Digital recording properties of relatively thick magnetic medium

This paper describes the results of an experimental study on the correlation between properties of the recording medium and the performance of the read-back signal. In contrast with previous works, wherein very thin metallic surfaces were often used as the experimental media, relatively thick media ranging from 2 to 16 μ were chosen to reduce the influences of spacing loss and head-gap loss. It is shown that the pulse width of a read-back signal is dominated by the thickness of the medium, while its amplitude depends primarily on medium retentivity. It is also shown that the pulse amplitude to remanent ratio should be inversely proportional to the pulse width for an in-contact ideal head. Some comparisons with the previous results were also made.