Ok Cassette tapes

erniejade

There is a few sites actually dedicated to this kind of stuff. Portable and cassette. stereo2go is one of them


The denon tapes that show the reels actually go for good $

heiney9

The Dragon was an auto reverse deck with one key feature unique to Nak. It had a computer controlled azimuth alignment playback head that would optimize the azimuth angle for every single tape played in it. This ensured perfect playback in both directions. All decks of the day flipped the head 180* in an auto reverse deck and many times differences could be heard because there was no way to ensure forward and reverse playback alignment of the playback head.

As Mhardy states the RX 202 and top of the line 505 had a stationary head and mechanically flipped the tape around by the large mechanism as part of the transport. The 505 was a nice deck but the Dragon was a lot better. I owned both.

One thing I disagree with Doro, is there was nothing "hyped" about the Dragon, it was the real deal and offered innovation and perfection in it's day that was unrivaled. It was an engineering marvel and it had the excellent sonics to back up it's $2500 price tag. For all it's wizardry it was a very reliable deck too.

H9

mhardy6647

heiney9 wrote: »

The Dragon was an auto reverse deck with one key feature unique to Nak. It had a computer controlled azimuth alignment playback head that would optimize the azimuth angle for every single tape played in it. This ensured perfect playback in both directions. All decks of the day flipped the head 180* in an auto reverse deck and many times differences could be heard because there was no way to ensure forward and reverse playback alignment of the playback head.

H9

oops, I absolutely didn't know that; thanks!

FWIW, I always found the Nak decks a bit finicky in terms of electronic trimming but mechanically reliable and of course stunning sonically. No hands-on experience with the Dragon, though... I was busy with other things by the time it came along.

Tour2ma

Dan,

I feel your pain. I have hundreds of cassettes from my college days when LP's were "passed around" the dorm. All were decent CrO2 formulations from Maxell, TDK, Ampex and are still holding a decent signal. My problem is they no longer roll... bind up like a **** during play. They'll FF and Rew for the most part with only a hint drag, if any...

Not that I'd like to redo them all, the best stuff is in the LP or CD collection, but there are some off-air gems and other rarities I'd love to rescue. Short of buying new empty shells, if they're even still available, I've not found a cure... and I have operated on several trying different things.

If anyone has any suggestions, I'd appreciate hearing them.

Dan,

I feel your pain. I have hundreds of cassettes from my college days when LP's were "passed around" the dorm. All were decent CrO2 formulations from Maxell, TDK, Ampex and are still holding a decent signal. My problem is they no longer roll... bind up like a **** during play. They'll FF and Rew for the most part with only a hint drag, if any...

Not that I'd like to redo them all, the best stuff is in the LP or CD collection, but there are some off-air gems and other rarities I'd love to rescue. Short of buying new empty shells, if they're even still available, I've not found a cure... and I have operated on several trying different things.

If anyone has any suggestions, I'd appreciate hearing them.

mhardy6647 wrote: »

Good quality tape will not degrade appreciably over numerous plays over a long period of time. I have TDK SA-90 and Maxell UDXLII-90 tapes made in the late 1970s on a Yamaha TC-511S (an entry-level deck, ca. 1975) that still sound very good.

Most of the hiss you describe arises from residual magnetism of the tape heads and other metal in the tape path. Regular cleaning and demagnetizing of the heads and other parts of the tape path minimize that problem. Once the damage is done, though, it is irreversible.

All true, mhardy, but also, over time the signal on magnetic tape can "fade" in storage due to weak magnetic fields from all sources electrical. And since the tendency was/ is to store them near where they are used… One of the rules of old audio was to never store tapes in drawers under other audio equipment... especially amps. It also turned out driving around town with tapes was none too good for their signal integrity.

POP Quiz: Who made the first home Dolby Cassette recorder?

The Yammie’s shown here (they were pretty, weren’t they?) were modern compared to my 1973 Sony TD-124D, one of the first, major Mfg, mass-market Dolby home units. I replaced it with a BOTL Yammie in the early 80's. Top end of my old Sony's FR was ~12kHz; Yammie's was 13.5-ish? So Yammie playback of the old Sony made tapes tended to be hissy due to lack of top end scale. Only turning the treble control counter clockwise made them barely listenable.

Turned out there was (and still is) a way to squeeze better sound out these old tapes... dbx’s line of dynamic range expanders. Maybe 25 years ago I took one of my old Sony tapes to a dbx demo day, and the dbx tech was able to make it approach the SQ of a CD... didn't get there, but I was shocked that he could even get it close.

There were four series in their expander line: original, Series II, Series III and the DS series. All are on ebay nearly all the time. I'm partial to the III's and DS's as they added impact restoration to the mix, but they can get up in price. On the very cheap, <$100, you can bag a Series II for a taste of what they can do.

Within each series there were multiple models, e.g., 1BX, 2BX, etc., up to 5BX. The numerals referred to the number of segments each of them break the FR into for individual control. Not all models were available in each series. I'm partial to the 3BX's and up with the 3BX easily the best value.

Alone a dbx 3BX-III will serious improve the SQ of decent cassette recordings. For really bad recordings, like my old Sony’s, applying equalization to boost HF (and LF, if you like) and then routing the signal through a dbx does do wonders. This was what was done at the demo day. dbx makes fine EQ's as well, but there are many less expensive ones that'll do as well (including one made by dbx, but sold under the ADC name, IIRC).

The dbx expander also does wonders for vinyl... many genres don't need it, but some, like classical symphony, actually need it to produce a true concert hall experience.

Bought my last, and only remaining cassette deck around 2000 give or take. An AIWA with Dolby S and HX Pro that can damn near duplicate a CD’s SQ… But I’d gladly give up some SQ, if it would just roll some of my thirty-seven year-old tapes…

mhardy6647

That is absolutely true (vis-a-vis loss of signal from tapes); I rather deliberately omitted it because it is largely avoidable with good storage - physical degradation is a big culprit, too, and that is often intrinsic to the tape formulation. Touche... but I do think I used some weasel-wording in my original reply to buy myself some plausible deniability :-)

I have no idea who made the first Dolby home deck. I don't think it was the Advent 201; hk had a pretty early one (hk1000) but ... you got me there.

wayne3burk

... according to wikipedia... the first dolby cassette deck was....


ding ding ....

Tour2ma

mhardy6647 wrote: »

...but I do think I used some weasel-wording in my original reply to buy myself some plausible deniability :-)

A practice I embrace as often as I can... :biggrin:

mhardy6647 wrote:

I have no idea who made the first Dolby home deck. I don't think it was the Advent 201; hk had a pretty early one (hk1000) but ... you got me there.

Not really... for a guy with no idea you had a good idea... it was the Advent 201.

Kloss recognized the potential of Dolby B for home recording. To him it was just another stepping stone to his video projection dream...

heiney9

In many inexpensive decks Dolby B could have some tracking issues. Some of the other decks I owned sometimes I didn't use Dolby. Never had that issue with a Nak deck.

H9

Tour2ma

heiney9 wrote: »

In many inexpensive decks Dolby B could have some tracking issues. Some of the other decks I owned sometimes I didn't use Dolby. Never had that issue with a Nak deck.

I assume you're referring to dolby calibration, not signal tracking.

Improper dolby perfromance during playback of a home made tape made on that deck should have been a rarity. There's a chance that playback on a different Dolby deck, or a car unit, could be an issue, but given how anal Dolby was about his licensing, again, should have been a rarity.

Most Nak's had dolby calibration routines IIRC... some like the Dragon were auto-cal's... Yes?

Keiko wrote: »

You can try this, but do so at your own risk, Tour.

Thanks.. that page was more aimed at sound restoratrion than rolling. But your link led me to another eHow page that was about mechanical cassette issues. Basically the same excepting the prying open of the shells (which I have done) and the use of a "tape cleaning solution"... whatever TF that is.

Anyway, I've really nothing to lose and not like water can hurt the tape... Wash them... Brilliant.

Thanks...

Keiko wrote:

Never cared for Dolby NR. Seemed to muddy up the sound, so I always left it off.

Different strokes... I found the background hiss during low volume passages, between tracks of non-dolby cassettes unbearable.

heiney9

Not for Dolby, the calibrations were for tape bias.

The Dolby circuit just like anything else was a standard set of specs, but that didn't ensure that every Dolby deck performed the same. There were Dolby tracking issues, especially between decks. It may not have been a direct result of the Dolby circuit but inconsistencies within the deck itself like transport issue's, head alignment issues, minute speed variations, less than perfect tension pads, etc, etc. These types of things seemed to be less noticeable when playing on more than one deck when Dolby was NOT used. Atleast that was my experience.

Also high speed copying of Dolby encoded tapes sounded worse. Obviously there were other things going on other than just Dolby.

H9

steveinaz

This was the last cassette deck I owned (though not my pic):
Teac Z6000

mhardy6647

The HF boost required to "encode" Dolby (B) noise reduction upon recording really limits the high frequency extension/response in Dolby (which is already pretty limited for cassette tapes*). Indeed, though the background hiss on a cassette tape recording sans Dolby is very high (i.e., S/N is pretty poor - we are talking 1-7/8 ips, after all!), the "cure" of Dolby is almost worse than the disease.

* Thus do most cassette decks specify frequency response at -20 dB recording levels.

danger boy

metal tape or high bias on a good deck sounded pretty dang good when I used to copy my CD's back in the day.

wayne3burk

steveinaz wrote: »

This was the last cassette deck I owned (though not my pic):
Teac Z6000

TEAC normally included dbx encoding on their decks...

as i recall.

wayne

mhardy6647

this little mid-1980s guy, otherwise quite unassuming, has dbx:

steveinaz

wayne3burk wrote: »

TEAC normally included dbx encoding on their decks...

as i recall.

wayne

Yep. very good NR system. I also used it on my Teac X2000R R-to-R

cnh

Anyone remember Dolby S options. What was up with that? You had B and C before that--with C in 1980--I think?

cnh

mhardy6647

also, did we mention Dolby HX-Pro?

http://www.dolby.com/uploadedFiles/zz-_Shared_Assets/English_PDFs/Professional/212_Dolby_B,_C_and_S_Noise_Reduction_Systems.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_noise-reduction_system#Dolby_HX

cnh

mhardy6647 wrote: »

also, did we mention Dolby HX-Pro?

http://www.dolby.com/uploadedFiles/zz-_Shared_Assets/English_PDFs/Professional/212_Dolby_B,_C_and_S_Noise_Reduction_Systems.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_noise-reduction_system#Dolby_HX

Good point. My old AIWA has all those logos.

cnh

dcmeigs

Before file sharing, FM radio stations would play entire albums without commercial interruption late at night. It was perfect for those with tape decks. For the cost of a TDK SA you could have a reasonably good analog recording of a recent release; much, much better quality than the crap tapes the labels sold back then. I made lots of those and still listen to them once in a while. Some of them are as good today as the day they were recorded. Others are crap. The difference is that many of them lived in the glove box of my Jeep and were played in the filthy under dash cassette deck. Don't misunderstand, I cleaned it regularly but there is just no keeping one clean in a open top Jeep. Direct sunlight, heat and dirty heads are the natural enemy of recording tape.

Danny Tse

I can't believe no one has mentioned the ultimate blank cassette....the ceramic cased Sony Metal Master....



I still 3 of these factory-sealed.

Tour2ma

cnh wrote: »

Good point. My old AIWA has all those logos.

cnh

As does mine...

Tour2ma wrote: »

Bought my last, and only remaining cassette deck around 2000 give or take. An AIWA with Dolby S and HX Pro that can damn near duplicate a CD’s SQ…

I honestly never had the Dolby B issues others have mentioned... ideal reproduction, no. But in its day a 10 dB reduction of the noise floor was nothing to sneeze at...

Later...

George Grand

I like Tandberg cassette decks. Rock solid, sound great. I have a TCD-310 that I would never part with.