Digital to Analog Transfers

Mr. Toad's can transfer your digital master into whatever format you need. There are plenty of good reasons for transferring your digital project from the digital world into analog, not the least of them being sound quality and future upsampling ease.

While digital recording is getting higher quality all the time, everyone in the know understands that there is a certain magic that happens when music is transferred to a piece of magnetic tape traveling really fast, on the highest quality equipment. It adds "THAT SOUND" to the music... an intangible yet highly desirable flattery of the audio. Sometimes you want to do it at the multitrack stage of the process, for greatest impact on the recording, or after the final mixes have been bounced, for maximum cost-effectiveness. This stereo transfer can be handled as a flat transfer or as an integrated part of our mastering process.

We use only the best equipment available to make your transfer. Our Otari MTR-100a can play back almost every format of 1" and 2" analog tape. It effortlessly aligns to both CCIR and NAB equalizations and has Dolby A and SR built-in, if needed. Our Ampex ATR-102 has an extended-frequency-response Flux Magnetics 1/2" head stack for the best reproduction on the best sounding stereo tape deck ever.

One of the more interesting arguments for a transfer of a digital project to hit 2" tape is its archivability. Many major labels are now insisting that DAW-based projects submit an analog master tape with all relevant tracks transferred onto it. Why? Because analog tape is a fairly stable and versatile archival medium. Analog tapes could be playable 50 years from now (proven because analog tapes from 50 years ago still playback fine today) - unlike the worlds of digital storage, which has so many questions: How long does a hard drive last? Can CD-R really last 50 years and restore perfectly? Will the file formats still work then? What if PCM audio has been completely replaced and is not supported?

With this scenario it makes perfect sense to transfer the project before it gets mixed, so that the sonic flattery of the analog tape makes it into the final mixes, and so that the archive matches the actual tracks used. For more discussion of the subject of tape and archiving, check out our section on archival mastering.