kirkg (10/31/82)
I've been having paranoid feelings lately about my various electronic toys
sending out some strange electromagnetic waves that are infecting, and perhaps
harming, my cassette tapes. I'm not familiar with these electrical-type
things (software only, me), and feel that the average stereo store salesman
whom I query is bluffing when he tells me that he knows what the heck he's
talking about.
The only thing that I think I know about the subject is to not sit my tapes
actually on top of the reciever. Is that it? What about next to it? Or on
top of my tape deck? Does it too send out these waves, or are only amps
guilty of this? Finally, what about my terminal? It has this big black thing
inside that looks like a transformer, I guess, and I can just FEEL the power
flow out of it.
At present, I keep my tapes stacked up about a foot from my terminal. If I
remember anything from physics, the forces sent out should fade in an inverse-
squared relationship (i.e. twice as far = one-fourth the juice).
To summarize, just how far from something/anything (apologies to Todd R)
do I need to keep my tapes?
Thanks bundles,
Kirk Glerumstewartd@sri-unix (11/05/82)
Not only near a terminal, tape deck, etc, but are tapes safe near most good quality speakers? The woofer magnet is fairly huge in most good speakers.
shauns (11/24/82)
This question was asked a month or two ago in Audio, I believe. In any
case, tapes suffer more losses from print through than from stray magnetic
fields caused by electronic equipment whose fields are
generally very low. Field strength
decreases rapidly with distance, so farther than an inch or so from
the source erasure is negligible.
Speaker magnets (At least mine) have field strengths close to a Weber
and thus could cause some problems, again if the tape is within 6" or so.
To do this, however, you'd have to open up the enclosure.
Shaun Simpkins
uucp: {ucbvax,decvax,chico,pur-ee,cbosg,ihnss}!teklabs!tekcad!shauns
CSnet: shauns@tek
ARPAnet:shauns.tek@rand-relay