Adjusting The Levels And Song Layout For Recording To Audio Tape

You had to listen to select passages of your source media and monitor the left and right signal levels on your tape recorder (either cassette or reel tape). An average level or peaks that were too high would distort the signal and a level too low would allow the “tape hiss” to be more noticeable because the relative level of the signal was lower. If you were copying to cassette tape, there was an extra step of arranging the songs in a manner that you did not leave too much blank space but also not cut a song in half when the tape ran out. Some tape recorders had an ALC feature (automatic level control) but this often resulted in a copy that had less dynamic range as the lower levels were increased and the upper levels were decreased. Similar to listening to FM radio. Lower end tape recorders had no manual level control and only had ALC.