You Know Nothing About Analog Tape, Joe Schmoe. And this quiz proves it.

Show of hands: who has actually cut a record on analog tape? No, 2″ tape. Your old Tascam 4-track doesn’t count. Okay, so that’s a couple of you. Now, how many of you actually know how to work one of the damn machines yourself? Yeah, didn’t think so. Seriously, how could you forget what “Sel-Rep” mode does?

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In case you’re curious as to the staggering breadth of your pointed ignorance, Playbuzz has this 10 question analog tape quiz to hone your humility. Do me a favor and post your score in the comments. I manged to guess my way to 5 out of 10 but I was only sure about 2 or 3 my answers. Because really, “reference fluxivity” can’t be a real thing, right?

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Chris Alfano has written about music and toured in bands since print magazines and mp3.com were popular. Once in high-school he hacked a friend's QBasic stick figure fighting game to add a chiptune metal soundtrack. Random attractive people still give him high-fives about that.

Latest comments
  • 6/10

  • I got 3/10 right. one of those was a lucky guess. I’ve never recorded to 2 inch (maybe someday). I did record a totally kick ass sounding demo in 1999 on an Akai (I think) 12 track… remember those?

  • A solid 1/10 for me!

  • 4/10. That quiz sure is a cheeky cunt.

  • 6/10 and I haven’t even touched/seen live a studio grade tape recorder but a bit familiar with recording terminology.

  • 9. Sweet. I guess reading all those books about recording back in the 70s paid off.

    • We have a new champion. Ata Brat, I’ll send you a prepaid UPS box so you can mail your championship belt back.

  • 8/10 and I had no idea, just a good guesser or something… barely looked at the questions, I really have no idea about anything of that. Didn’t even use cassettes very much.

  • 2/10…I didn’t understand half of the words in some of the questions…

  • I got 6 out of 10 correct. If I had gone with my first choice for two of the questions, I would of had 8 of 10. Two of my correct answers were guesses. I was lucky enough to watch one of the engineers calibrate a tape machine that he bought at the studio I was interning for. I also had to use a tape machine to record a song as a project for a recording class as well.

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