Serge Auckland wrote:

"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.

I have a three head Denon machine here with variable bias - I'll give
that a test soon using the same method and post the results.

d