Referring to my "+24 no more" post I would like to share some historical information that I believe led the recording industry down that road. I acknowledge that many recording engineers and preamp designers may resist leaving this standard. I would be happy to hear any reason for keeping the +24 standard. The technical side of the +24 practice is on the first post here:
http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=111645.0After WWII Jack Mulllin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Mullin sewed the seeds of modern tape recording in this country. I had the pleasure of many conversations with him as he lived about 3 miles from me in Santa Barbara. His home on the cliff overlooking the ocean was always a plearue to visit and he had his entire "History of Recorded Sound" traveling exhibit packed up in a special room. This exhibit traveled to many AES conventions where he gladly demonstrated the progress of sound recording from Tinfoil to tape. This exhibit is now housed in the Pavek Museum of Broadcasting...
http://www.pavekmuseum.org/ and
http://www.pavekmuseum.org/jmullin.html.
He was kind enough to give me his entire collection of AES journals from #1 on. Several of the articles in these journals were authored by him and the first several years of AES were deeply involved in articles on improvements of tape machines and tape. I have spent many enjoyable hours reading these journals which also include the original papers of Julius Futterman and many audio luminaries. They were accurate, technical and presented valuable information of the day. Sadly we do not have this quality of writing today.
Perhaps some recording engineers and others would be interested to know a few things he told me. I am in the process of writing a paper on this and wish Jack was still alive to fill me in on the progress of tape recording as he experienced it. In his absence I would be happy to hear from recording engineers, especially old timers to construct a time line of how studio levels increased over time. I do not believe that anything close to +24 dBu was considered as a maximum level (headroom) in the beginning and I suspect the levels climbed up over time as tape recorders and tape improved. Now that most studios have converted to digital recording I feel it is important to re-assess the situation. Otherwise we are like blind men climbing a mountain and about to fall off a cliff.
Here is a great article on the early years.
http://www.aes.org/aeshc/docs/company.histories/ampex/leslie_snyder_early-days-of-ampex.pdf
