| Legendary producer engineer Ron St. Germain on
ATR Magnetics Master Tape
“I just mixed my first album on the ATR 1” Master Tape and am absolutely thrilled as are my clients who have never experienced anything in audio that has them totally committed now (and as long as tape exits) to mixing to analog 1” for the rest of their career! The way this tape is so smooth and even throughout the entire frequency range is spectacular. I mixed this rock album at 15ips @ +3db/185nwbm and at the manufacturer's recommended 2.5db on the bias. This yielded an incredibly fast transient response, a clear and fully rounded bottom, pain free mid range with a sheen on top that sounded hand polished! It made the Pro Fools multitrack master actually pleasant to listen to at all levels.
The big speakers in the room I was mixing were the venerable URIE 813's with the yellow, green and red glowing light fuses that glow more brightly as you approach welding volume and I am happy to report that I was able to light up all three consistently, not the usual one at a time! (Note: these speakers were only turned on at the conclusion of the album so the band could “feel it like a live show”! I do not mix or play back at masturbation level).
There was no abnormal tape shedding evident on the transport to speak of with this ATR Tape. Although the tape can take levels of +9, I choose the relatively conservative level of +3db/185 in order to allow its superb head room to absorb the +14 (and up) transient peaks that VU meters are incapable of registering and to enjoy zero ‘print through'. This is especially important for extended storage of the masters. With the 1” format there is so much signal to noise that noise doesn't stand a chance anyway. By not running at super high levels you do not run the risk of overloading the electronics, a sound that a lot of engineers mistakenly interpret as “tape compression”. Since I by pass the electronics with a special modification and record directly to the head stack, the input to the machine is almost 6db hotter anyway. (This is immediately evident during the alignment phase when you select the ‘direct' input as opposed to ‘normal input' on my machine). When used properly in this manner I find that tape in general, and ATR Tape specifically, really shines as the original “soft compressor”.
As I listen back I get the sense of hearing the equivalent of the difference between seeing a film shot on 70mm IMAX film (1”) as compared to 35mm film (1/2”) as compared to 16mm film (1/4”) as compared to 8mm video tape (16/44.1 digital). I did not have the luxury on this project or budget to experiment with various speeds and bias settings at 30ips; however, I am anxiously looking forward to that in my next project coming up at the end of the January.
Stay tuned for more updates on those results. If you are a tape head like me, to hear ATR tape is to love it. If you are not, then this 360 degree ATR experience [ATR tape recorder with ATR tape] should certainly convert you!
Blue Skies! Ron Saint Germain |
