Master Tape Research Articles

From Forgotten Work

From Forgotten Work Jason Guriel (bio) The band had yet to settle on a sound,Never mind a name. The common groundThey shared was comically vast in terms of styles.They could agree on Mozart, Dylan, Miles,And Beatles, not to mention bass harmonicaSolos (see Pet Sounds); ’60s electronica(The talk of vintage robots: blips and bloops);Talking blues; Talking Heads; loopsOf samples softwared together; also, humanBeings together in one room, their acumenTheir only software as they improviseSome standard. “That’s how jazzmen ionize,You know,” said Jim. “They get a charge off each other.” Stevens, poet, said that “Death is the motherOf beauty.” Jim’s bandmates proved that insecurityIs the mother of snooty—and proved their purityBy prizing the obscure, which signifiedAuthentic art. Thus minor men who diedBefore their time lived on inside the mindsInside Jim’s band. They loved James Booker, blindIn one eye, black, and gay—a man, the kidsMight say, who occupied a point on a gridWhere several different selves had intersected.But one took spot-lit center stage: neglectedPiano genius. Booker, what he made,It sounded like a concert being playedBy several men at several sets of keys,Each one, an Eastern god etched on a friezeAnd armed with surplus arms. He was a starIn Europe; stateside, expired in an ER,Wheelchaired, awaiting care for renal failure. [End Page 40] Side note: the French thought Welles was cinema’s savior.But in the States, his voice supplied an earth-Sized robot’s gravity. To know your worthAnd yet to be condemned to cartoon voiceWork—or, in Booker’s case, your Sophie’s choiceOf closet-sized club to fade away in—isAn awful fate. “Do not be branded whizKid or a wunderkind” appears to beOne lesson. Having peaked at poetryIn youth, and duly stranded on Parnassus,Daryl Hine could only watch as assesLike Allen Ginsberg stormed the world below,While Hine, basecamped with gods, acquired snow. Another lesson: don’t be loved in ParisAnd not the States. Nothing can prepare usFor the moment—having crisscrossed nations,Which equalizes, much the way equationsDo, two stages: stardom and the voidThat follows—when our genius, unemployed,Is plunged in shade. But fans who form a cultTend not to want a less romantic resultFor those they covet. Ending on a high,Well-loved, is no way for a man to die.Welles knew this. “God, how they’ll love me when I’m dead,”The author of Citizen Kane is said to have said. ________ Rehearsal talk would often turn to Blake,Which meant, in Music Nerd, the late Nick Drake,Who cut his starkest songs without his label,Island, knowing. A figure out of fableAppeared at Island’s front desk one afternoonAnd left the master tape for one Pink Moon(His masterpiece to be) with reception,Then left—one part truth, one deception.(Drake said yes to tea, resolved to stayAwhile.) But yes, he left a tape that day(That part was true), a work of art entrustedTo the girl who worked the phones and fussed withThe made-up face inside her compact. Maybe [End Page 41] Drake, a desperate parent, left his babyOrphaned with this girl as if to severHimself from it. And maybe art is neverFinished, merely abandoned as the hard-Hearted like to say. (A work is marredBy too much work.) Pink Moon was cut in twoNights with a single engineer in lieuOf well-stocked studio. Drake peeled the backingBand clean off his songs, and none were lacking.“That album only has his voice, guitar,That’s it,” Lou marveled. “Plus a couple barsOf piano,” added Jim. It was dismissed.“It could be that Nick Drake does not existAt all,” wrote one reviewer (Melody Maker).If sound could take a form, Drake’s voice, like vapor,Would bloom, then fray and fractal into air.He was, his critics felt, barely there.(Sometimes a man can seem less whole, less...

And God Created Great Whales by Rinde Eckert (review)

Reviewed by: And God Created Great Whales by Rinde Eckert Jonathan Chambers And God Created Great Whales. By Rinde Eckert. Directed by David Schweizer. Culture Project in Association with Elisha Wiesel, Culture Project, New York City. 29 February 2012. From the 1920s to the ’40s American literary scholars gradually reclaimed Moby-Dick from the edges of oblivion. Mostly forgotten by all but the most erudite, the novel, first published in 1851 to lukewarm critical and popular response, was initially rediscovered by Carl Van Doren and D. H. Lawrence in the early 1920s, and subsequently lauded by many notable literary critics as the consummate American novel. By mid-century, Moby-Dick had been fashioned into Melville’s magnum opus, and its characters—principally Ahab and Ishmael—had become iconic, representing the best (that is, adventurous individualism) and worst (obsessive hubris) facets of the American spirit. Given its profound cultural cache, it is not surprising that Melville’s novel has inspired myriad artists following in its wake. The diversity of adaptations is impressive, ranging from the avant-garde (for example, Laurie Anderson’s Songs and Stories from Moby-Dick) to the popular (the “Möbius Dick” episode of Futurama). Although the motivations driving these and other Moby-Dick-inspired reflections, reimaginings, and borrowings are as varied as the works themselves, their very existence validates the point that Melville’s most famous work remains a powerful referent for American artists seeking to understand themselves and their universe. Within this tradition of Moby-Dick inspiration is Rinde Eckert’s new music-theatre piece And God Created Great Whales. Created, written, and composed by Eckert (who also performs), with direction by David Schweizer, And God Created Great Whales was originally developed at P.S.122 in the late 1990s. Later staged at the Foundry Theatre and the Culture Project in 2000 and 2001, the production has periodically been remounted nationally and internationally. The 2012 revival, again directed by Schweizer, was essentially a faithful restaging of the original version. In it, Eckert ruminated on a number of weighty themes, including the vexed process of artistic creation, the burden of obsession, the convolution of consciousness and memory, and the specter of death. As with Eckert’s other pieces that draw upon extant texts, And God Created Great Whales’ relation to its source material is more thematic than literal. Nathan, played by Eckert, is a piano-tuner and composer who hopes to finish an opera based on Melville’s masterpiece before his memory fails. Nathan’s disintegrating consciousness is an analogue for the physical challenges Melville’s Ahab faces in his obsessive pursuit of Moby-Dick. To compensate for his failing memory, Nathan relies on a collection of color-coded tape recorders marked for specific purposes—blue is the “master tape,” green is for “incidental notes,” red is the “working tape,” and so on—and he also wears a tape recorder hung around his neck. Although the voice on the tapes is that of Nathan, recorded at a time when he was still lucid and aware of his condition, it is not clear how this system of recording was created, what caused his condition in the first place, how long it has been going on, or how much time passes during the action of the performance. Eckert’s refusal to provide answers to these questions invests the time, place, and action of And God Created Great Whales with a sense of swirl and blur. The revival production emphasized this sensation. Most notably, Eckert and Schweizer sought less a real-world/physical locale and instead set the action in the realm of Nathan’s consciousness. While the setting was, in a literal sense, Nathan’s apartment/studio, it was also something more. Designed by John Torres and Caleb Wertenbaker (based on original designs by Kevin Abrams), a baby-grand piano, wrapped with sailing line that evoked the rigging of Melville’s whaleboat, the Pequod, dominated the stage. Two ends of the sailing line extended vertically into a triangle suggesting a sail. Surrounding the piano-boat were bits of scrap paper, flash cards, items torn from magazines and books, and cassette tapes. The purpose of these items was ambiguous. Were...

A Brazilian educational experiment: teleradiology on web TV

Since 2004, educational videoconferences have been held in Brazil for paediatric radiologists in training. The RUTE network has been used, a high-speed national research and education network. Twelve videoconferences were recorded by the Health Channel and transformed into TV programmes, both for conventional broadcast and for access via the Internet. Between October 2007 and December 2009 the Health Channel website registered 2378 hits. Our experience suggests that for successful recording of multipoint videoconferences, four areas are important: (1) a pre-planned script is required, for both physicians and film-makers; (2) particular care is necessary when editing the audiovisual material; (3) the audio and video equipment requires careful adjustment to preserve clinical discussions and the quality of radiology images; (4) to produce a product suitable for both TV sets and computer devices, the master tape needs to be encoded in low resolution digital video formats for Internet media (wmv and rm format for streaming, and compressed zip files for downloading) and MPEG format for DVDs.

Satchmo and Me

In 1956 Lil Hardin Armstrong tape-recorded an oral history about her early life in Chicago and her courtship and marriage to Louis Armstrong. It remains unclear who initiated the recording project or where it was taped. But the reminiscences made their way onto an LP issued by the Riverside jazz label (run by Bill Grauer and Orrin Keepnews) and entitled Satchmo and Me (Riverside 12-120). The master tape for this LP was prepared by Robert S. Greene, who also wrote the narration that appears between segments of Armstrong's voice. When Bill Grauer first acquired the raw 15ips Ampex tapes of Armstrong's recollections, he wanted to use them as masters for the Riverside pressing. But he decided against it because of the scattered, disjunct nature of Armstrong's recollections. So he approached Greene, an old friend and Columbia University classmate who had wide experience producing radio documentaries. Grauer gave Greene the raw tapes and asked him to make a sequence that made sense out of them. Greene decided to cut out the gems of Lil's monologues and edit them together, using standard radio techniques he knew well. First Greene transcribed onto index cards all the taped passages he thought worth using, indexed with their time locations on the raw tapes. Then he grouped the cards by topics, arranging them within each topic so as to make a sensible narrative flow. Next, he wrote a narration, a series of statements and questions that seemed to encompass the assembled segments of Armstrong's voice. Although Greene had much experience cutting and splicing tapes, in this case he turned the tape over to a Riverside editor who did the manual work on the raw tapes. Barrett Clark, a well-known actor and radio voice who worked as a producer at Riv-

Vocal Features of Conversational Sarcasm: A Comparison of Methods

This study investigated vocal cues that differentiate sarcastic utterances from non-sarcastic utterances. Utterances were drawn from videotapes of participant interviews and arranged on a master tape for analysis. Utterances that were identified as sarcastic by speakers and recognized as sarcastic by listeners were randomly arranged with utterances identified and recognized as non-sarcastic by the same participants. Both sarcastic and non-sarcastic utterances were analyzed by two methods-acoustic analysis and perceptual coding. The acoustic analysis proved slightly more successful than the perceptual coding in discriminating between sarcastic and non-sarcastic utterances. The acoustic analysis indicated that fundamental frequency, frequency range, length of utterance, and total amount of sound significantly discriminated sarcastic from non-sarcastic utterances. The perceptual coding method revealed that pitch range, length of utterance, and total amount of sound significantly discriminated sarcastic from non-sarcastic utterances. Moderate correlations were found between the acoustic and perceptual variables.

Making Tracks: The Ontology of Rock Music

listens is the result of two quite distinct groups of actions. First, the composer creates the work by writing a score. Then, a performing artist or group of artists performs the work, of necessity producing an interpretation of it.1 Often, the composer is closely involved in at least the first performance of a new work, but even then his or her contributions as a composer are clearly distinguishable from those made as a performer. Shortly after World War II, some classical composers began focusing on producing works that did not require any performance. Using technology developed to record and reproduce the sounds of performances, they began creating tapes that when played back produced sound events that could not be considered an accurate record of any performance occurring in the studio, in any sense. Any authentic copy of the master tape produced an authentic instance of the work when played back.2 In such music, the sound of the work, in an important sense, came straight from the composer, without the mediation of a performing artist. The end of traditional compositional techniques was solemnly predicted. In fact, in the classical tradition, electronic music remains a minority culture. It was a different musical tradition that took up the recording studio as its workshop.

Listeners’ perceptions of and attitudes toward Hispanic-, Asian-, and Arabic-accented English speakers

A master tape containing the randomized recordings of 20 Hispanic-, Asian-, and Arabic-accented English speakers reading a standard prose passage was presented to a group of 22 native English-speaking listeners who participated in two listening sessions. In the first session they were asked to use a 5-point listening preference rating scale. In the second session they heard the same speakers and were asked to determine the presence or absence of an accent and, if present, the type (Asian, Hispanic, Arabic, or other) and degree (mild, moderate, or severe) of accentedness. A scattergram plotting listeners’ mean listening preference ratings and degree of accentedness ratings for each of the speakers in the study revealed a strong inverse relationship which yielded a statistically significant (p <0.01) correlation coefficient.Thus, the higher the degree of severity of the listeners’ judged accentedness of speakers, the more negative their listening preference rating judgments of the speakers. Implications of these findings and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Phonemic Vowel Length Contrasts in Cerebellar Disorders

Apraxia of speech and Broca's aphasia both affect voice onset time (VOT) whereas phonemic vowel length distinctions seem to be preserved. Assuming a close cooperation of anterior perisylvian language zones and the cerebellum with respect to speech timing, a similar profile of segment durations must be expected in ataxic dysarthria. In order to test this hypothesis, patients with cerebellar atrophy or cerebellar ischemia were asked to produce sentence utterances including either one of the German lexial items “Rate” (/ra:the/, ‘installment’), “Ratte” (/rathe/, ‘rat’), “Gram” (/gra:m/, ‘grief’), “Gramm” (/gram/, ‘gramm’), “Taten” (/thatn/, ‘actions’), or “Daten” (/datn/, ‘data’). At the acoustic signal, the duration of the target vowels /a/ and /a:/ as well as the VOT of the word-initial alveolar stops /d/ and /t/ were determined. In addition, a master tape comprising the target words from patients and controls in randomized order was played to three listeners for perceptual evaluation. In accordance with a previous study, first, the cerebellar subjects presented with a reduced categorical separation of the VOT of voiced and unvoiced stop consonants. Second, vowel length distinctions were only compromised in case of the minimal pair “Gram”/“Gramm.” In contrast to “Rate”/“Ratte”, production of the former lexical items requires coordination of several orofacial structures. Disruption of vowel length contrasts would, thus, depend upon the complexity of the underlying articulatory pattern.

Reproduction of CD by providing ultrasonic atmosphere

It is said that the LP sound reproduced by a well-prepared system is superior to the sound of a CD and the difference stems from whether the signal is recorded by analog or digital form. Considering master tape of LP is recorded in digital form, the main difference exists in the bandwidth of the reproduced signal. The signal of a CD is restricted to 20 kHz. On the other hand, the spectrum of an LP signal is extended to 100 kHz. Though the upper limit of hearing acuity of a human is 20 kHz, superior components will contribute to offer more rich and realistic atmosphere. In order to produce a higher-frequency component from CD sound, the folding spectrum of the sampling frequency of 44.1 kHz is utilized. The output signal of a DA converter of a CD player is filtered with BPF of 24–42 kHz. This signal is added to the CD output and presented to listeners. This system is named PULSA (providing ultrasonic atmosphere). A preference test is conducted on conventional CD sound and the sound by PULSA through a wideband static headphone on three minuets of orchestra and opera. It is revealed that PULSA sound is better than the conventional by the ratio of 65 to 35.

Steps to Success in Producing an Educational Videotape

LEARNING OUTCOME: Estimate resources and plan procedures necessary for production of high quality videographic educational aids. In site-based observations of students in quantity food preparation laboratories, hand washing was found to be the leading sanitation deficiency (average rating 3.1 on 5-point scale). Resources available to produce a training videotape targeted specifically for hand washing included the videographic unit of a state cooperative extension service. Steps involved in production were: script development, review and editing; review of file tapes for usable footage; securing permission to use selected sites; selecting and rehearsing student actors prior to filming each scene; reading the script on to a master tape; preparing text and graphics to be integrated with visual images; selecting and editing visual images and matching them with spoken text; adding title, logo, credits; selecting background music; duplicating the master tape. Total time involved was 300 labor hours to produce a 10-minute finished tape. Total cost was $9980.00. To date, approximately 900 tapes have been distributed free of charge. A survey of viewers (n=50) resulted in a mean satisfaction rating of 4.2 (1=not helpful to 5=very helpful). We concluded that successful video training tapes must be professionally produced, but this undertaking requires knowledge of the procedures, attention to detail and abundant resources.

Voice Onset Time in Ataxic Dysarthria

In eight patients with a purely ataxic syndrome due to cerebellar atrophy the voice onset time (VOT) of word-initial stop consonants was measured at the acoustic signal. The subjects had been asked to produce sentence utterances including either one of the German minimal pair cognates “Daten” (/datən/, “data”) and “Taten” (/tatən/, “deeds”). In addition, a master tape comprising the target words from patients and controls in randomized order was played to six listeners for perceptual evaluation. Two major findings emerged. First, the cerebellar subjects presented with a reduced categorical distinction of the VOT of voiced and unvoiced stop consonants. Second, the patients' target words with initial unvoiced plosive gave rise to a significantly increased number of misassignments at perceptual evaluation. To some extent comparable VOT disruptions have been noted in apraxia of speech and basal ganglia disorders. Thus, different pathomechanisms might result in similar VOT abnormalities.

Recording for the blind and dyslexic: The development of an internet accessible online catalog

Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic (formerly Recording for the Blind) has been providing audio recordings of educational texts since its founding in 1948. RFB&D's master tape library currently contains over 80,000 volumes, making it the largest resource of its kind in the world. Beginning in 1992, RFB&D initiated a project to develop an online public access catalog that would allow both institutional providers and individual borrowers to search its holdings and order recorded texts via the Internet. Also in 1993, a coordinated pilot project was begun to allow a limited test group of institutional sites and individuals the ability to use the catalog‐ordering mechanism in an effort to gather structured feedback on the usefulness of the system and suggestions for improvements. Although the project cannot be considered an overwhelming success, much insight has been gained as a result of our efforts and will be of considerable value in the development of a future improved version of RFB&D's online public access catalog.

Multicultural Multimedia Across the Curriculum

During spring semester, 1992, as research associates from the Center for the Design of Educational Computing at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), we conducted a campuswide program to encourage thinking about internationalization and cultural differences using a multimedia platform. This article is a report on that experience. * Initial Impetus In 1991 we had participated in a new technologies initiative in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences to produce a laser checkdisc, a videodisc pressed for single or very limited production. Our segment on this disc became an archive of some 250 print advertisements and 30 full-motion video ads from eight (mainly Euro-American) countries, the majority from France, our particular area of specialization. Once the checkdisc was pressed in January, 1992, we began to call professors whose spring semester courses might benefit from exposure to the images in our archive and the new media. The positive responses were overwhelming; we had to call only the first 20 names on our list to get 13 invitations into 15 classrooms in five colleges. The disciplines included: psychology, anthropology, history, English, modern languages, business, biology, fine arts/ design and urban affairs/communicationsMost classes were at the undergraduate level, though four were graduate courses. We asked potential participants to meet with us for a short preview of the images on the disc. They were asked to choose ones that might best reinforce their subject matter or, better yet, those with visible cultural differences that might provide an entirely new optic on the course. From their selections, we designed an individual interface for each presentation using HyperCard. Eventually we developed generic cards since faculty were tending to choose similar thematic groupings. Even though our sample archive lacked both breadth and depth, in only a few instances did we find any need to supplement the disc materials with other media, such as slides, print ads or videos. While they were choosing, we asked professors to elaborate on the goals of the class and to indicate extra materials from which their students might benefit. So, for example, for the psychology class on gender differences we later furnished French gender demographics; and for a graduate marketing class, we were asked for listings of advertising museums and archives here and abroad. Based on discussions with faculty, we also came prepared with background information on cultural differences, such as the organization of disciplinary knowledge in various counties. * Cultural Contexts of Ads We never claimed that our collection was representative of world advertising, indeed far from it; the most international collection we had contained print campaigns about AIDS (specifically designed for a professor in Cultural Studies in the English department). It turned out to be the most provocative series, in part because it had the greatest scope and in part because of the range of culturally diverse treatments of sexuality and disease. To our surprise, a professor of International Management chose it--precisely because of its range. Other groupings on the disc include French and American perfume and cosmetic ads; French, American and German beef; French, American, Canadian and German milk and milk products; American, French and Spanish cigarettes; Benetton's United Colors and (supposed) social consciousness campaigns; French and American apples; French ads displaying Americans and American icons; an archaeological trench of French images of French women over a ten year period; and France's tendre macho, a man who does housework and takes gentle care of children. Our choice of television commercials was limited to those already in or converted to NTSC (the American TV standard versus PAL md SECAM used by the rest of the world). Furthermore, the TV ads were put on the master tape by technicians to fill up remaining space. …

Speech Dysfunction of Obstructive Sleep Apnea: A Discriminant Analysis of Its Descriptors

We have previously demonstrated a relationship between abnormal speech and obstructive sleep apnea in a small subject sample. The present study was designed to replicate the previous one with a much larger population, analyze the perceptual characteristics of the speech quality, and determine the degree to which each of three descriptors of speech abnormality contributed to the perception of speech abnormality. Ten graduate students in speech pathology listened in two 1.5 hour sessions to 252 random speech samples presented on a master tape. There were 81 subjects comprised of 27 sleep apnea patients, 27 matched chronic obstructive pulmonary disease control patients, and 27 matched normal control subjects. Rating the speech along an equally-appearing interval scale from 1 to 7, the judges heard abnormal resonance, articulation or phonation in 74 percent of the sleep apnea subjects, 53 percent of the COPD subjects, and 7 percent of the normal subjects (significant difference by chi 2 test at the .01 level of confidence). Discriminant function equations based on these speech descriptors correctly identified 96.3 percent of the normal subjects and 63.0 percent of the sleep apnea subjects. Analysis of abnormal speech resonance, articulation and phonation may identify obstructive sleep apnea or may provide insight into its pathology.

Listeners' perceptions of nonspeech characteristics of normal and dysarthric children

The purpose of this investigation was to compare listeners' evaluations of nonspeech characteristics of dysarthric and normal speakers. A total of 16 speakers, eight cerebral-palsied and eight normal children ranging in age from 6 to 11 years, recorded six three-word phrases. The cerebral-palsied speakers were judged to have disorders in at least two of the three areas of articulation, phonation, and resonance, and all were judged to have an articulation disorder as one of the two disordered areas. All normal speakers were found to have normal speech characteristics. A master tape containing the 16 speakers' recordings was presented to 25 listeners, who were asked to rate each of the speakers on a 24-item semantic differential scale that contained polarized adjective pairs concerned with personality and physical-appearance traits. Results of their ratings indicated that for all but two of the 24 adjective pairs, the normal speakers were judged more favorably than the dysarthric speakers, and for all but one of the 24 adjective pairs there were significant differences in judges' ratings between the normal and dysarthric speakers. It appears, therefore, that dysarthric speech adversely affected listeners' perceptions of the dysarthric speakers' personality and physical-appearance characteristics.

A new set of auditory demonstrations

A new series of auditory demonstrations for classroom use, modeled after the well‐known “Harvard Tapes” [D. M. Green, Harvard Laboratory of Psychophysics (1978)] was developed and produced. The demonstrations are issued on a compact disc (CD), are accompanied by a 92‐page explanatory booklet, and fit conveniently in a handy slide box. Almost all demonstrations were synthesized digitally on DEC Vax 11/780 and MicroVax II computers, converted to analog signals with DSC‐200 16‐bit two‐channel D/A converters, and recorded on 16‐bit PCM video tape. Brief spoken introductions to each demonstration were recorded on similar PCM video tape. Editing of the master tape was done digitally in 1630 format on 34‐in. U‐Matic tape, from which the CD master was made. The CD medium, allowing a S/N ratio of up to 90 dB, is very appropriate for sound demonstrations that require a clean acoustic background. The medium also provides random access to individual demonstrations or parts thereof, allows preprogramming of any desire...

Copy tape parameters for thermomagnetic duplication

Thermomagnetic duplication (TMD) of video program material, using mirror master tape with high Curie T. (>500°C) and chromium dioxide copy tape (Curie T. 130°C), was performed at a speed of 4 m/sec using a neodymium YAG laser as heat source to optimize tape parameters for TMD mode, and to study differences between TMD and conventional helical-scan video recording. Optimum TMD copy tape uses CrO 2 with high Hc, diluted with some non-magnetic pigment in a thin coating. TMD has greater latitude than realtime recording in chroma output and S/N. Dilution (from 50% to 20% by volume) causes 8 dB loss of chroma output in realtime but only 3, 4dB in TMD. The same dilution causes chroma (AM) S/N to drop by 3 dB in realtime, whereas TMD mode maintains a constant value of +4 dB. Very low coverage (30 mg CrO 2 /dm2or less) copy tapes appear to be within practical reach.

Edit Film/Conform Tape (EFLM/CTAP) — The Filmmaker's Video System

The Edit Film/Conform Tape (EFLM/CTAP) system is an integrated laboratory post-production system that uses original film footage to create a conformed and completed video master tape. The production team uses film production equipment and techniques for the filming, editing, and final sound-track generation. In the lab, the EFLM/CTAP system builds a high-quality video master from the uncut original film footage and allows full use of electronic character generation, digital effects, etc. This article addresses the reasons for shooting on film and releasing on videotape, and explains how the EFLM/CTAP system provides a transparent in-laboratory bridge between film origination and video release.

Magnetic contact duplication for R-DAT with Barium ferrite media

The experiments on magnetic contact duplication using a newly developed duplicator for R-DAT (Rotary type Digital Audio Taperecorder) was carried out and evaluated at the wavelength of 0.6 to 40 µm with the track width of 10 to 20 µm. The metal particulate(MP) master tape, barium ferrite(BF) particulate slave tape and Co-γFe <inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</inf> O <inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</inf> (Co-γ) slave tape were evaluated. (1) The transfer efficiency was about 2 dB greater with the BF medium than with the Co-γ medium. (2) The reproduced wave form of a BF slave tape duplicated from digitally recorded MP master tape was more symmetrical than that of a BF slave tape directly recorded by a recording head. (3) The block error rate of the BF slave tape duplicated by contact duplication was about 5×10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-3</sup> before error correction. This value indicates that the BF medium is suitable for contact duplication with R-DAT. The above results clarified the superiority of BF medium as a slave tape for contact duplication.

Listeners' discrimination of real and human-imitated animal sounds.

To determine if listeners can accurately distinguish between real and human-imitated animal sounds, a total of 165 recorded sounds (55 real and 110 human-imitated) of cats, cows, dogs, pigs, and sheep were randomly arranged on a master tape and presented to 30 listeners for discriminative judgments. Results indicate that, in general, listeners can accurately discriminate real from human-imitated animal sounds. Suggestions for future research are discussed.