Nothing lasts forever - especially audio reels

Today we've seen probably the worst case of tape degradation to-date. 

Among a series of reel to reel tapes brought in for transfer this tape below has shown the worst case of failure that we've experienced.

7 inch Reel of 1/4 inch    

 The tape oxide has litterally shredded off the polyester tape backing as it's being played

Tape shreds while being played

Surprisingly it's not the oldest tape in the batch either, being a backcoated tape. probably manufactured between the mid to late 90s going on the programme content.

The tape had needed baking before it would play properly anyway, which was the first sign that this tape had problems.

Fortunately the content was located at the start of the tape so we recovered it all before the tape starting falling apart. 

Tape Close Up

Destroyed 1/4inch reel to reel tape

So here's the warning - just because the audio reel isnt that old and looks ok, doesnt mean that it will play and it's without problems.

Unfortunately at the moment we're seeing an increased number of reel to reel tapes that are requiring extra work to get them transferred and it's likely that this issue will continue to get worse.  

If you are considering getting some archived material digitised our recommendation would be to do it sooner rather than later.  Contact us on 08  9375 3902 or 1 300 4 PROCOPY for further details.

What causes wobbly sound on audio cassettes?

Audio cassettes generally last a long time. (we have many in our library that are more than 30 years old) however we're starting to get a few come in for digitsing that are exhibiting problems. Before you throw them away - let us see what we can do with them. Usually the tapes will play ok in our professional cassette decks but every now and then we'll have to explore the problems more deeply to get a good quality transfer. 

Ampex audio cassette

We recently received a tape of an oral history project that was recorded in 1985. During the assessment process we found that it would play for around 3 minutes and then start to play back erraticly, eventually slowling to a stop. You can hear the effect here and it might be something you've heard before and then thrown the tape away. Sometimes people think the tape has "stretched" in fact tape is very robust and that's a rare occurence.

There are a couple of possible reasons for this playback problem and with some careful work we've been able to retrieve the audio. With this particular tape it  was a one-off recording, no other copies exist so it was of great importance and we had to do our best to get a good copy. 

Could this cassette tape be exhibiting a problem we usually find only with reel to reel tapes called "sticky tape syndrome"? We've only just started to find cassettes with this problem but it was certainly old enough to be a candidate.

We have a special temperature controlled oven for "baking" audio tapes to stabilise the tape surface. (Warning: Please do not attempt to do this yourself as you may ruin the tape permanently) When we've gone through this process it gives us enough time to do the digital transfer of the tapes. In this case a few hours in the oven stabilised the tape surface enough for us to be able to make a copy and then go through our audio restoration processes to improve the audio. 

You can hear the result of the new transfer here.

The client was fortunate that this tape was caught in time before it became completely unplayable and we've been able to retrieve the important interview contained on it.

If you have a library of tapes that are approaching 15-20 years old it would be a good idea to have them checked and transferred to another format as soon as possible,

Call us on 9375 3902 if you'd like us to assess your audio tapes.