A Taper is a person who records musical events often from standing microphones in the audience for the benefit of the musical group's fanbase. Such taping was popularized in the late 1960s and early 1970s by fans of the Grateful Dead

Grateful Dead

The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The band was known for its unique and eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, improvisational jazz, psychedelia, and space rock, and for live performances of long...

. Audio recording was allowed at shows and fans would share their tapes through trade. Taping and trading became a Grateful Dead sub-culture.

Tapers generally do not financially profit from recording such concerts and record using their own equipment with permission from the artist. Taper recordings are commonly considered legal because the recordings are permitted and distribution is free. Taper etiquette strictly excludes bootlegging

Bootleg recording

A bootleg recording is an audio or video recording of a performance that was not officially released by the artist or under other legal authority. The process of making and distributing such recordings is known as bootlegging...

 for profit. "Stealth taper" is a common term for a person who may furtively bring equipment into shows to record without explicit permission.

Although taping is usually done with microphones, often bands will allow plugging into the soundboard

Mixing console

In professional audio, a mixing console, or audio mixer, also called a sound board, mixing desk, or mixer is an electronic device for combining , routing, and changing the level, timbre and/or dynamics of audio signals. A mixer can mix analog or digital signals, depending on the type of mixer...

 for a direct patch. Taping setups are generally portable, operating on high quality condenser microphones, phantom power

Phantom power

Phantom power, in the context of professional audio equipment, is a method for transmitting DC electric power through microphone cables to operate microphones that contain active electronic circuitry....

, a microphone preamplifier

Preamplifier

A preamplifier is an electronic amplifier that prepares a small electrical signal for further amplification or processing. A preamplifier is often placed close to the sensor to reduce the effects of noise and interference. It is used to boost the signal strength to drive the cable to the main...

 and a recording device all of which are battery powered.

A common means of trade is by transferring the tape recording to a lossless

Lossless data compression

Lossless data compression is a class of data compression algorithms that allows the exact original data to be reconstructed from the compressed data. The term lossless is in contrast to lossy data compression, which only allows an approximation of the original data to be reconstructed, in exchange...

 digital format such as FLAC and sharing through an internet file share protocol such as BitTorrent with the assistance of a networking service such as etree

Etree

etree, or electronic tree, is a music community created in the summer of 1998 for the online trading of live concerts. etree pioneered the standards for distributing lossless audio on the net and only permits its users to distribute the music of artists that allow the free taping and trading of...

.

External links

• DAT-heads – resource for tapers and trading
• TaperSection – forums for tapers
• Archive.org – archive of live music recordings