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I was 10 when "Ice Ice Baby" came out, and thinking back to that time reminded me of an old memory I haven't recalled for a long time. One time someone played a

I was 10 when "Ice Ice Baby" came out, and thinking back to that time reminded me of an old memory I haven't recalled for a long time. One time someone played a cassette of To The Extreme from the beginning (I forget the setting; maybe I was hanging out with a friend from school), and I remember hearing an ascending sequence of tones (probably sine waves), each one an octave higher than the previous, before the first song started. Of all the many cassettes I ever listened to as a kid, this might have been one of two or three that ever started this way. Does anyone here know what I'm talking about? What were those tones for, and why did this cassette in particular have them? From what I've read, I gather that this particular cassette might have been a copy made on someone's home tape deck. Or did legitimate commercial copies have those tones too? </tangent>

wyldfire 6y ago
Did well-organized tape copiers realize that they needed some kind of gain control when mixing tapes? Speculating wildly that this kind of calibration at the beginning of the tape could be like an analog ancestor to 'ReplayGain'.
onionisafruit 6y ago
What you heard is probably the xdr test tone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XDR_(audio) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XDR_(audio)
- mwcampbell 6y ago
  Yeah, I think that's it. I guess it wasn't strictly octaves after all. Hey, I was 10 or 11 when I heard it. My guess at the time was that the tones were a tuning reference for anyone who wanted to play along with the tape. I now realize they would have been really bad for that. How common was it for cassettes released by major labels to have those test tones? I should clarify that at home we mostly listened to religious albums; many were released on small labels, but some were distributed by A&M. So maybe the test tones were more common in mainstream music than I realized.
  - itsoktocry 6y ago
    >How common was it for cassettes released by major labels to have those test tones? Anecdotal: I think it was common. I knew what you were asking about as soon as I read your comment. I used to add it my own mixtapes as a kid.
lostgame 6y ago
Whoa. This is fascinating. Also, the existence of XDR was also fascinating to me. Did vinyl ever have such a calibration equivalent?

wyldfire 6y ago

Did well-organized tape copiers realize that they needed some kind of gain control when mixing tapes? Speculating wildly that this kind of calibration at the beginning of the tape could be like an analog ancestor to 'ReplayGain'.

onionisafruit 6y ago

What you heard is probably the xdr test tone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XDR_(audio) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XDR_(audio)

mwcampbell 6y ago
Yeah, I think that's it. I guess it wasn't strictly octaves after all. Hey, I was 10 or 11 when I heard it. My guess at the time was that the tones were a tuning reference for anyone who wanted to play along with the tape. I now realize they would have been really bad for that. How common was it for cassettes released by major labels to have those test tones? I should clarify that at home we mostly listened to religious albums; many were released on small labels, but some were distributed by A&M. So maybe the test tones were more common in mainstream music than I realized.
- itsoktocry 6y ago
  >How common was it for cassettes released by major labels to have those test tones? Anecdotal: I think it was common. I knew what you were asking about as soon as I read your comment. I used to add it my own mixtapes as a kid.

lostgame 6y ago

Whoa. This is fascinating. Also, the existence of XDR was also fascinating to me. Did vinyl ever have such a calibration equivalent?