In article , Dave Plowman (News)
wrote:
In article ,
Jim Lesurf wrote:
There was a rather strange tribute to him on R4 earlier today where they
spoke to his name-alike popstar. He did a good job of demonstrating how
Dolby-B could help cut down intrusive tape noise of audiocassette.

Were you listening on a good system? I was, and I'm near certain it was
fiddled. Take an available decent recording (easy) and add some hiss
(easy) Finding a decent working cassette machine and decent cassette, not.


No. I was listening to cheap speakers in the kitchen. So the actual effect
may well have been faked. I thought it worked as a way of explaining that
'Dolby' allowed for replay with distinctly lower hiss levels in practice,
though. I doubt most listeners would have followed a short attempt to
explain more about what is involved.

Slainte,

Jim

--
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html

In article , Mike O'Sullivan
writes

Surely it should have been said that the RECORDING had to be with Dolby
on before any benefit could be observed on playback?

Um, not entirely...

.... Cat #43 anyone? :-)

At one point, Dolby Labs would deny the thing existed to any enquiry
from the general public.

We had one in Bristol's dubbing theat the results were amazing if
used carefully. However, to those in the know, many, many film and TV
soundtracks rattle to the sound of a mis-applied Cat43 pumping away
horribly on dialogue tracks.

Happy days. I note there's one just sold on eBay:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/DOLBY-Cat-...mic-Noise-Filt
er-/261256355647

Someone just got a bargain.
--
SimonM

In article , tony sayer
writes

I did once hear Angus McKenzie demonstrate a Nakamichi tri tracer
cassette machine compared to a Studer running at 15 IPS at an audio show
once, and seeing the narrow cassette slow tape compared to that, it was
very impressive indeed...

....and the MTBF (or at least MTB Line-ups) was probably measured in
minutes.

Nakamichi - the art of the impractical.

I think sales of Dolby B and C paid for the development of the really
good stuff in film (Dolby Digital) and pro audio (Dolby SR).

However you argue about the consumer stuff, Dolby Labs' professional
work was outstanding. I thought the racks (360 onwards) indicated a
certain humility too - 'this works, but we can do better (so you'll only
have to plug another card in)'. I've still got some of the whitepapers
on SR and DD in a filing cabinet somewhere. Ought to dig them out
really. I'm glad I never had to do 24T dolby A alignment!

Trivia: I think Dolby tone turns up somewhere in the first series of the
Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy. I once had the tapes in Bristol for,
er, 'audition' purposes, and IIRC there was a note on one of the
recording reports to the effect that Dolby tone appeared n minutes into
the programme.

Memory's going though, so it may be pure fantasy :-)
--
SimonM

"tony sayer"
Phil Allison
"tony sayer"

One of the "great's" of audio has just passed away...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24075429


** Great at what, exactly ???


The only remarkable thing that Ray Dolby ever achieved was to disprove the
widely held belief, among audio novices and experts alike, that it was
quite
impossible to polish a turd.


By that you mean Analogue tape media .....


** Not all, just the **** awful examples where Dolby was most used - egs:

Compact Cassettes with a track width of 0.7mm and speed of 4.75 cm/S
!!!!!!!!!

24 track, 1 inch (so called) studio machines with even smaller track width.

Dolby was a turd polish that made such utter crap usable, but only just and
only to uncritical ears.

Like yours.



.... Phil

"tony ****head sayer"


I did once hear Angus McKenzie demonstrate a Nakamichi tri tracer
cassette machine compared to a Studer running at 15 IPS at an audio show
once, and seeing the narrow cassette slow tape compared to that, it was
very impressive indeed...

** Blah, blah , blah.

My god you are one vile, fallacy spewing pile of ****wit, pommy ********.

Tape head - dickhead.



.... Phil

In article , Phil Allison
scribeth thus

"tony sayer"
Phil Allison
"tony sayer"

One of the "great's" of audio has just passed away...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24075429


** Great at what, exactly ???


The only remarkable thing that Ray Dolby ever achieved was to disprove the
widely held belief, among audio novices and experts alike, that it was
quite
impossible to polish a turd.


By that you mean Analogue tape media .....


** Not all, just the **** awful examples where Dolby was most used - egs:

Compact Cassettes with a track width of 0.7mm and speed of 4.75 cm/S
!!!!!!!!!




24 track, 1 inch (so called) studio machines with even smaller track width.

Dolby was a turd polish that made such utter crap usable, but only just and
only to uncritical ears.

Like yours.



** And those of a lot of other audio engineers world-wide...

Who by that logic must have been uncritical as well then;?..


But if it hadn't been for his noise reduction system a lot of recordings
around today would have been the worse..


... Phil





--
Tony Sayer

In article ,
tony sayer wrote:
By that you mean Analogue tape media which as you may well remember was
the only viable medium for recording both pro and domestic for many
years until the advent of usable digital media...

Disc recording was used by the BBC long after tape came into use.

--
*The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

In article ,
tony sayer wrote:
I did once hear Angus McKenzie demonstrate a Nakamichi tri tracer
cassette machine compared to a Studer running at 15 IPS at an audio show
once, and seeing the narrow cassette slow tape compared to that, it was
very impressive indeed...

I had a Sony machine which used FerriChrome cassettes. Gave very good
results indeed.

--
*Great groups from little icons grow *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

In article , SpamTrapSeeSig
wrote:
In article , tony sayer
writes

I did once hear Angus McKenzie demonstrate a Nakamichi tri tracer
cassette machine compared to a Studer running at 15 IPS at an audio
show once, and seeing the narrow cassette slow tape compared to that,
it was very impressive indeed...

...and the MTBF (or at least MTB Line-ups) was probably measured in
minutes.

Nakamichi - the art of the impractical.

Depends what you mean, I suspect.

The 'Cassette Deck 2' I've been using in recent years does a decent job of
playing my ancient cassette recordings when I've been doing digital copies
of them. It may well be that the behaviour is changing due to factors like
tape HF loss with replays/time, etc. But not very easy to do any
re-aligment for that give they were recorded at times spread over a decade
or more, long ago. I gave up *recording* onto audiocassette many many years
ago when I switched to CDR.

Slainte,

Jim

--
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html

In article ,
Phil Allison wrote:
24 track, 1 inch (so called) studio machines with even smaller track
width.

Says it all if you consider an analogue 1" 24 track a studio machine.

--
*White with a hint of M42*

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.