 
|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
|
|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
198.54.202.226
In Reply to: RE: why the interest in cassette decks and reel to reels posted by RWF on October 10, 2007 at 12:48:34
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
Follow Ups:
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.
| FAQ |
Post a Message! |
Forgot Password? |
|
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
Top of Page ]
[ Contact Us ]
[ Support/Wish List ]
[ Copyright © 2025, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]
