Dutch Tape Transfers

16/12/2024

Today is a beautiful day for a pile of 1/4inch masters.

At the start of a day like this, I arrange all tapes on artist and expected alignment depending on the studio they were recorded. The rest will be aligned to my trusty MRL tones. That way I can work very fast. 😺👍🏻

06/12/2024

It’s DTRS day! Running my Tascam DA-98HR with five DA-78HR’s chasing which makes 48 tracks altogether with Pro Tools synced to TC. Multitracks of four episodes of a music TV-show from 2003, a concert from 1999 and a very special one: a concert from 2001 where my friend and I were present at the then called Heineken Music Hall (now AFAS Live) when we were 17/18. Very cool to transfer these tapes. And no errors yet! Knock on wood! 😸👍🏻

15/11/2024

The remastered and expanded edition of Golden Earring’s N.E.W.S. came out! Originally released in 1984, featuring their smash “When The Lady Smiles”. I had the honour to transfer the master tapes and multitracks for this one. Wouter Bessels did a fantastic job remastering and putting it all together. Next to the remastered album on CD1, CD2 contains tons of demos, early versions and other cool snippets we found in the archives. Some of these bonustracks were only found on the multitracks, so they had to be mixed to get heard. I got the honour to do so, which was a great pleasure. And look at the beautiful artwork! The original album master is used for the CD tray!

Congratz Wouter Bessels, Red Bullet - Record Label, Jeroen Ras and everyone involved with this beautiful release. It was a great pleasure to work on it.

14/11/2024

A new episode of Bart’s Classic Track! The ultimate classic “België” by Het Goede Doel from 1982. In this video/podcast Bart discusses the making of the track and listens through the original multitrack of the song, accompanied by songwriter/singer/synth player Henk Temming, guitar player Sander van Herk and engineer Robin Freeman. I had the honour to transfer the original multitrack tapes from the Red Bullet - Record Label archives. Which was a great pleasure!

View the episode on Youtube or listen to the podcast on you favorite streaming platform. Enjoy! 😺👍🏻

08/11/2024

New plugin I had the honour of helping with! 😺👍🏻

This past spring, I was approached by mix engineer and plugin developer Jesse Ray Ernster to see if I’d be willing to sample my digital tape machines for the creation of a plugin that, for the first time, would emulate digital tape machines. While digital tape is essentially just a data carrier, the thought was that the built-in vintage AD/DA converters might have a unique character. So, I got to work and sampled 10 machines, including the Sony PCM-3348, the Sony PCM/F1 series, one of the first digital stereo machines—the Mitsubishi X80—and the Tascam DA-88. It was incredibly interesting to do, with sometimes genuinely surprising results. Very cool to hear this come to life in plugin form.

Incidentally, a few formats didn’t make it to the finish line, including the Digidesign 888 converter and the Alesis ADAT machine. Those converters turned out to be so unpleasant at higher levels that they were practically unusable. 😸

Congratz to mixland_audio and with the release of this great plugin! ❤️

The secret weapon behind the hits, now a plugin. 3348 TAPE faithfully recreates the iconic 3348, delivering the warmth, depth, and character of digital tape ...

25/10/2024

No tape indeed, but the DTRS family is back together. All working smooth, all hooked up, ready for some 90’s and 00’s live recordings!

17/10/2024

This dinosaur entered the building. The iZ RADAR24 from 2001. Ready for all RADAR recordings that need to be archived for the future. It needs a little love on the power supply and some fresh disks, but then it’s ready for service. And yeah, it’s compatible with the older Otari RADAR and RADAR II.

A brief explanation of what you are looking at. RADAR was a computer based recording system introduced in 1992. It’s essentially a PC with build in hi-quality converters and a dedicated operating system which is instant ready to record audio. A no nonsens stripped to the bone DAW in modern terms. And with help of the dedicated “session controller”, which has every function assigned to a dedicated k**b, you can operate the RADAR without a screen.

Can’t wait to work with this one! 😺👍🏻

PS: the song you hear was transferred by me. What a coincidence! 😸👌

12/09/2024

A new machine has entered the building. A little maintenance, love and a sync cable and she’s ready to roll! Looking forward!

02/09/2024

It was time to fire up this beautiful trio: the DBX 208 noise reduction system with 411 modules. Three times 8 makes 24 tracks of DBX I need once in a while. This time for a secret project we’re working on, but I can say the tape is from a legendary studio in my hometown: Studio Rosegarden. The easy part of DBX: no alignment! Only matching the inputs with the outputs and we’re good to go. 😺👍🏻

26/07/2024

While building my new digi-room, I mainly focussed on getting the DASH and ProDigi machines working. Now they do, I gave my DTRS setup its first spin. Two DA78HR’s are still under maintainance, so I started out with a 24tr live recording of one if the finest jazz legends The Netherlands knew. I blocked the session name out of routine, but I can tell you it’s bass player Ruud Jacobs with and amongst others. A real pleasure to spend my time on this one. Recorded by Michiel Hoogenboezem somewhere late 90’s to beginning of the 00’s.

25/07/2024

I want my, I want my, I want my NTSC! 🎶🎵

It took some time, since NTSC Betamax players seemed pretty hard to get my hands on, but now I have a Sony SL-2000 Betamax machine for everything NTSC PCM. Some American masters on this side of the water were patiently waiting for this day. And it matches perfectly to his European PAL, the SL-F1. Thanks to .nl for getting it working.

02/06/2024

Another episode of “things I find in tape boxes”. Someone must have had a lot of fun thinking about someone opening up this tape box after 36 years and see this. Mission accomplished! This is one of the analog masters for the self titled debut album for reggae group Revelation Time, featuring their hit single “South Africa” featuring Ruud Gullit. Recorded at Bullet Sound Studio's in 1988, engineered by Shell Schellekens. From the Red Bullet - Record Label archive. Of course I’ll put the spoons back. I hope it won’t be necessary, but let’s see if they’ll catch daylight again in a few decades and put a smile on someone’s face. ❤️

Further specs on this tape: BASF 911 at 15ips CCIR 320nWb/m with Dolby SR on my Studer A80VU with two Dolby 361’s.

01/06/2024

No running machines today! It was a good moment to re-organize the DAT archive of . All sorted out on alphabetical order and some artists even get their own drawer. Ikea’s Helmer drawers can store exactly a hundred DATs when fully packed. Time to get on transferring these gems.

28/05/2024

Last week a very cool release came out on the streaming services: “Silent Partners - Extended Versions” by Bolland, a.k.a. Bolland & Bolland. While transferring their masters from the archives, I bumped onto a set of masters containing extended version of all album tracks of the Silent Partners album from 1984, recorded at . Some versions were released on 12inch at the time, but about half of them were not.

There was only one 12inch version missing: The Boat ‘The Recovery Of The Titanic’, of which no tape was found in the archives, so I transferred that one from vinyl. Happy to work on this one, a great version of a already great album.

Have a peek at one of the tapes I used for this one. Transferred on my Studer A80VU at 15ips CCIR 320nWb/m into my PrismSound Lyra 2.

#1984

08/05/2024

Welcome to my digi-room! My second work space housing my Mitsubishi X-850, Sony PCM-3348, PCM-3348HR and two piles of ADAT and DTRS. Still under construction but today I connected everything up to get to work this friday. Looking forward!

07/05/2024

It’s quite a digital week! After doing a batch of Sony PCM-1630 Umatic tapes, it’s the same tape format now, but another protocol: PCM a.k.a. F1 using the Sony VO-5630 recorder together with the Sony PCM-701ES, going analog out to Pro Tools at 24bit 192kHz. Again, from a well known Dutch singing group from my hometown. 😸👍🏻

04/05/2024

Today it’s Sony PCM-1630 day! Digital audio on Umatic video tapes. This batch is from the archive of a well known Dutch singing band from my hometown.

When compiling a CD in 1989 like this one, they first copied the DAT tapes containing the final mixes to a 1630 Umatic tape (called “work master”), then they mastered them to another 1630 Umatic (called “processed master”) and these versions were copied to another Umatic with the CD tracklist and correct edits added (called “Intermaster”) which was copied to the final CD 1630 Umatic master with PQ data added. Crazy times! So that means I had to listen to thus great album several times. My pleasure! 😸👍🏻

02/05/2024

This man has left planet Earth today: Wilmer Wolf, a brilliant songwriter, musician and frontman of Dutch new wave band Secret Sounds.

In 2008 we joined hands to create a boxset of his old band Secret Sounds, active from 1981 to 1987. I was a rookie, I only did some archive work for 80’s bands with my cassette deck before. But Wilmer came up with boxes full of reels. Totally new to me, so he was the one who actually teached me loading a tape on a machine. After the release of the Secret Sounds boxset, on which I’m still incredibly proud of, we continued working together on his solo record “The Inside Story” and I had the honour to share the stage with him and my close friend Rinse Visser , who introduced me to Secret Sounds in the 90’s when we were 14.

After these gigs we kept in contact and we met now and then.

Thank you for the music and the friendship Wilmer! You made your promise to the state of sound. Condolences to everyone who loved you. You will be missed. Have fun up there! ❤️

Listen to their masterpiece “Wasteland” from 1984 on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/album/4fPR7eAcu2sZJpVDnwNlyi?si=ZR0J14kdTRiy0NB7YEHgcA