Firstly, I'm a regular Satin user, love it to bits.
I frequently use (and abuse) the "service" controls to mess up my sound, especially azimuth and head gap/bump.
Does anyone have any ideas on how I would go about achieving these effects in hardware?
Reading the (excellent) manual and just listening while tweaking parameters, I understand that a slight delay is introduced between left and right channels, introducing a doppler effect.
There's also some kind of high frequency attenuation going on.
Looking at the scope in the service section, the frequency response looks like it's being comb filtered, and the manual mentions the sound being "smeared"... But of that I'm not sure.
Interested in any input / suggestions.
Cheers
Simulating Satin Azimuth adjustments out of the box
-
- KVRAF
- 2249 posts since 6 May, 2003 from rat city au
-
- KVRian
- 1141 posts since 2 Oct, 2001 from Berlin, Germany
Azimuth and head gap & bump settings refer to the replay-head geometry.
I personally spent my youth in the 80s, surrounded by tape/radio recorders in the household, and we've swapped many cassettes among friends. You often had the problem that no recorder had perfect symmetry, which means the head wasn't perfectly adjusted for a 90° angle. Tape recorders have a small screw that one can adjust for azimuth. What you hear in Satin is exactly what happens when you play back music that was recorded on a misaligned recorder. We all had small screwdrivers at hand for that...
It's a 'specialty' of tape, where I can't think of anything else that has the same sonic property. But I bet it comes in handy for forensics, as tape recorders have many 'unique' properties, and azimuth is a very distictive one.
Gap & bump are properties you can't change on a given device. Generally, the larger the tape format, the larger the gap. It's all about magnetic induction, as with a dynamic microphone or a guitar pickup. Small gaps retain the most treble but have the smallest inductance, thus are quieter.
Head bump is more prominent with large heads and formats (as with studio machines). The larger, the more eddy currents across the entire head affect replay, so it's not only the gap but the interaction of the voice coil and the surrounding metal parts. It even extents to other metal parts of the transport system, which is why frequent degaussing a recorder is important.
So, what happens here technically is a change in frequency response but also phase. Remanence & hysteresis has to be taken into account, thus all additional magnetic stray fields include 'memory'.
I personally spent my youth in the 80s, surrounded by tape/radio recorders in the household, and we've swapped many cassettes among friends. You often had the problem that no recorder had perfect symmetry, which means the head wasn't perfectly adjusted for a 90° angle. Tape recorders have a small screw that one can adjust for azimuth. What you hear in Satin is exactly what happens when you play back music that was recorded on a misaligned recorder. We all had small screwdrivers at hand for that...
It's a 'specialty' of tape, where I can't think of anything else that has the same sonic property. But I bet it comes in handy for forensics, as tape recorders have many 'unique' properties, and azimuth is a very distictive one.
Gap & bump are properties you can't change on a given device. Generally, the larger the tape format, the larger the gap. It's all about magnetic induction, as with a dynamic microphone or a guitar pickup. Small gaps retain the most treble but have the smallest inductance, thus are quieter.
Head bump is more prominent with large heads and formats (as with studio machines). The larger, the more eddy currents across the entire head affect replay, so it's not only the gap but the interaction of the voice coil and the surrounding metal parts. It even extents to other metal parts of the transport system, which is why frequent degaussing a recorder is important.
So, what happens here technically is a change in frequency response but also phase. Remanence & hysteresis has to be taken into account, thus all additional magnetic stray fields include 'memory'.
Sascha Eversmeier [formerly digitalfishphones]
TOURAGE DSP
croquesolid drum processor- mix real drums fast & focused
TOURAGE DSP
croquesolid drum processor- mix real drums fast & focused
-
- KVRAF
- 24433 posts since 7 Jan, 2009 from Croatia
Nice to see that you still visit/lurk this place, Sascha 
-
- KVRian
- 814 posts since 18 May, 2007 from Berlin
Happy to see/read you here, Sascha!
-
- KVRAF
- 1897 posts since 14 Jul, 2018
+1