't had one fail for quite a while now.

I normally use Maxell for my service data DVD-ROM and valve data CD-ROM and have only had 2 or 3 reported problems with previously good disks becoming unreadable, and in some cases the owners admitted it had been left in the sun on a windowsill or something.

When I started with the original CD-ROMs I used a variety of brands of CD-R including some unbranded ones, and had a lot more problems. This may have been because it was newer technology of course.

[dave walsh]

I think Graham may be right about HD storage [p9*] but I'm not very Computer savvy, have lost previous Hard Drives and am not much of an "eggs in one basket" person. Plus I like to hold the product in my hand, as it were. Paul Stenning kindly once wrote me an explanatory piece re the "RAID" system [used in Corporate situations eg the Beeb] a long time ago but it's all above my pay grade I think DVDA [audio] will see me out. Now even the Panasonic Recorders sometimes have to be cossetted like the VHS machines these days [in the manner of vintage steam engines].

So far my audio tape archive, starting with cheapo 4 Track reel to reel tapes from circa 1964, going on through audio cassettes and finally audio recorded on VHS tape, has stood up well with no real problems. I transferred a live recording of a Manchester band [playing in a pub near Ramsbottom in 1980] to CD recently. The pub is long gone and I went to see the singer [who now wears a Tuxedo and entertains the trendies in Chorlton] at the beginning of March. One of my superior efforts really ie stereo [at 7.5 ips] on an Akai 4000 borrowed from my brother. I still have it!

Geoff [at p11*] mentioned the Archivists concern that the hardware to play the tapes might be a bigger problem than the tapes themselves. If so, I wonder why academics don't avail themselves more of the knowledge base contained in sites like this and organisations such as the BVWS. Mind you, there was once a article in the Bulletin were a University Researcher [Bournemouth?] seemed to be arguing that holding on to the hardware might not be the future route at all in terms of effectively retaining the historical info for future generations.. I found that a bit strange in the context of the magazine.

Dave W

[Gulliver]

Well....I've never come across an audio tape or cassette that I couldn't play. I had some Concertape 1800 foot reels a while back that squealed and shed so I baked them at about 50C for an hour and they played perfectly. I haven't tried playing them again so i don't know if that was good for just one play...but I was able to dub them to type II cassette to continue to enjoy them.

Otherwise I have cassettes going back to the late 70s and reels from the early 60s that still play. I've handled reels from the 50s that sound as if they were recorded yesterday.

I do not buy this idea that magnetic analogue tape will become totally unplayable. I did digitise a bunch of VHS cassettes and audio cassettes to DVD and CD in the early 2000s....oddly enough the original tapes are still great whereas some of the DVD-R discs now have glitches/errors/refuse to play.

Oh yes I even have Sony helical scan video tape from the 70s which play fine.

Indeed are not the tapes discovered in wartime Germany still just about playable?

[Ted Kendall]

Originally Posted by Gulliver

Indeed are not the tapes discovered in wartime Germany still just about playable?

The Tonschreiber tapes I dealt with some time ago played well enough, but were cupped and brittle and needed a decent transport to behave. The surviving RRG stereo tapes were dubbed for an AES convention in 1993, using a Telefunken M20 modified with 6.5mm guides to accomodate the slightly wider tape of the time.

[electronicskip]

Originally Posted by Station X

I've found CD's and DVD's to be the most unreliable recording format. No problems with hard disks so far.

At least with audio or video magnetic tape something of the recording remains, but if a DVD won't load....

I have a couple of Laser discs which have suffered from laserdisc "rot" now unplayable.

[jamesperrett]

Originally Posted by Gulliver

I do not buy this idea that magnetic analogue tape will become totally unplayable.

I think most people on here have collections of domestic tapes from the heyday of reel to reel recordings. In my experience, most domestic tapes play with no issues (apart from those caused by poor edits and obvious storage issues). It is the professional tapes that seem to cause problems and, in a few cases, they are falling apart. I've had the oxide layer detach itself from the base and attach itself to the matt backing of the next layer in the spool in a few cases.

So far the majority of professional tapes can still be made playable but people are starting to find that baking isn't always as effective as it used to be so it is possible that these tapes will no longer be playable at some point in the future.

[dave walsh]

Honestly, I really have no connection with Greg Milner's 2009 book [post 8*] but if you are interested in the German origins of audio recording during WW2 it's a great investment for that alone and everything else.
The layout is not that linear but that can be an advantage.
The style has caught on-see "1, 2, 3, 4 The Beatles In Time" by Craig Brown [just out] and of course, Chronicles Bob Dylan 2004!

Dave W

[TIMTAPE]

The oldest tapes I've dealt with were paper based Soundmirror tapes from around 1950. Like acetate the paper could break or tear but at least they didn't stretch. The breaks were clean and could be spliced together.

A problem with some was that the layers tended to stick to one another when the tapes were unspooled. Not like Sticky Shed where the tape itself is soft and gooey, but more one side probably "catching" in the crevices of the other. Once unspooled, on respooling there was no adhesion but a year or so later the winds had started to stick together again. I guess there had been time for one side of the tape to "conform" to the crevices in the other and they kind of interlocked like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle.

[red16v]

I’m not sure if I will be regarded as a sort of heretic on here, but having ‘digitised’ all my Betamax and quarter inch tapes I have it all stored on Apple’s iCloud. It’s easily and readily accessible and I think the base level of storage is free. I have upgraded to something like 100GB and it only costs 2 or 3 pounds a month. Apple will have multiple sever farms across the world so I know my files are never going to be lost.

I must add of course that for many people, especially on a forum like this, that there is clearly much pleasure in repairing/adjusting and conserving the hardware to replay the original material and that should not in itself be overlooked. But if you’re looking to save and store files the ‘cloud’ must surely be the way to go?

[barrymagrec]

Originally Posted by electronicskip

I have a couple of Laser discs which have suffered from laserdisc "rot" now unplayable.

I have one CD, but as far as I know only one, in a collection of several thousand discs, a Hyperion recording of Britten`s Saint Nicholas which I have had for nearly 30 years and which started to deteriorate after a relatively short time.

I also have tapes dating back to the time of the coronation but I haven`t played them for many years, even then the acetate base was very fragile.

[Richard_FM]

I got the impression that Laserdiscs seemed to suffer from laser rot if they are left in a humid atmosphere for too long, as the acrylic reacts with water vapour, & sometimes the type of glue also reacts over time.

Considering they were poplar in countries with humid weather, I wonder how well they have lasted in collections.

One collector's site mentions the problems with buying ex-rental discs, as they often have vegetable oils & salt from snacks on them, & recommends cleaning them & changing the original inner sleeves.