"Don Pearce" wrote in message
et...
Serge Auckland wrote:

"David Looser" wrote in message
...
"The Legend Returns" trabant owners club@Nicks place.comco wrote in
message news About a two years ago, I posted here about tapes. I messed about with
my tape deck for a couple of evenings, then stuck it back in the box
and forgot about it.

Three days ago, I set it up and once again, have just spent two
thoughrougly enjoyable nights putting some music back on tape and I'm
now left scratching my head, why the format has virtually died out?

Using the very cheap but extremely good TDK SA tapes purchased from
Richer Sounds last week and replacing the 99p RCA leads with some much
better but also inexpensive leads http://tinyurl.com/5zzmq5

I'm scratching my head as to why someone who is satisfied with cassette
tape is bothering about leads?


Anyone care to discuss what type of Dolby setting (B, C or S) they
used, the brand/type of tape they used or indeed, still use when tape
recording, or if they think tape could ever make a comeback?


I usually had Dolby switched out. Even with the most expensive cassette
decks there always seemed to be problems with mistracking between the
Dolby encode and decode processes. And with later tape formulations tape
hiss wasn't intrusive.

David.


I used Dolby C, but it was extremely critical of line-up. I can well
understand why anyone without access to test equipment would prefer
cassette without Dolby, even B. However, if the machine was properly
lined-up, it could give truly excellent results, comparable with R-R
without Dolby. Tape saturation wasn't that much of a problem if you kept
record levels down, as Dolby C would take care of the noise.
Of course R-R with Dolby A was a lot better, and a LOT more expensive on
tape costs.
Interesting how it all went away with recording on Hard-Disc.

S.

I've posted this before, but I think it is useful here - it is a plot of
the frequency response and noise levels of my Sony Walkman Pro. There are
three noise plots, normal, Dolby B and Dolby C

http://81.174.169.10/odds/dolby.gif

It isn't a pretty sight with any of them.

d

I no longer have it, but my old Nakamichi 482Z had much better frequency
response than that. At 0dB record level (200mM/mm) it was flat (-1dB) to
20k. Noise curves look about similar, typically broadband noise about -60dB,
Dolby tracking within 1dB. It did need a lot of tweaking to get it like
that, and it did rather vary tape to tape, even within the same manufacturer
and formulation. I wasn't sorry to give up on cassettes and go to hard-disk.
S.
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