Weird noise before Aces High on some versions of Powerslave??

srfc

srfc

Ancient Mariner
The very first version of Powerslave I had was a copied tape. There was a brief synthy almost R2D2 esque little melody that played just before Aces High. A mate later got an original of Live after Death and it had this noise as well, so the noise was not something that might have accidentally been added when my tape was copied. I remember the Live after Death version was the fame edition with a cream coloured cassette.

I have loads of copies of Powerslave and Live after Death now and none of them have this little melody on them. I even have the fame cassette of LAD and it's not on it, although my cassette is clear and not cream so there could have been different pressings.

Does anyone else have a version of Powerslave or LAD that has this little melody on it?
 
Were they both cassettes? The originals, I mean? It's been a while, but I remember some cassettes having a "audio beginning now" queue at the beginning of each side and maybe at the end. I could be totally wrong on that though.
 
Yeah both cassettes. And I know LAD was definitely a Fame version but I think Powerslave was copied from a Fame cassette as well.
 
srfc said:
Yeah both cassettes. And I know LAD was definitely a Fame version but I think Powerslave was copied from a Fame cassette as well.
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Not sure what is meant by "Fame", but hopefully someone else can chime in. I remember some cassettes having that noise and I do not think it was every an actual part of the recording.
 
I was not aware that audio tapes had a start signal. There would definitely be a start signal on the home computer tapes, back then. I've seen tape decks that can detect silence in padding and song gaps, so user can skip whole tracks like on digital media.
 
Zare said:
I was not aware that audio tapes had a start signal. There would definitely be a start signal on the home computer tapes, back then. I've seen tape decks that can detect silence in padding and song gaps, so user can skip whole tracks like on digital media.
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I know I've heard it before on some tapes, but I haven't owned a cassette in over 20 years so I can't remember if it was a particular brand or kind of tape or what. It's also possible I'm remembering things entirely wrong. Now I'm curious, I'm gonna Google it!

Ah, here we go:
"The cassette quickly found use in the commercial music industry. One artifact found on some commercially produced music cassettes was a sequence of test tones, called SDR (Super Dynamic Range, also called XDR, or eXtended Dynamic Range) soundburst tones, at the beginning and end of the tape, heard in order of low frequency to high. These were used during SDR/XDR's duplication process to gauge the quality of the tape medium. Many consumers objected to these tones since they were not part of the recorded music.[85] "

This is under the Audio/Applications section. Does this sound accurate to what you heard?

en.wikipedia.org

Cassette tape - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Second Edit: Here's an in-depth article regarding the SDR/XDR stuff printed above: http://www.lenrek.net/experiments/sdr-cassette/
 
"Fame" was a budget label belonging to EMI on which they'd re-release albums at a cheaper than usual price. All the 80's albums where reissued on this label.

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R-6752572-1524007885-8504.jpeg.jpg
 
chaosapiant said:
I know I've heard it before on some tapes, but I haven't owned a cassette in over 20 years so I can't remember if it was a particular brand or kind of tape or what. It's also possible I'm remembering things entirely wrong. Now I'm curious, I'm gonna Google it!

Ah, here we go:
"The cassette quickly found use in the commercial music industry. One artifact found on some commercially produced music cassettes was a sequence of test tones, called SDR (Super Dynamic Range, also called XDR, or eXtended Dynamic Range) soundburst tones, at the beginning and end of the tape, heard in order of low frequency to high. These were used during SDR/XDR's duplication process to gauge the quality of the tape medium. Many consumers objected to these tones since they were not part of the recorded music.[85] "

This is under the Audio/Applications section. Does this sound accurate to what you heard?

en.wikipedia.org

Cassette tape - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Second Edit: Here's an in-depth article regarding the SDR/XDR stuff printed above: http://www.lenrek.net/experiments/sdr-cassette/
Click to expand...

That sounds exactly like what I'm talking about.
 
Chaosapiant was right, I found a video online, the ones that you can barely hear between 0.21 and 0.28 are the ones that were on the tape I had of Powerslave

 
Aha, I remember those little tones. I owned a couple of cassettes that had them. One of them was Asia's second album, Alpha:
s-l640.jpg
 
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