IDM Mailing Archive

On 11 May 2002 at 12:52, ... hellothisisalex ... wrote:

quoted 2 lines Can anyone tell me what the rising tone at the beginning and end of

> Can anyone tell me what the rising tone at the beginning and end of > cassette tapes was for? I was listening to some old tapes and wondered.

It was the set-up tone to check frequency response and azimuth when they did dubbings off big machines, to make sure the transfer was recording correctly. Much like mastering engineers would send test tones to the lathe operators who cut records, to make sure that their masters were cut without any equalisation. For instance, 1 kHz at 0 dB, 10 kHz (high frequency) and 50 Hz (low frequency). These were common at the beginning of all 1/4" master tapes sent for reproduction.

quoted 1 line Also--any programs or suggestions on how to make the tone?

> Also--any programs or suggestions on how to make the tone?

Any tone generator will be able to duplicate that sound - simple sine waves, no harmonics. Most professional mixing desks have a signal generator built in that produce sine wave tones. Anything that can produce pure sine wave tones can produce those noises. < quote from my husband Tully, who knows these things. I just thought it was to give you fair warning that the cassette was coming to an end :-) > I * --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: idm-unsubscribe@hyperreal.org For additional commands, e-mail: idm-help@hyperreal.org

This is (or was) a reference tone, back in the day when separates hifi was the only way to go... (it still is). I remember a kraftwerk tape (electric cafe) which had a synth tone played in octaves. These tones are to check the sound levels, balance and general quality of your playback equipment before hearing the music in question. You can buy commercial CD's from places like Studiospares full if variations of these reference tones, all designed to test various levels of hifi and p.a. systems. FM synths are good at recreating similar sinewave rising tones. Rich arkive@btopenworld.com www.geocities.com/arkive2097 http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/393/arkive.html ----- Original Message ----- From: "... hellothisisalex ..." <mark@hellothisisalex.com> To: "IDM List" <idm@hyperreal.org> Sent: Saturday, May 11, 2002 5:52 PM Subject: [idm] cassette tape beep | Hey, | Can anyone tell me what the rising tone at the beginning and end of cassette | tapes was for? I was listening to some old tapes and wondered. Also--any | programs or suggestions on how to make the tone? | | cheers | Mark & Melissa | hellothisisalex | www.hellothisisalex.com / records.hellothisisalex.com | mp3s at www.raw42.com/cgi-bin/featuredartist.pl?artist=213 | mark@hellothisisalex | | | | --------------------------------------------------------------------- | To unsubscribe, e-mail: idm-unsubscribe@hyperreal.org | For additional commands, e-mail: idm-help@hyperreal.org | --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: idm-unsubscribe@hyperreal.org For additional commands, e-mail: idm-help@hyperreal.org