Brian Gaff wrote:
Now, don't get all hot about it.
I have a dbx recorder or two here, and one can actually record
bandwidth limited squarewaves at higher levels. The one artefact you
tend to see of cours, is down to the finite time the processor takes
to do things. You tend to get level overshoots and undershoots and an
obvious worsening of the noise performance on louder recordings
I never really understood why everyone went toDolby, it was terrible
if the heads and eq were not exact, and was inherently non linear in
an obvious way. I would imagine if DBX had been adopted more widely,
people would have been a lot happier to have cassettes for home
recording.

**Actually, dbx is MUCH more difficult to get right than DolbyT.

[Anecdote]

When I went for an interview for my last job (ca. 1975), I was ushered into
the demo room for a major audio equipment importer into Australia. I was
left alone, with the instructions that I could listen to the equipment if I
wished, whilst I waited for the boss. I dutifully selected an LP, placed it
on the turntable, and gradually advanced the volume control, 'till I could
just hear the surface noise on the Marantz 1200b (100 Watts per channel) and
sat down to listen to the Klipsch Corner Horns.

The room exploded. I ran for the volume control and the sales-guy popped his
head into the room and said:

"I see you've found our stash of dbx encoded LPs."

I got the job. I spent 5 years working on the entire dbx range, all the way
from the humble 117 single ended stuff, to the mighty 301 processors. It
rapidly became apparent that dbx encode/decode systems magnify flaws in
recording equipment in a way that DolbyT does not (as much).


--
Trevor Wilson
www.rageaudio.com.au