The waveform at an inductive reproduce head of a digital magnetic recording system is a differentiated representation of the magnetic transition. Detection of the transition can be by zero-crossing detection when the head waveform is either further differentiated, or integrated to approximate the original flux pattern. For an integrating channel d.c. equalization is also required. The effect of pulse slimming, d.c. equalization, noise and pulse height variation is examined for both systems, from which it is concluded that an integrating channel has advantages provided that pulse height variations are small.