Masters are usually being issued in one copy only and thus join the ranks of the most sought after rarities—along with acetate vinyls, demo tapes and et caetera. Depending mainly on the year of issue, a master can be a reel of analogue tape, DAT or other form of digital tape, or recordable compact disc.
The following is the master tape from Abbey Road Studios for the single release of Being boring:
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It is a 3/4” U-matic cassette (3/4” refers to tape width), full size (6”×10”), compatible with Sony PCM-1630, the most popular format at that time. (Interestingly, this format was developed to host video content, and later adapted for audio.)
The tape contains both seven-inch and album mixes, recorded twice each. Contrary to the regular home compact audio cassettes and similarly to DATs (Digital Audio Tapes), the music is recorded in digital format. As indicated on the sleeve, alongside music the tape contains a “guide audio track,” and “30 frames per second, non-dropped SMPTE” (time code for synchronization and delimiting tracks). The tape is dated 16th October, 1990.
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Abbey Road Studios.
Created and maintained by Marcin Wichary.
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