Tape hiss is the high frequency
noise
Noise is sound, chiefly unwanted, unintentional, or harmful sound considered unpleasant, loud, or disruptive to mental or hearing faculties. From a physics standpoint, there is no distinction between noise and desired sound, as both are vibrat ...
present on
analogue magnetic tape
Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic storage made of a thin, magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic film. It was developed in Germany in 1928, based on the earlier magnetic wire recording from Denmark. Devices that use magnetic ...
recordings caused by the size of the magnetic particles used to make the tape. Effectively it is the
noise floor
In signal theory, the noise floor is the measure of the signal created from the sum of all the noise sources and unwanted signals within a measurement system, where noise is defined as any signal other than the one being monitored.
In radio com ...
of the recording medium. It can be reduced by the use of finer magnetic particles or by increasing the tape speed or the track width used by the recorder. A 3
dB improvement of the signal to noise ratio occurs for every doubling of the track width.
A number of
noise reduction
Noise reduction is the process of removing noise from a signal. Noise reduction techniques exist for audio and images. Noise reduction algorithms may distort the signal to some degree. Noise rejection is the ability of a circuit to isolate an u ...
techniques can be used to reduce the impact of tape hiss, including
Dolby NR and
DBX dbx or DBX may refer to:
* dbx (debugger), a Unix source-level debugger
* dbx (company), a professional audio recording equipment company
** dbx (noise reduction), a noise reduction system invented by dbx, Inc.
* .dbx, the file extension for Micros ...
, or, in the case of
videotape recording,
frequency modulation
Frequency modulation (FM) is a signal modulation technique used in electronic communication, originally for transmitting messages with a radio wave. In frequency modulation a carrier wave is varied in its instantaneous frequency in proporti ...
of either the
composite video signal, or the
luma component.
See also
*
Audio quality measurement
*
Sound recording
Sound recording and reproduction is the electrical, Mechanical system, mechanical, electronic, or digital inscription and re-creation of sound waves, such as spoken voice, singing, instrumental music, or sound effects. The two main classes of ...
References
Sound recording
Noise
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