Thursday, January 13, 2005

The Extinction Of Tape?

According to this news report, studio recording tape has gone extinct, at least temporarily. The last manufacturer of reel-to-reel tape, Alabama-based Quantegy Inc., has filed for bankruptcy and closed its plant. Quantegy hopes that restructuring will allow it to open back up, but at the moment there is no manufacturer of what was once a music industry staple.

Many bands and producers which still use reel-to-reel for aeshtetic reasons are hoarding, tracking down used reels, or making plans to resplice. And NASA's bugging out, too --- the space shuttles use Quantegy's tape to record all sorts of data.

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