Beating the Expansive-Part III

The time passes quickly–mostly because I am fiddling with the old Telex system in the big blue cabinets to get product to my clients. The call comes at 3PM. It’s the warm southern voice who took my call seeking information a few weeks ago; the same voice who confirmed my order had been received. I learn her name is Amanda, and my new machine will be delivered tomorrow.

 

"You have the required space ready?"

 

"Of course."

 

"You’d be surprised."

 

The next morning, I was summoned to the reception area where I met a bearded man about my height who called himself Dennis.

 

"I brought your duplicator."

 

"How did you know what it was?"  I thought the man was from a trucking company.

 

"I should know. I built it!"

 

Dennis was the owner of Magnefax International, the company his father had started, and he personally delivered my new machine. I would later learn that he personally delivered every machine sold in the U.S.

 

We uncrated my new LB-72 and set it into place.

 

"It fits perfectly," Dennis said.

 

"I know how to measure."

 

Then came the surprise. Dennis asked me what I knew about mastering recordings meant for high-speed duplication. I shared with him how I intended to make the masters, and showed him the equipment I was going to use. He said, "Let me show you something." He took a master tape I had prepared and loaded it onto my new machine and started it playing at production speed. He hooked up an oscilloscope so we could monitor the signal. It was the ugliest audio signal I’d ever seen.

 

Dennis asked me if I thought that signal would sound good after it was recorded onto the slower moving cassette tape. I shook my head, and Dennis shook his head. He then spent several hours teaching me an art that few knew existed–shaping the audio signal for optimal results. He explained that the higher speeds (and the resultant bandwidth shift) actually turned AF (audio frequency) into RF (radio frequency), and that the highest audio frequencies caused splatter on the cassette tape because the narrow track widths could not contain all the energy of the signal, and became overloaded, so one must tailor the master recording in such a way as to give the cassette tape only that signal which it can store properly without distorting it. He showed me a properly prepared master on the scope again, and the difference was astounding. Even more astounding was the sound of the copy. It was exactly the sound I wanted to achieve. Just when I thought the lesson was through, Dennis said, "Now, let me show you some tricks with bias." (Bias is a signal, out of the audible range, that is used to excite the molecules of oxide so they are better prepared to accept the analog audio signal. The digital recording of today uses no such signal.)

 

As a techie, I thoroughly enjoyed my new education, and considered it to be a bonus that I would have never received from expansive Bob.

 

I developed a deep friendship with Dennis, and over the next eight years we saw each other many times. We traveled to his plant in Arkansas twice, saw him at trade shows, and even vacationed as a foursome a few times. He came to my home one Christmas. I also saw him deliver three more machines to me as my business grew, and I was always aware that it was growing, in part, because Dennis showed me how to make tapes that sounded superior to my competition.

 

Dennis developed an aggressive form of cancer, and died August 22, 1995. The industry lost a giant, and I lost a giant friend. Analog audio soon followed, and as I look around my shop today and see multiple towers of CD drives used to duplicate my 21st century product, I know that if he had lived, they all would have an etched aluminum plate just above the on-off switch that would read MAGNEFAX.