Magnetic tape recordings.

"Gather ye reel tapes while ye may, old time is still a-flying-
And this same tape that plays today, tomorrow will be dying."

Our apologies to poetry lovers. Unlike diamonds, magnetic tape is not forever. The deterioration and eventual loss of information stored on magnetic tape is an unfortunate proven fact, and this might happen in as little as 20 years. It is imperative to have magnetic media transferred into the digital domain where it can be kept forever without further degradation.

Tape recordings come in an almost infinite variety of shapes and sizes, and we've worked with everything from little toy "kids playing with the recorder" tapes to studio masters. Regardless of the source, our digital mastering and restoration technology will provide you with preserved memories that are better-sounding than the original source recordings.

About cassettes - We are often sent commercially-released cassettes of albums that are already available on CD. Please, always check to see if a CD has been released before sending an album on cassette. It will be cheaper and sound better. And if there's a choice between an LP and a cassette, we prefer the LP. It too will sound better.

Mystery Tapes - If you don't know what's on your tapes, we can audition them before we begin restoration work and let you know what's on them. That way you won't have to pay for something you might not want.

Splice Wrecks - Sometimes a reel of tape will consist entirely of short pieces of tape which have been spliced together. All the splices have dried out and are now falling apart. Every time a splice goes through the machine, it breaks, which means stopping the recording, putting the tape back together, backing up, and starting again. The typical "splice wreck" reel will add about $20.00 to the cost of the project, but it's the only way to recover the tape.

Sticky shed syndrome is caused by the absorption of moisture into the oxide binder. The oxide will actually scrape off onto the non-moving parts of the machine, usually accompanied by a loud squeal. Tapes in such condition can't be played with any degree of safety. However, baking the tape will drive out the moisture in the binder and allow the tape to be played. This is only a temporary fix, but at least it will allow the tape to be transferred to a more permanent digital medium. We bake tapes at a slight additional charge.

Jammed Cassettes - Many fond memories can be found on inexpensive cassettes which are now on year 30 of their 10 year life. A lot of these tapes won't even play anymore. Our success rate with such tapes is 100%.

Pancakes are reels of tape without reels.
Recovery of pancakes will add $5.00 per
tape for the additional time required.

Deep Sky Audio was chosen by KOPN-FM for their 3,000
tape reel-to-reel archive project.