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In Reply to: RE: why the interest in cassette decks and reel to reels posted by 3db on October 03, 2007 at 08:16:54
I'll start off with 3 reasons:
1. There is the opinion that the audio signal stored and retreived from analog media is superior/sounds better than that encoded to redbook cd specification. You will find 15-20 posts on this board each week from someone in the analog camp who has answered the debate absolulely, once and for all. You will also find 15-20 post each week from those in the digital camp who have accomplished the same. They are easy to spot because of the enormous number of responses and moderator interventions.
2. Reliability of CD-R media. I record the worship service direct to CD-R at my church each Sunday. When it works, the sound is preserved as faithfully as I could ask for. If the disc was bad, it is usually un-readable and the event is lost. When I recorded to cassette tape, if I had a bad tape I would get sound that is compromised, but still useable. I suppose we could record to hard disk, find a volunteer to transcribe to CD, look into tape or disk backup solutions, etc. But, that seems to be a far more complex effort that cassette tape.
3. It's fun for us. I know a guy who wacks a little white ball around a park for fun. I know another guy who drinks all night until he pukes then passes out. He says it's fun too... We all have our quirks. If you ask a Ford Model A enthusiast why he doesn't drive a (insert the name of your favorite ultra-reliable import/domestic look-alike bubble car here), and he/she will wax eloquent for hours. We just like tape machines.
Follow Ups:
I dont think CD is a good way of storing your collection to last long
If one has to remplace Casette i would look elsewhere to like Minidisc which i use and have only had 2 failed recording of over 1000 compared to CD which i had lot more errors.
Also Cd get scratched and is a pain to keep cleaning, on other hand Casettes can get corrupted by Dust or magnetic interferences over years.
Minidisc on other hand is safe because the little CD is inside a cartdige.
Personaly i prefer Mp3 for outdoor use and My computer for indoor use
CDs is not realy that perfect that some belive it is.
As for vinyl i dont know have never used it.
Everyone has their personal way of storing music
For me i belive the best way is backup all recordings on Minidisc.
So if want to remplace Audiocasette go for Minidisc or something like that.
Minidisc is very neat - I have one - a Sony 930 series. Atrac 5.0. I really wanted a 555ES and couldn't afford it at the time in 2001. I admit, its outrageously cute and better by miles than any data reduced MP3, 2/4, or the MSoft one - better than them all with the one exception of DCC. I have a Philips DCC 600 and that is subtlety better again - but of course much less sexy and much less convenient. But genuine lossless (don't mention Apple or Meridian) - i.e. pure analogue wins the day. Smooth extended highs, no grittiness, seamless integration of frequencies, no vagueing out on busy passages (even DCC and the best of mini-disc does this and as for lossy anything, they are unlistenable even at 192kHz). Also bear in mind that mini-disc truncates frequencies below 20hz and above 16kHz - yes I know your spec manual says that the frequency response is from 2hz and up to 22khz - the machines circuitry may indeed perform on those parameters - the media and ATRAC coding doesn't. Not a chance – no space. PASC is slightly better with an 18 bit word and 18kHz upper threshold.
3dB, if you're still there, I listen to tapes because they offer superior recording - I don't much like CD recording. Media is sometimes a reliability hassle and odd order distortion rises as dither, clocking and other errors are successively re-approximated by the error correction chipware. This is aggravated if using yellow and orange (RW) book devices instead of red book machines working in real time.
And analogue is more fun. Recording on them, which I do often, is rewarding. I copy to CD for friends and relations who are unfortunate enough not to have a cassette deck or place instant track access above sonic quality.
Cheers all - MH
JL and MHugo, are you guys musicians? I'm a musician, and these are the formats I use for recording; Cassette(my first choice) and MD(my second). Cassette sounds better and MD is easier to transport and has less risks with getting eaten or dirty. I also like to use my MD to record rhythm tracks and then dub over them on cassette for solo pieces. Cassettes are closer to real, but can have some timing issues--pitch issues for overdubbing unless you have a great machine. I am currently in the market for a great machine.
CD just has too many issues for me at present. The MD,IMHO, doesn't sound quite as good as a cd--a little more vague--but I never have any playback issues as long as I take it with me. Unfortunately most people never caught onto what these little things can do.
Sorry for getting off topic a bit.
Dan
Silver Iris owning analog addict. Please help.....
Hi Dan,
Sorry for the delay - no I'm not a mnusician!! The funny thing is that MD have been popular here with musicians and in pro-live situation - for live backing tracks. My involvement in music in the recording studio and in concert recording live events. I agree that it has been really sad that it did not take off more as a convenience based home hi-fi thing a bit more. I like the sheer clourful aspect, nice to touch and handle and the definite durability. Also, the 5 second grace-recording, shuffle and delete/insert, indexing - just thrashes CD (talking about digital formats here).
Take care - Marc
I have 700 Grateful Dead and other tapes I still like to play.
Hi RWF,
Please tell me - I am always sorry I missed out on that era of music somehow - the concept of tape trading, especially with bands such as Grateful Dead and Phil Lesh that shunned the recording industry and encouraged music sharing. Well, probably natural, I have been in South Africa. But please tell me, what was (bear with me please if you have answered this before) the most frequently used tape amongst tape traders to your experience, the most preferred, the ones you have the most of, the ones you like the best, the preferred mastering tape, the preferred machines in the field, the no-nos and so forth.
Many thanks - Marc
Dear Marc,
Sorry you missed out on that as it was on hell of a ride. I saw the dead about 150 times from 85-95, seeing them right until Jerry's death. I did a bit of taping and toured with lots of tapers. All the tapers I knew recorded the live shows on Maxell metal tapes. The predominant deck was the Sony D-5. We used Sennheiser Shotgun Mics. Other people used different things I guess but this was the setup of about everyone I knew. The DATS came in toward the end I guess. Some people had them earlier but I would say that the D-5 was the deck
With regard to my collection, I had a wide range of different tapes as I did not have a lot of money back then. By far the most tapes I have are Maxell XL II (and XL II S when I could afford it). I also have Sony Metals and Fuji Chromes as I used to be able to get a good deal on them at a tape shop by the ten pack. I also have some TDK Chromes. I would bet I have pretty much every kind of commonly avaiable Chrome tape in my collection but the vast majority are Maxell XL II's. The one thing I never purchased ever was normal bias tapes. They are all chrome or metal. I still play them to this day and they still sound good to me. I am sure that some other deadheads will pipe in as well with their experiences but for what its worth this was mine in ten years of touring.
Richard
Hi Richard,
This is great - thanks a lot for bringing that magic alive to me. "...they still sound good to me..." I bet they do!! I have the highest regard for Maxell XLII over the years. The Sony D-5 - I have heard of it before. It makes sense using type IIs for generational copies because of their low noise floors and I know you guys were very strict on the no-Dolby rule for all those compatibility issues. What decks are you using?
All the best - Marc
The Sony D-5 was as far as I know the best battery powered deck that was available. It used D batteries and was portable. When we taped at the shows no power was available to us so we had to use battery powered equipment. On occasion we were allowed to be patched into the soundboard but mostly used mics.
My current decks are both Yamahas-a KX-1200 U and and a KX-W332. I also have a Yamaha EQ-630 since the tapes sound better equalized. And yes no dolby was supposed to be used although sometimes people did not know that. Really an equalizer is a must in any case at least for me.
Anyone remember when Telarc were putting out cassettes on TDK SA? I think it was the very early 90s and I bought a couple of their titles. I have to say that I thought they sounded much better than the CD equivalents. I played them in an entry level Nakamichi.
I've been tossing with the idea of some sort of analogue format to make copies of my pristine LPs. But as others have pointed out, even if machines can still be bought, good tape is extremely hard to find.
Interestingly enough, in terms of digital I have found that the Fraunhofer compression codec seems to offer a very "analogue tape" type of sound compared to the source it is encoding.
I agree the Telarc's on TDK SA's that use 70us EQ do sound much better than the CD versions. This includes all the Classical releases, some of the Kunzel and a couple of the Jazz releases. The ones at 120us EQ are not as good but I think they are at least as good or better than the CD versions.
However for a real thrill find on Nakamichi Reference Recordings recorded in Real Time (1:1) on TDK Metal tape available with either Dolby B or Dolby C encoding. There are very close to the sound of Telarc SACDs!
Those were the days...you'd get lovely glossy monthly updates from Telarc via snail mail and their CDs were the best of a bad lot...I seem to recall Telarc went on quite a bit about their state of the art cassette duplication (I think it was 4 x speed but I could be mistaken). They even spoke about how the huge pancakes of SA tape were delivered from TDK.I used to get very excited when I saw a new Telarc cassette on the shelves at the music store. There was always something about the accuracy of instrumental timbre on my Telarc cassettes that the CD did not match. It's a bit like the vinyl versus CD viewpoints I have today.
I used tape a heck of a lot in the 80s and 90s and even ended up buying a TEAC open reel. It had quite an appetite and cost me a wad to fuel it's diet of Ampex 456. But it did not suffer the annoying but subtle flutter problems that I had with cassette - even with the Nakamichi.
I have no idea how you get the stuff you talk about but I'm happy for you that you have it. In the end the thing that knocked tape on the head for me was actually the lack of a range of titles. This was of course long before the internet. Now I see lots of stuff for sale including lots of old pre-recorded open reel.
Oh, btw I just found your website. Excellent! I agree completely with your summations of all the different formats with their strengths and weaknesses.
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