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ANYONE about to buy his first tape machine must first choose from one of three tape formats available: (1) open-reel or (2) cassette or (3) eight-track cartridge.

The three formats were developed at different times and were intended for different, rather specific purposes (and I should explain that "format" refers both to the forms in which the tapes come to you and to the non-interchangeable machines on which they are played).

(1) Open-reel, which is the format that usually comes to mind when someone says "tape recorder," was the first of the existing configurations. The open-reel tape is wound in a pancake shape on a plastic reel similar to home movie-film reels. And, like such film, the tape in an open-reel machine has to be physically handled. You must unwind a length from the "supply" reel, thread it through the tape machine's guides and across its tape heads, and finally attach it firmly (usually by winding one or two layers over the loose end) to the hub of the "take-up" reel.

Open-reel machines for consumer use are almost always four-track, which is to say that they are designed to record and play back two-channel stereo in both directions of the tape-one stereo pair running in one direction and a second pair running in the other, as shown. Utilizing the available space in this way saves tape, and the other two formats follow the example set by open-reel, though in different ways. (Discrete four-channel, or quadraphonic, open-reel tapes are not recorded in both directions; all four tracks are played in one pass by the special machines equipped to handle them.)

Some open-reel tape machines require that you switch the reels around in order to play or record in the reverse direction. Others-the automatic-reversing types - are designed to reverse direction when all the tape has been transferred from the supply reel to the take-up reel (completion of the forward side), winding the tape back onto the original supply reel as side two is played.

(2) The eight-track and cassette formats came later. They are both "cartridge" systems, with the tape being enclosed in a plastic shell  - ideally, you should never have to touch it. Eight-track cartridges were initially designed for use in automobiles, where disc recordings and open-reel tape would be impractical. These cartridges are somewhat larger than cassettes and contain only one reel on which a long continuous loop of tape is, remarkably, wound and unwound simultaneously. You simply plug an eight-track cartridge into the player or recorder, and it does the rest. As its name implies, the cartridge has eight parallel tracks-it accommodates four stereo programs or, more recently, two four-channel programs. But the tape never reverses direction; instead, the tape head in the machine is periodically and automatically shifted to intercept the various sets of tracks.

(3) Cassettes and the machines on which they are played were first envisioned in 1963 as low-fidelity devices for recording speaking voices only, but somewhere along the line the cassette became a serious music medium. Cassette tapes themselves are small  - a bit larger than a pocket address book. In their layout they resemble a miniaturized open-reel system, except that the two reels (simple hubs, actually) are within the plastic shell, and the tape is accessible only through openings along an edge of the housing. Cassettes are also recorded and played in two directions and must usually be flipped over for side two, although some automatic-reversing machines for home and automobile use are available.

Now that you know what the three formats are, let's look at their respective merits for your modest - or elaborate  - tape-recording purposes. The considerations will be: fidelity, suitability, flexibility, reliability, and portability. Maybe one of these points will be a deciding factor in your case; maybe others will intrigue you and encourage you to dig deeper.
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If you plan to do most of your listening to commercially prerecorded tapes, their fidelity will determine the limits of the fidelity you get in playback. It is rare that audiophiles are overwhelmingly impressed by the sound of a prerecorded tape produced by one of the big duplicating companies. In general, prerecorded tapes, at their infrequent best, sound almost as good as discs (gemeint sind LPS). Of the three formats, open-reel prerecorded tapes are probably still the best in overall frequency response, noise level, dynamic range, and so forth. Cassettes rank second, and eight-track cartridges are a somewhat distant third. This is no necessary reflection on the potentials of the formats  - or how they might sound if you make your own tapes. It's simply the way things are with the prerecorded products.

A prerecorded tape that doesn't have hiss is rare in any format. "Dolby B" processing, the hiss-reducing treatment for tape introduced to consumers some years ago, is available on a number of cassette releases and (so far) on a few open-reel prerecorded tapes. According to Ampex, it will soon be offered on eight-track cartridges. This process is the most effective way of dealing with hiss on your tapes, but you will have to pay more for a tape machine with Dolby circuits or buy a separate, add-on Dolby unit. Equipment with built-in Dolby circuits is much more expensive in the open-reel format than with cassettes, probably because the open-reel machines generally use four Dolby modules (to encode for recording and simultaneously to decode the monitor-head output). Cassette machines, on the other hand, almost all use two Dolby modules that are switched to encode during recording and to decode during play. The exceptions are the very expensive cassette decks (about $700 and up) with full-response monitor heads.

There are no Dolbyized eight-track cartridges available at this moment 1974 - (their introduction has just been announced by Ampex, however), but there is a Dolby-equipped eight-track record/play deck (from Wollensak) that will enable you to make your own Dolbyized cartridges. I would expect the results to far outshine any commercially recorded cartridge. And the same would be true for tapes you make on your own Dolbyized equipment in the two other formats as well. Open-reel and even cassette recordings that are home-made on the best equipment are often audibly perfect. There are, however, certain unavoidable inconveniences in recording on eight-track cartridges, and these will be discussed later on.
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None of the three formats is compatible with any other, which means that you cannot play a cartridge on an open-reel or cassette machine. (However, there are a few tape decks available that have special separate facilities for two of the three formats. There are also adaptors that will permit cassettes to be plugged into eight-track players, but they seem somewhat unreliable at best. Therefore, you must think about the suitability of a particular tape format to your present and future needs and way of life. For example, if you bought your present automobile with a tape player already installed, chances are it's an eight-track unit, and this is a persuasive argument for owning a home eight-track recorder/player to generate new material for car play and to be able to play at home the tapes you have acquired to listen to while driving. But if you're starting from scratch, an automatic-reversing cassette player is fully as convenient (and safe) to use in a car - and four cassettes will fit in the space occupied by one eight-track cartridge. Also, with a cassette deck connected to your high-fidelity system, you'll be able to make tapes to play either at home or in your car.

One question you'll have to deal with sooner or later is whether to buy a tape recorder or a tape deck. A recorder, in current parlance, is a machine that comes complete with its own amplifiers and speakers - in other words, a self-contained music system. A deck is designed to be connected to an existing music system (appropriate plug-in jacks must be provided on the amplifier or receiver), and it will never make a sound until it is. Recorders and decks are available in all three formats. (It might also be mentioned that many recorders can function as decks as well if they are connected to an external music system through special output jacks; in this mode of operation  the   recorder's own  built-in speakers and amplifiers are simply by-passed.)

Four-channel prospects enter into the question of suitability to your needs. Should you want four-channel sound, which of the formats is best for you? In the eight-track and open-reel formats, four-channel recording is now a reality. You can buy discrete quadraphonic eight-track tapes and a few open-reel quadraphonic releases, as well as special machines to play them and even to record your own. But be warned that the equipment to play the Dolbyized discrete quadraphonic open-reel tapes that are emerging is going to be expensive.

Philips, the firm that licenses the cassette format, endorses discrete four-channel cassettes only in a form that is technically difficult to cope with. It involves four parallel tracks running in one direction, and four tracks running the other- and eight-track cassette, in other words. The technical problem arises because the track width of an eight-track cassette is half that of the eight-track cartridge.

There are other factors that could influence your buying decision. For example, the availability of the kind of music you like in one format or another. Eight-track offers the largest selection of prerecorded tapes, especially for youth-oriented music. In contrast, reports are that sales of prerecorded cassettes last year amounted to a considerably smaller share of the prerecorded tape market than the year before. Prerecorded open-reel tapes, although constituting the smallest library, have been growing in popularity since Dolby-ized offerings were introduced.

If you are concerned about the availability of the kind of music you like prerecorded for a tape format you are considering, a quick check of the Schwann catalog will reassure (or discourage) you.
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The idea behind the first high-fidelity cassette deck was to approach the same performance and flexibility afforded by open-reel equipment, but in a form that was more compact and easier to use. By and large, this goal has been reached.

Cassettes are generally available in playing times from 15 to 90 minutes in each direction of tape travel, which nicely corresponds to what can be recorded on the various lengths of open-reel tapes (on 7-inch reels at 7 1/2 inches per second). Cassettes are much easier to handle (threading some open-reel machines requires a knack that some master more quickly than others), and dozens of them will fit in an ordinary shoe box.

Editing a cassette tape is considerably more difficult than editing an open-reel recording, but some people seem willing to attempt it. Since the prices of the best cassette decks generally end where those for good open-reel decks begin (somewhere around $300), the two formats do not really compete on the basis of cost.

Look at the eight-track cartridge and you'll immediately see that it's a system basically intended for playback. Cartridge recording is a clumsy business, and for this reason there have been few cartridge records on the market until recently.

The longest-playing cartridges I know of run 94 minutes in four segments of 23 1/2 minutes each. Every 23 1/2 minutes the endless loop of tape in the cartridge completes one full circuit, and the tape head shifts automatically, with a "chunk," to engage another set of the parallel tracks on the tape. It does this three times (once for the Q-8 four-channel cartridges), and then you're back where you started.

The cycling process is the same for recording as for playback, and since there is a break in the program every time the tape head has to reorient itself, the recordist has to keep careful track of the passing minutes if he doesn't want his music interrupted. He can't just look (as he can with cassettes and open-reel) to see whether he is running out of tape  - even if  he could see it, which he can't, he couldn't tell. A timer is therefore required. Some Wollensak and JVC eight-track recorders, incidentally, have such timers built in.

Although most eight-track decks provide a fast-forward speed, you can't reverse an eight-track cartridge. Thus, backtracking for editing or any other purpose is simply out of the question. To return to a specific point on the tape you must fast-forward along through the entire loop until the spot comes up again.

All this has effects on the prerecorded product as well. A disc's worth of music offered in eight-track form has three interruptions instead of the disc's one. This is okay for popular songs, but disturbing for long classical works such as Beethoven symphonies or Strauss tone poems. On one such cartridge I heard recently each track-switching break was preceded by an aesthetically disturbing fade-out - then a fade-in after the track switch! In a car one could perhaps live with such anti-musical distractions, but not in the home.
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According to reports, cassette and eight-track troubles are most frequently caused by the tape and its container, and open-reel difficulties generally result from failures of the transport mechanism.

Whatever the causes, the malfunctions manifest themselves in two ways: mechanically (the moving parts become erratic or inoperative) and electrically (one or more channels become weak, distorted, or noisy, or go dead altogether).

Electrical problems can occur with any format, at any time; it's up to the designer of the equipment to foresee and prevent them. But tape-motion troubles, if they are caused (as happens with cassettes and cartridges) by the tape pack itself, reflect on the whole format.

Open-reel has tape-pack problems of its own  - warped reels and, sometimes, rippled tape edges. But transferring open-reel tape to a new reel is easier than prying open a cassette or cartridge to rescue the jammed tape inside.

Tape jamming within the plastic container has plagued cassettes since their beginning, and only in the past year or so has it seemed that jamming will diminish to a "normal" defect rate.

Eight-track cartridges have a special problem. Since layers of tape wound on the reel must be free to slide past each other, the tape has to be treated with some kind of dry lubricant, and it appears that in time the lubricant can wear out (or off).

If there is a way to avoid this, it is simply to buy only cartridges of the very highest quality - good advice, incidentally, for any of the tape formats. The tape industry does offer warranties on its products.
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This is a consideration that will interest only certain readers. Some are looking for carry-along entertainment, and for them cassettes and cartridges should be equally suitable. The size of a portable tape player is mostly determined by the size of its speaker. There are some ultra-small cassette portables hardly larger than the cassette itself.
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Also, you can fit more cassettes than cartridges into your coat pocket. However, if you already have a large collection of cartridges, this might influence your choice and make you decide on one of the portable eight-track players.

Other readers may want to make high-quality recordings on location. The best - and in some cases the smallest - machines for this purpose are the special-application, battery-powered open-reel units (Nagra, Stellavox, Uher, and so forth) designed for recording film soundtracks and other professional uses.

Ironically, the smaller they are, the more horrendously expensive they are. There are a few pocket-size battery-operated cassette portables that do a surprisingly good job of recording music with their built-in microphones. And Sony makes a stereo portable cassette recorder (1974) with built-in Dolby circuits and provisions for chromium-dioxide tape.

The foregoing discussion of the present state of tape recording and its formats should provide you with the basic information you need in choosing the format for a first tape recorder. It seems clear that all three formats are going to be with us for quite a while, and your choice of format and particular model should be made on the basis of your current recording requirements rather than on an attempt to guess what the distant future holds.                     □
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BEFORE buying a tape recorder, take the time to critically examine your own personal requirements. The most important question is: what do you plan to do with the recorder?
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To play commercially recorded open-reel tapes, a two-speed (3 3/4" and 7 1/2 ips), four-track recorder is necessary. Special recording facilities (sound-on-sound, microphone mixing, etc.) are not required. In fact, no recording capability at all is needed, but the "playback only" tape decks of a few years ago are no longer being manufactured, at least for home use.

Since a growing number of commerical open-reel tape releases are being made with Dolby "B" processing, a simple accessory Dolby noise-reducing unit might be advisable. Built-in Dolby circuits are only found in a few rather expensive machines.

The main requirements for the recorder itself are reasonably low flutter and noise level, plus accurate playback equalization. Most moderately priced tape decks are perfectly satisfactory for this purpose. Many recorders are available with built-in playback amplifiers and speakers (sometimes detachable for better stereo listening). These are never comparable in quality to even a low-priced hi-fi system. In any case, the inherent limitations of high-speed duplicated commercial tapes  make   "state-of-the-art"   recorder  performance unnecessary.

Most of these comments apply equally to cassette recorders, except that Dolby circuits are usually built into machines selling for more than $ 200. For serious listening to cassette recordings, a Dolby-ized playback system is imperative. Many, if not most, current cassette releases are Dolby-ized. For listening only, there is even a Dolby-equipped cassette player (not a recorder) available from one manufacturer.
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Many people - perhaps the largest group of tape recorder users - dub phonograph records and FM broadcasts to build up a tape library. As with the "listening only" tape unit, no special recording flexibility is required for this, but a good overall record/playback frequency response is desirable.

The tolerable limits of recorder flutter, distortion, and noise level depend somewhat on the quality of the associated record-playing equipment and FM tuner. An unweighted flutter of 0.2% or less, and a S/N ratio of 55 dB or better, combined with a useful frequency range from 30 Hz to 14 or 15 kHz, will usually result in a tape copy virtually indistinguishable from the original program. For certain types of music, such as piano, it's desirable to have less than 0.1% flutter, but this also depends on individual hearing acuity.

In practice, most medium-priced open-reel recorders, as well as most over-$200 cassette machines, are capable of an excellent job of disc or FM dubbing. In the over-$300 price range, one can expect "perfect" results in this application from most open-reel and cassette recorders.

The majority of home tape-recording requirements fall into one of the two preceding categories.

If "live" recording is your goal, an open-reel recorder is most desirable, since its tapes can be edited. The quality and price of the recorder you choose must be dictated by the specific nature of your recording needs. For example, no recorder can sound any better than the microphones will allow, and good microphones are expensive. One should be prepared to spend about half as much for the microphones as for the recorder, for a comparable quality of sound.

For anything more than casual recording, even the more expensive recorders may lack the desired input flexibility and require an external mixer. Costs escalate rapidly-not so much in relation to audible performance as operating flexibility. Clearly, each case must be evaluated individually.
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