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THERE'S a widespread belief that, when recording, the needles of the VU meters should never go into the red area. On the loudest music passages, so the homily goes, the needle should just graze the 0 dB mark that forms the lower boundary of the red "danger" zone. Some recording tape manufacturers tell us to go ahead and record in the red. This is because most tape decks are biased at the factory for standard or low-noise tapes.

But today's quality tapes are modified oxide types with much higher coercivity. What this means is that they need more drive to get all of the recorded sound onto the oxide. And once you give them that extra recording level, they'll repay in kind with higher output level, better dynamic range, and lower hiss.

Experiment with your next batch of tape. Let the needle crest close to +3 dB  - the far right of the red danger zone. Keep medium-loud passages at or near 0 dB, and make sure that the needle always exhibits some wiggling on the softest passages. "Riding the gain" like this may tend to smooth out some of the more dramatic dynamic swings in your recordings, but you'll also succeed in getting a lot more super sound out of the tape on playback.

The sure way to tell if this "overdriving" of the tape is working is to play it back and listen critically. Of course, if you're working with a three-head, open-reel deck or preamplifier with monitoring facilities, you can listen to the tape on headphones while you're recording it and learn instantly if you're distorting or not. In fact, it's often a good idea to spot-check the tape if you have monitoring facilities, and you can run the monitor through your rig's speakers just by flipping a switch or pressing a button on the tape deck.

But only certain types of machines let you monitor in this way. Monitoring, which is listening to the new recording on the tape an instant after it's made, is accomplished through a separate playback head assembly that can be switched on separately with its own preamplifiers. Pro's do it, why not you too?
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When you buy a good tape deck  - open reel or cassette  - you rarely get microphones with it. If you think that manufacturers are doing you and themselves a disservice, you're mistaken. A decent pair of matched mikes that perform well with your new $300 deck could add as much as another $ 100 or so to the price. Additionally, there's a wider range of personal choice among microphones than with tape machines.

There are less expensive mikes, of course, but if you drop much below $45-$50 each, you'll face very definite recording limitations: like frequency response vs polar patterns. For example, a $50 omnidirectional mike (which picks up equally well from all directions) may have a reasonably flat frequency response from 50 to about 15,000 Hz.

A cardioid (or directional) microphone at the same price and from the same manufacturer will start to cut off somewhere between 10,000 and 12,000 Hz. In this case, you've given up some frequency response for directionality. So there's a trade-off involved. If you decide to use two mikes on a singer who's plunking away on an acoustic guitar, watch what you use!

The guitar needs a "bright" mike with good frequency response. Good choice here: a ribbon microphone on the guitar (for its brightness and directionality) close in, and a dynamic placed very close in on the performer's mouth.
But this dynamic must be the type with built-in triple windscreen and pop filter; otherwise, with close miking, every plosive syllable will come out loud, explosive, and very sibilant.

Each live recording situation presents particular problems. For example, if you're high on piano music, you might experience difficulties in getting a warm, natural sound.

It's very difficult to get this type of piano sound in a typical living room because room acoustics and size are generally unsatisfactory. If you're in a large room, hall, or auditorium, you're home free.

In your living room, try tying back or removing all draperies. Move as much upholstered furniture as you can out of the room and roll the rug back. Here, you have to convert your living room from an acoustically dead one to a live environment with lots of echo.

The ideal microphone type for the piano is the bidirectional ribbon. Placed about 10 feet from the instrument, the main body of the sound will be picked up by the front of the mike, while reverberation will come in on the rear lobe. If you can set up a second ribbon microphone about 15 to 18 feet away in the same fashion, and either mix or record on the other stereo channel, you'll end up with a truly rich and lush piano sound.

If you don't have any ribbon mikes, but have several dynamics, start with a minimum of two set about 12 to 18 feet from the piano. If your room is "dead," use omnidirectionals - not car-dioids-so they can pick up room reverberation,

Vocalists are always better off hand-holding a dynamic microphone since they usually can't hold still enough to maintain optimum recording distance from a microphone on a stand. Besides, it gives them something useful to do with their hands.
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For really professional sound, let someone else do it. Use the professional microphones, performers, techniques, recorders, echo chambers, and other niceties of the pro by simply recording off the air. FM radio offers a golden opportunity to obtain an excellent taped music collection at very low cost.

But there are problems with this which may have little to do with your tape equipment, as follows:

Inexpensive FM tuners sometimes let the 19-kHz subcarrier sneak through unfiltered; this mixes with the bias oscillator signal in the tape recorder with very unpleasant results. Sharp selectivity, satisfactory sensitivity, and good image rejection are all important if you want studio-crisp recordings off the air. A good outdoor FM antenna is always highly desirable. You'll know if your receiver is up to the job the first time you seriously tape a music broadcast.

Another consideration is the quality of the broadcast material itself. Some FM stations broadcast distorted signals, do not bother to clean a record before playing, use worn styli, poor turntables, hummy preamplifiers, etc. Sometimes atmospheric conditions affect broadcast quality - although not much if you're running a receiver with a 1.8 uV IHF sensitivity, with a good antenna, and you're 40 or 50 straight-line miles from the transmitter.

Any recorder - open reel or cassette - can record off-the-air or directly from your record player by plugging into the "Tape Output" or "Tape Record" jack on the back of your stereo receiver. Signal level at these jacks is on the order of 0.5 to 2 volts. Usually high impedance, it will match most tape line inputs. Impedance at this output (and at tape recorder line inputs) is on the order of 10,000 to 15,000 ohms. Microphone input impedance on transistor tape decks is usually around 200 to 500 ohms.

The ideal off-the-air recording situation is when a sound-conscious FM station airs a live concert or its own master tapes of a live performance. This is where you get some great dynamics, true hall acoustics, and very low hiss level.

Hiss is something that's an underlying part of all tape recording, although it can be eliminated insofar as your hearing is concerned. Every time you make a tape recording, you inject a hiss level of about 3 dB (a barely noticeable jump). When you dub from tape to tape, each transfer adds another 3 dB of hiss. And this is where Dolby noise reduction comes in. Originally intended for professional use, one of the four Dolby frequency bands (the highest one) is used in the Dolby "B" system popularized for home equipment use. The Dolby must be used at the first tape interface (between the music source and the tape). After that, every tape-to-tape dub is automatically "Dolbyized," and there is an overall reduction of noise (hiss) level of 8 to 15 dB.

Many cassette decks come equipped with Dolby noise-reduction circuitry today. It generally adds about $50 to $75 to the price tag. It's worth it, especially when you hear the high-quality sound that cassettes can provide in combination with it. Outboard Dolby noise-reduction units are available, too, in the event your recorder doesn't incorporate the system.

Dolby circuitry reduces hiss, but it can be reduced even further. Using high recording levels, riding the gain, and watching VU meter needles peg near +3 dB (with high-energy tape), can also reduce hiss by improving the tape's signal-to-noise ratio.
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One potential headache is in recording from records. You may have some priceless antique shellacs or some brand-new borrowed discs that you want to get on tape.

Either way, you need good, reliable playback equipment for those records, and the discs should be absolutely clean. Give them a wipe off with a reliable aid, such as "Discwasher," and, while playing, use a "Dust Bug" or similar record-care equipment to clean out the record grooves a few seconds before the needle gets there.

The turntable itself should be the best you can afford; after all, turntable noise will be recorded for posterity. Obtaining sufficient signal level is a problem at times if a combination of a very-low-output magnetic phono cartridge and an insensitive "Tape Output" circuit from a receiver or amplifier occurs.
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If your want to tape your own four-channel programs, and have a quadraphonic (discrete) open-reel deck, get yourself four closely matched microphones and set up shop in your favorite church or auditorium (or living room). One word of caution: if you have had no significant experience in two-channel live recording, save your four-channel efforts for a little while. Positioning the mikes is as chancy and different as are the needs and tastes of the person operating the recorder.

Recording matrixed four-channel sound is no trick at all. Whether your source of encoded material is a record or an encoded broadcast, just record it as ordinary two-channel stereo. You can then play it back as regular stereo or through a decoder to recover the rear-channel information.

Encoded matrix material, whether it is SQ or QS, is basically two-channel information that has had something added to it-the rear-channel difference signals. When played back as regular stereo, the result is the same as when an encoded record is played as stereo: a slightly enhanced program that is spread out a little beyond the speakers. Whether or not you actually ever play the taped material as four-channel makes no difference. The information will be there on the tape ready for you to use whenever you want to.
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Und was ist mit CD4 ??
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One aspect of open-reel recording is the ability to add another track of music (or speech) after one of the two stereo tracks has already been used. There are two ways of doing this - called "sound-with-sound" and "sound-on-sound." Both require some special switching in the recorder and not all open-reel recorders have this feature.

For sound-with-sound (SWS), one of the two stereo tracks is recorded monophonically (for example, a musical accompaniment for a vocal). Then by pressing the SWS button, one half of the record head becomes a playback head-playing back the music while you record your vocal or other material on the second stereo channel. When you play the completed recording back, the accompaniment is on channel 1, your vocal on channel 2. In recorders with separate record and playback heads, the switching is a little hairier, since the regular playback head cannot be used for monitoring. It's an inch or so away from the record head and the two tracks would be out of synchronization.

For sound-on-sound (SOS), the operation is basically the same, except that the material originally recorded on channel 1 is mixed with the new material and it all goes on channel 2. In both SWS and SOS, the record head must be switched so channel 1 is used for playback while channel 2 is recording. This method of synchronization is sometimes referred to as "Sel-Sync."
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One of the sad inequities of home recording is that after you buy some expensive microphones, you may find that the most live recording you do is with your $39.95 mono cassette portable with its own microphone - as you chase after the kids and adult parties and other recording situations. Certainly the battery portable is a useful tape recorder for such situations. And with ALC (Automatic Level Control) built-in, candid recording situations become the rule instead of the exception.

If you use the battery portable, remember a couple of cardinal rules: make sure the batteries are in good condition at the beginning and the end of your recording outing. Batteries that start to weaken during your session will slow down the motor during recording. The result is that playback at proper speed will be gradually faster and faster, until near the end your voices all sound like Mickey Mouse.

Alkaline batteries, while offering longer life, develop a leakage peculiar to this type. A light chalky film starts to cover the negative (flat bottom of the cell) terminals, making electrical contact chancy. If you use alkaline batteries, be sure to examine them frequently. Scrape off that white powder with a bit of emery cloth.

(A small square of emery cloth will store nicely right in the recorder's battery compartment.) Eveready's new "Super 99" cell offers an interesting alternative. Priced only slightly higher than standard carbon-zinc cells, this one is also carbon-zinc, but turned inside-out for greater power output.

One last point - don't cut corners on tape. Experiment with different brands and types to determine which serves your needs best before devoting a substantial amount of time on a recording session.
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• 1.  Clean tape path's and heads regularly (say, every 20 operating hours).
• 2.  Demagnetize tape heads at same time as above.
• 3.  Reduce dropouts by "playing" both sides of a Wank tape before recording.
• 4.  Don't start recording until the tape has run a few seconds to clear leader tape.
• 5.  When through playing or recording a cassette, rewind tape so that clear leader tape is exposed.
• 6.  Remove cassette tape slack before inserting into deck (the eraser end of a pencil makes a fine tool for this purpose).
• 7.  Wind tapes stored for a long time before playing to avoid layers of tape sticking.
• 8. Don't store tapes in warm or damp areas or near loudspeakers or any other object with magnetic fields.
• 9.  Two small tabs at the rear of a cassette can be removed to make it impossible to record. If you change your mind later, simply cover holes with masking tape.
• 10.  Mark tapes clearly if Dolby system was used during recording.

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