brent@itm.UUCP (Brent) (04/03/84)
why am i here?
cassettes - part 7
Last time we looked at Gauss loop-bin duplicators. Precious few
people in the real world can afford them. The majority of commercial
dup houses use Electro-Sound.
Electro-Sound is a vertical loop-bin system that uses either 1/4"
or 1/2" master tape, and runs about 60 ips. They're ok. Most of the
commercially recorded music tapes you buy were probably run on Electro-
Sound equipment. A master unit and two slaves will probably run about
$40,000: about half the price of Gauss. I am mostly inimpressed with
most E-S outfits I've seen. The objective of most such dup houses
is to get the product out the door. The quality control is minimal.
I guess it shows, in that most people here on the net are unimpressed
with the quality of pre-recorded cassettes. I agree.
Then there's Magnefax. It's a completely diffrent system. It's
vertical loop-bin, but the capstan for the playback is the same capstan
for seven record heads. Yes, this capstan is about 1" in diameter and
about three feet long. The pancakes of tape are vertical also, in much
the same configuration as a movie projector. Imagine seven such reels
side by side. The master speed is 90 ips and the slaves are 45 ips.
The frightening thing about this thing is that the 10,000' hubs of
cassette tape are flangeless. That's right, nothing on either side.
Supported only by the tightness of the wind. Both the feed spools
and takeup spools are flangeless. You take the finished hub of
tape and mount it right on the King 790. Flangeless as well. It's
really frightening to watch a flangeless hub of 1/8" tape travel at
1500 ips. We use Magnefax equipment here. It runs and runs. Cost:
for the outfit that makes 7 dups at 90 ips: about $15,000. I would
favorably compare the quality to most Electro-Sound outfits I've
seen. Magnefax is really catching on these days, especially for
voice-quality work.
More next time on the little old man who designed the Magnefax.
--
Brent Laminack (akgua!itm!brent)