[imcarthur]

Tape? Really? The joy of tape is that every time you play one, you lose some oxide from the tape. And this same oxide wears your tape head a teeny tiny bit like mild sandpaper. Good luck getting a replacement head – so clean your tape head religiously with a Q-tip & some Isopropyl alcohol. While a similar reaction occurs with the vinyl LP & cartridge needle, it is not as severe. The tape format starts off with some high frequency loss which is why Dolby et al had equalizing circuits on many tape machines to compensate.

In the professional world, master tape degradation is taking a serious toll on archives. As they age, tape gets brittle requiring frequent splicing & the adhesives that bound the oxide degrades & you are left with a pile of brown powder every time you play it. The solution: bake the tape. Literally baking it in an oven which temporarily binds the oxide giving the mastering studio one more shot at it. After one play, it is garbage. They typically will make both an analogue (another tape) & a digital copy for posterity.

Ian