A comparison of rotary- and stationary-head tape recorders

Digital recording may take advantage of many types of media, but usually a preferred type of drive or transport emerges for each. In magnetic tape recording, two approaches have emerged in which essentially the same medium is tracked in two radically different ways. This paper compares the characteristics of Rotary- and Stationary-Head transports in an attempt to establish which approach might be considered for a given application. The conclusion is that in many cases there is no obvious choice based on recording physics and that often the choice will be made on the experimental knowledge of the designer.