OT - calling all hipsters - C90 cassette - HK2000

[Jonathan]

I bought a new cassette deck about five years ago because I have a lot of cassettes and still play them.

Jonathan

[Brian Gaff]

The point is that cassettes suffered from an alignment issue. The tape path was nearly always messed up by the plastic housing and pressure pad in the actual cassette. It was fine if you used the tapes only in the machine that made them since the errors would be the same, but some machines were not as good. Yamaha, had phase jitter as the tape ran in jerks over the head, Akai later models the same. Sony were normally good, but you could hear some wow. Technics were fine and reproducible between different samples of the same deck, but only really sounded good with DBX. The reason Dolby sounded crap was that it was log based and relied on a flat frequency response. Sadly with tape alignment problems this was hardly ever the case producing top end loss or warbling and pumping of the dolby. Dolby, was a compander. dolby simply tried to mask noise with the signal and took off the hiss at lower levels which was why dolby tapes sounded crap in non dolby decks. Too much low level treble. DBX was linear and hence worked. The unprocessed recordings were unlistenable though, sounding like radio 1 does now but with edgy top end. The most embarrassing music to play on a cassette with Dolby ANRS or DBX was the piano solo. The pure tones tended to make the noise come and go as the loudness changed. The best bet was very low noise tapes. Some of the best I heard were Pyral, but they had issues over headroom treble saturation, so needed dbx. Dolby HX was invented to help this high end squash effect as it reduced the bias on the tape as the track got louder. this unfortunately could result in more distortion.

As has been said, Cassettes were never envisaged as hi fi. they were for portable and car use in the main. It was only the great developments in magnetic tape that allowed them a look in. If you got hold of some of the old emi and Philips tapes and used them on a modern deck, you could hear the real naffness! I still use cassettes, but I'd not want to have been buying loads of albums on pre recorded ones as the mechanisms were rubbish and the recordings crap in the most part. Some Decca and DGG recordings on Chrome tape with Dolby were quite good but you still had the different deck mechanism issues. They were bin duplicated from a looped master tape so after a while copies got pretty bad due to wear of the master.

I could go on about dual capstans, three head decks etc, and metal tapes and the different pre and emphasis requirements, and the issues of dual layer Ferrichrome tapes, but I won't. I have had to calibrate more dolby systems than I've had hot dinners on consumer decks, as the set up seemed to be very poor on many. Note we are not talking of the professional Dolby and DBX systems used in the actual recording back in the analogue days as these were banded and much more robust since they were used on very expensive recording machines.

Brian

[Brian Gaff]

The early CDs were mainly poor due to the fact a lot of them were merely made from the masters tweaked for the vinyl. They thus had a big pre emphasis for the 5khz region and a bass cut to stop the grooves having huge excursions on in phase elements or depth issues on out of phase ones. The advent of remastering and of pure digital from end to end complete with jitter has made CD far better. However as always, the decisions made by the producer stamp them with a personality, and for example you seldom get high dynamic range in popular albums, but the folk going back to the lets say, old Elton John recordings for a remix have made some outstandingly good sounding cds, far better than the vinyl could have ever been.

Brian

[Brian Gaff]

Yes, I think one has to always look at the point of a system Nobody would have ever said it was the best hi fi ever, but it did the job in the time it was around. Attempts to replace them with alternative linear media all failed. L cassette attempted to have a double the speed normal width tape in a cassette that loaded into a conventional tape path with noise reduction, and could sound good, but the tapes were big and annoying. Then DCC Digital Compact Cassette came along, basically a deck that could play old type cassettes and new digital ones which were fitted into similar cases. This was a shuttle system linear digital recorder a bit like Basf's ill fated LVR for video. it never took off as finding recordings was a nightmare. Minidisc was far faster, but it too failed in my opinion due to the complexity of having to finalise recordings and all the labelling and different sampling options. If they had made it very simple, we would probably have used it till solid state and internet based media took off. It did however introduce the concept of lossy compression and I fear we have paid the price for this in quality ever since. Given that lossless compression is now more than possible its about time we simply used mp3 etc for spoken word and music got a better treatment. In a way I suppose MP3 is the cassette quality media of today. It is audible as phase flutter, grittiness and in some cases both! Brian

[Dave Plowman (News)]

IMHO the main problem with cassette is the very low tape speed. I've never had a reel to reel machine which worked well at 1 7/8ths either. That would required very special tape and head design.

In theory, the only thing that would be effected by the track width is noise. I'd rather have a decent frequency response than the best noise preformance - but YMMV.

Best cassette performance I heard was a Sony using ferri-chrome tape. But the cost of that ruled it out for many. Subjectively, it at least matched my half track Revox A77 at 3 3/4.

It was a great relief when DAT arrived. ;-)

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I've never heard an early CD made in this way. Early CDs were expensive, and made from the studio master - not a vinyl cutting version. Unless that studio master had been lost. And given early CDs tended to be of big selling stuff, unlikely.

[Huge]

That's most unusual. There are about 9 different charity shops in my local town, and none take VCRs or cassette decks. Or CRT TVs. I Freegled my VCR and had quite a lot of interest, but I couldn't give the CRT TV away for nowt, even with a free STB so you could use it with Freeview.

[RJH]

I'd check it works before spending whatever you might expect to get for it - the rubber drive belts tend to perish.

[tabbypurr]

and IME can usually be replaced with cheap stationery rubber bands & work for years.

NT

[michael adams]

The tape speed was a direct result of the compact cassette specfication. They needed tape which would fit inside a compact spool which would run for 30 or 45 minutes but be strong enough not to stretch or bleed or whatever the term is..

Is this as a result of problem with low speed motors ? Either that or physical limitations on the speed with which the heads can magnetise or read heads.

Otherwise I'd have thought tape speed and area are both components of the same thing. The area of magentisable tape available to be nagenetised at any one moment.

a) And things are worse than at first appear because unlike with half tracks, cassette tapes run in both directions. Going metric for the sale of convenience, a half track has two 3mm tracks - a total of 6mm when recording or playing. A cassette by way of contrast has two 0.75 mm tracks or 1.5 in total. Assuming square heads this a magnisable area for the half track of 36 sq mm and 2.25 sq mm for the cassette. If we assume that in both cases these areas are covered in particles of a similar density, for the sake of argument

100 particles per sq mm this gives potentially 0-3600 magnetised particles - or a dynamic range of 0-3600 - not just a maximum and minumum but a potential 3600 discrete values for the half track and only 0-225 for the cassette. Similarly if we assume "noise" is magnetism straying to an adjacent particle, assuming similar sized particles in both cases then the effect of noise is 16 times greater on the signal in the cassette. Indeed as is the case the wider the track the higher the S/N ratio becomes.

Although apparently this relationship between magnetisable area and dynamic range isn't totally linear.

? I've never

Given my admttedly limited knowledge of this subject as encapuslated in a) that I'm afraad that to all intents and purposes that appears to be complete and utter tosh

As is that. Unless the tape used in the Revox had previously found used as a pyjama cord or similar I suppose.

But then Turnip wasn't to know that in his totally bizarre expectation that by way of comparison at least, cassette players could somehow ever constitute true h-fi.

michael adams

...

[Dave Plowman (News)]

The highest frequency which can be recorded to tape depends of the size of the 'particles' on the tape and the head gaps. Both are related to tape speed - and therefore at lower speeds more difficult/expensive to make. And far more critical to set the various pre-sets on a tape machine for. Production tollerances of tape batch by batch making things even more of a problem.

Agfa PEM 468. But then you've admitted you have limited knowledge of this subject, and probably don't understand what 'subjectively' means in this context.

I'll try and explain it. No one in their right mind uses a slow tape speed like 3 3/4 - or indeed a cassette - for recording anything important.

Perhaps you would define Hi-Fi - if that's what you meant. Would be very interesting.

[pamela]

How can Dolby tracking could work properly if it isn't calibrated to the tape output?

Cassette tape manufacturers seemed keen to produce higher output tapes (for the same bias setting). This would affect the level of playback emphasis.

[michael adams]

Ah ha ! So it now transpires that the poor performance relatively speaking of your Revox was simply because you hadn't yet worked out how to set it up to record at low speeds. Whereas the Sony was deliberately designed for use by technical incompetents from the off.

So the range of particle sizes which can be deposited on a tape extends between what values exactly ?

As a against the width of tracks which when comparing half track as aginst cassette tape which extends from 1 - 16.

Which is why presumably you decided to snip the detailed explanation I gave of why wide tape is far superior.

I sometimes deliberately include throwaway remarks such as having limited knowledge of a subject simply so as to see whether the other party will resort to using this as a crutch. As you did.

Of course I do. It's your own opinion. Which is why as nobody is around to judge for themselves, all such statements are totally worthless.

However rather than admit to wasting everyone's time by making totally worthless statements, not that that's ever stopped anyone, there is nevertheless the implication, given your previous occupation as a sound engineer that your subjective judgement will be closer to some objective standard than that of the average Joe in the street.

Better than low fi. As it always has been since the inception of the term. Its always been a comparative term. Objectively in terms of characteristics of the audio signal, noise, dynamic range etc measured by various instruments as compared with what was available before. I'm rather surprised you hadn't already worked that one out for yourself, to be honest.

Anyway glad to have helped.

Doubtless you'll snip that paragraph as well, now.

Along with your admission above that

You're incapable of optimising your own Revox A77 to run at low speed, such that it could outperform a cassette player. But not that low, as it turns out

"Variants also included half-track, quarter-track and slow-speed versions 1 7/8ips".

michael adams

...

[The Natural Philosopher]

Fundamentally it couldn't.

On the nakamichi it could be reasonably OK on one channel, rubbish on the other, or rather poor and definitely different on both. Simply changing a tape to a different sort threw the whole process ouit, and pre-recorded tapes were a total toss up.

The only place Dolby ever worked was in a recording studio with daily calibrated kit and a single tape brand and type.

Of course is not just the width of the tape that is the issue, more the slow tape speeds that need massively fine head gaps to maintain any sort of frequency response and were inherently noisy anyway. Signal to Noise is really a function of how many ferrite molecules per second are going past the head.

The cassette tape format was developed for dictaphones. It was never intended for music. Bit like tring to play the brandenburg concerto on a telephone handset.

For all the idiocy surrounding vinyl, at least studios are now using full frequency range full dynamic range low noise digital recording onto presumably banks of spinning rust.

[tabbypurr]

that bit is sensible. Most of the rest is just confused imgination.

[Graeme]

In message , The Natural Philosopher writes

That really is the bottom line. Arguing about whether or not cassettes were or are 'hi fi' is missing the point. Back in the day, many of us played with the family Grundig reel to reel, and it did what it was designed to do. We could record records from the radio and borrow vinyl to record. Perfect. The first popular cassette recorder/player was probably the Philips mono portable machine (2202 etc.), which was a huge advance in terms of convenience if not reproduction. Then came stereo cassette 'decks', 1970-ish? Couple that with the introduction of in car cassette players, and it was a whole new world. Suddenly we could all record our record collections, and those of our friends, and listen to them at home and in the car. Cassettes were convenient and portable in a way reel to reel never was. Eight tracks were better, but more bulky.

'Proper' hi fi then was almost confined to the pages of Hi Fi News and stories of enthusiasts who built listening rooms. Most people listened in an ordinary living room at home, or in the car. The equipment was comparative crap, the listening environment less than perfect, but it worked, and was simple. Many had cheap 'music centres', recording was from AM radios. 194, 208, 247 etc.

I tend to think of MP3s and cassette tapes in the same way. Less than perfect, but they do the job.

[Vir Campestris]

We gave up on vinyl not when CDs arrived, but when kids did. Small children aren't good for records. But we kept them... Some of our stuff we only have on cassette.

I've since digitised all the vinyl, and they're only kept for the gatefold sleeves.

Andy

[Vir Campestris]

Our current cassette deck is self calibrating. Put a tape in, and press the button. It winds a bit into the tape, records a test pattern, winds back, plays it to itself, and then has all the right bias etc. settings so it can play the recording back at the best it can manage.

Haven't done it for years mind - I used to record BBC radio, now I use iPlayer.

Andy

[tabbypurr]

Which deck does that? I've never found one that has all the wanted features, ie 3 head, autoazimuth & dbx.

NT

[Andy Burns]

My student-grant funded AIWA F770 did that in 198mumble, it's still in the loft somewhere but no doubt would need a new set of belts before it could be used now ...