Xn RECORDINGS -label overview

[FreakAnimalFinland]

Review added!

K7D 002 Proiekt Hat XX (Cass, Ltd) 20015
10 years later, another tape. Handmade metal box with insert. Artworks remain non-existent. It's all about material itself. Musically this tape offers some of more rough tape works within postmortem genre. While many "gutter noise" artists don't seem to have so much clue what exactly they're trying to achive, PH isn't here being overly distorted. Not muddy in distant and lazy ways, but seems like there is actually very detailed sound fetishism towards all things tape. Amount of tape hiss, sound artifacts of decaying tape and all that seems conscious, while music itself is far from being noisy. It's rather suffocating loops and blurry keyboard tones, which indicate into utterly minimalist and simple set up, that doesn't intend to go into areas synth modulation etc. My assumption would be just tape-deck-overdriven casio tones and such. Movie samples, which are quite oddly unpopular these days?!

One curious element in this release makes me wonder details. Tape shell is regular ferric tape shell. Meaning just two regular sized holes on top. But tape loaded inside shell seems like would be chrome tape - according to color of tape, which is very dark instead of red-brownish cheap ferric tape. It makes me wonder is this some sort of slap into face of people who have new tape decks with automatic tape mode switch? So they can't adjust it to chrome manually? Or perhaps technical detail, what boosts the intended frequencies? As indeed, chrome tapes sound little different depending what mode you use for playing them. It is also possible, that this is all purely accidental, and I just dream of PH's tape fetish going to odd levels such as this.

[Scat-O-Logy]

K7D 002 Proiekt Hat XX (Cass, Ltd) 2015
tape hiss

To me, there was so much tape hiss that it sounded like something went wrong in production. Sounds like low bitrate/mp3/sound glitches. I shared THIS sample with few contacts but none of them heard anything unusual.

[FreakAnimalFinland]

At most drastic, high pitched tape hiss flutter can have some similarities to mp3. I noticed this first time when listening some my old dubbed over used old tapes sort of music recordings from couple decades ago. It is different, but I could see how people wouldn't hear much difference. Same as some can't hear difference in sound in general.

[Scat-O-Logy]

At most drastic, high pitched tape hiss flutter can have some similarities to mp3.

Ah, thanks for explanation... First time I've come across this so it really baffled me.

[Theodore]

One curious element in this release makes me wonder details. Tape shell is regular ferric tape shell. Meaning just two regular sized holes on top. But tape loaded inside shell seems like would be chrome tape - according to color of tape, which is very dark instead of red-brownish cheap ferric tape. It makes me wonder is this some sort of slap into face of people who have new tape decks with automatic tape mode switch? So they can't adjust it to chrome manually? Or perhaps technical detail, what boosts the intended frequencies? As indeed, chrome tapes sound little different depending what mode you use for playing them. It is also possible, that this is all purely accidental, and I just dream of PH's tape fetish going to odd levels such as this.

To me, there was so much tape hiss that it sounded like something went wrong in production. Sounds like low bitrate/mp3/sound glitches. I shared THIS sample with few contacts but none of them heard anything unusual.

Discogs says is indeed a chrome tape. I guess the info was taken from the label itself. 2 Lust Vessel tapes i have [Joel Danielsson, Arv & Miljo] are Chrome Extra but shell is normal position too. Although my deck has switches, i play them as intended to be played, normal. I have read that back then wasn't uncommon pre-recorded tapes be chrome in normal shells in order to sound "hotter" on playback. But must have been dubbed as chrome. Otherwise they won't sound good. Less bias than it should, will result to lower music volume on tape, therefore to lower music / hiss ratio on playback [More hiss]. Correct me if i am wrong. I haven't the XX tape, neither i have listened any sample / rip, but i doubt something went wrong.

Edit : Still, i have no idea what's the best equalizer setting when recording such tapes. Chrome or normal position ?

Edit 2 : Answering my own question, since it's for normal position playback, equalizer on recording has to be normal position too. So chrome bias + normal eq.

[sterilization]

My copy of the XX tape is in fact a chrome shelled tape. It was difficult to see the perforations from the top, but if you look at the tape from either side, you will notice a void underneath the tabs, which of course, is not found in type normal tapes. I removed the tab (I have a newer teac deck that requires these tabs to be broken to engage my decks chrome function) and found the sound to be slightly more powerful. 

It is my understanding, that the position tabs are strictly for newer decks to know when to auto switch to the correct type. If Xn has an older deck with a manual bias switch, the bias tab, in or out, would make no difference on the selected recording bias, as long as he chose the chrome setting before dubbing.

[Zeno Marx]

A lot of factory-grade high-speed dubbing equipment only dubs in normal bias.  There's a slight benefit in using chrome tape, but not all the virtues of chrome are realized.  This was a long time ago, but a huge tape facility in Minneapolis dubbed everything in normal position unless you asked them to do otherwise.  They'd sell you chrome grade tape, but then use normal position by default (and put it in normal bias shells).  It never made sense to me, other than the fact that most of their machines weren't equipped with type II bias.  They could do more jobs, thus get greater productivity, if they didn't bottleneck at their few chrome machines.  On top of that, chrome tape recorded in the proper type II position in a normal bias shell gives the idea that everything is brighter and crisper.

[Theodore]

A lot of factory-grade high-speed dubbing equipment only dubs in normal bias.  There's a slight benefit in using chrome tape, but not all the virtues of chrome are realized.  This was a long time ago, but a huge tape facility in Minneapolis dubbed everything in normal position unless you asked them to do otherwise.  They'd sell you chrome grade tape, but then use normal position by default (and put it in normal bias shells).  It never made sense to me, other than the fact that most of their machines weren't equipped with type II bias.  They could do more jobs, thus get greater productivity, if they didn't bottleneck at their few chrome machines.  On top of that, chrome tape recorded in the proper type II position in a normal bias shell gives the idea that everything is brighter and crisper.

You messed up equalizer [Pre-emphasis / De-emphasis] with the bias, i think. You shouldn't record a chrome tape with normal bias. It will sound shit. I haven't tried it but it's physics and that's totally wrong. But you can record a chrome tape with chrome bias and normal position equalizer. And it actually will sound better [If playbacked with normal position equalizer too].

It has to do with the amount of pre-emphasis applied on recording and removed on playback. Since all tapes are recorded with loud enough signal, the applied pre-emphasis goes above the clipping point of cassette, there is a "loss" of most pre-emphasis boost. But the same amount is reduced on playback due to de-emphasis, and there isn't any loss in that reduction. So in simple words, the bigger pre-emphasis / de-emphasis is, the bigger is the dB loss on playback [Of high frequences] and the lesser the noise. Chrome equalizer position applies more pre-emphasis / de-emphasis than normal. Chrome tapes are not much noisy, so we can record them with normal equalizer [And play them with normal too], sacrificing some noise reduction for more dB !

My copy of the XX tape is in fact a chrome shelled tape. It was difficult to see the perforations from the top, but if you look at the tape from either side, you will notice a void underneath the tabs, which of course, is not found in type normal tapes. I removed the tab (I have a newer teac deck that requires these tabs to be broken to engage my decks chrome function) and found the sound to be slightly more powerful.  

It is my understanding, that the position tabs are strictly for newer decks to know when to auto switch to the correct type. If Xn has an older deck with a manual bias switch, the bias tab, in or out, would make no difference on the selected recording bias, as long as he chose the chrome setting before dubbing.

I wouldn't do it ! Many normal tapes are with that void underneath the chrome tabs. That's factory matter. To not manufacture two types of shells.