cassettes, who knew

danger boy

dug up my old Sony cassette player tonight.. cleaned her up.. and plugged her into the SDA's and Elite amp.. Mmmmm, toasty! Listening to Sade's self titled cassette... Sade. (pronounced Shar-Day)

I was expecting it to sound like crappy old musical cassettes used to sound like. but instead.. it sounds mighty fine I must say. Very analog... i'm not hearing any hiss at all.. I'm sure if i pushed it and really opened up the volume. it would, but so far.. dang.. either this cassette is excellent... or the cassette format ain't so bad after all.

The Sony cassette deck is heavy too.. about 15lbs. circa very late 70's/early 80's.

I am going to Craigslist it I think.. but dang.. I have no idea how to price it, now that it rocks. Prob like $15 I would think. Everything works on it.. just needs a good lube job inside.

danger boy

time to flip the cassette and listen to more of the smooth, soothing vocals of Sade

hearingimpared

How the hell do you get "Shar-Day" out of SADE? My wife has CDs of "Shar-day" and I keep asking her the same question.

danger boy

hearingimpared wrote: »

How the hell do you get "Shar-Day" out of SADE? My wife has CDs of "Shar-day" and I keep asking her the same question.

I don't know. hold on let me call Sade and ask her

F1nut

It's Sha-day, no effing R.

danger boy

F1nut wrote: »

It's Sha-day, no effing R.

of course. how could I screw that up? :rolleyes:

rskarvan

I honestly can't tell a difference between a well-recorded cassette and a CD. Meaning: if I copy a CD to my Denon 3-head cassette deck and play it back... it sounds darn near absolutely identical.

beardog03

it`s say-dee !


shar day

sha-day


yeah, yeah

sha-day !!!


that`s it !
That`s the ticket ~!



I remeber my old rig back in the late 80`s , early 90`s
I thought my denon tape deck w/adjustable bias for recording, was a great sounding set up.....very much like LP`s

George Grand

I'm with you Ron. Still a world class cassette deck in each of my two rigs. A beautiful Tandberg in the HT thing, and a Sony ES in the He-Man rig. It's not just me either. I've had people walk in and say, "What's that cd that's playing?"

The "cd" is a tape I recorded when I was about 23, on a Tandberg cassette deck with H-K Citation/AR turntable as the rest of the rig.

Yashu

I used to take so much time making the perfect cassette... I would buy the best metal oxide tapes I could find and I would spend a bunch of time setting the bias up perfectly. I used to love it.

While I could still hear the hiss, and dolby C reduced the dynamic range too much for me to find it useful, it was the only real way for me to get vinyl onto another format so I could get the vinyl experience without wearing out my records.

Until:

You know what I used to do also? Sony made some very high quality 4 head VCRs back in the day... The audio track on a VHS tape is much wider than a cassette, and running at a normal speed, you could still fit 2 straight hours of music on a VHS cassette. This sounded even BETTER than audio cassettes, less hiss, more range, and the tapes lasted longer. A quality VCR was like a poor man's reel to reel.

beardog03

yep !
I remember the dolby c and the bias w/the best tapes available...!!


Now the VCR thing is a smart idea !!!

heiney9

In the early days of digital I owned a Nakamichi Dragon and I used to record cd's to Maxell Metal casettes (the ones with the metal shell). It sounded damn good and in some cases better than the early cdps and cds. Casettes do have their limitations but that Dragon with metal oxide tapes sounded almost indistinguishable from the real thing. Also bevause of the analog nature it sounded better many times.

I still have a Nak deck but sadly it never gets any use.

H9

heiney9

Yashu wrote: »

You know what I used to do also? Sony made some very high quality 4 head VCRs back in the day... The audio track on a VHS tape is much wider than a cassette, and running at a normal speed, you could still fit 2 straight hours of music on a VHS cassette. This sounded even BETTER than audio cassettes, less hiss, more range, and the tapes lasted longer. A quality VCR was like a poor man's reel to reel.

I did that for parties, but trying to find a particluar song was a real ****!

jcaut

Yashu wrote: »

The audio track on a VHS tape is much wider than a cassette, and running at a normal speed, you could still fit 2 straight hours of music on a VHS cassette. This sounded even BETTER than audio cassettes, less hiss, more range, and the tapes lasted longer. A quality VCR was like a poor man's reel to reel.

Just to clarify: You're not talking about the standard audio track, but the "HiFi" track, correct? A hifi VCR records the audio diagonally across the tape, just like it does video. I used to use an old Beta :eek: HiFi machine to record audio tapes. They were available before VHS hifi.

And I agree that well recorded cassette tape, on a good machine, sounds as good as CD. CD's sure beat them in convenience, however.

Jason

Yashu

I did that for parties, but trying to find a particluar song was a real ****!

haha You are right about that. I used it for dubbing albums... stuff I would just let play through, or if I wanted a good copy of a friend's CD that I could use when recording cassette mixes.

You never could dub one tape to another and have it sound good, but you could go from VCR to tape and get almost the real thing.

My old pioneer cassette deck was built like a tank but did not have some of the more advanced settings of the new ones. I remember that they eventually came out with a dolby S NR that supposidly worked really really well. Stereo Review did a big article on it, even comparing the spectral graphs from the original source to a metal oxide cassette with dolby S, and right there you could see an almost perfect match. They then compared the other recording mediums of the time (DAT, minidisc, DCC (haha), and such), and the cassette easily won. It was interesting to note that the minidisc had the worst looking spectral graph... tons of compression artifacts. Sony turned southward into hell with the minidisc.

There is just something about not having to go through that extra AD stage that made tape such a great recording medium. I wish I had a use for one (actually I do, when I get my TT hooked up again), it would be fun to make mixes again, but I don't know if I would ever use it. I don't even know who makes a good deck anymore, and I don't remember what vintage models were the best.

EDIT:

I am talking about the track that was NOT recorded diagonally... VHS tapes did have a space for this, and I could have sworn 4-head HIFI VCRs using this... it was why it sounded so good. I did it all the time, use VHS tapes to record friend's albums... the VCR had recording levels just like cassette decks.

heiney9

jcaut wrote: »

And I agree that well recorded cassette tape, on a good machine, sounds as good as CD. CD's sure beat them in convenience, however.

Jason

I would agree back when cd first came out, but compared to digital today (some exceptions of course) cassettes can't keep up.

H9

heiney9

Yashu wrote: »

There is just something about not having to go through that extra AD stage that made tape such a great recording medium. I wish I had a use for one (actually I do, when I get my TT hooked up again), it would be fun to make mixes again, but I don't know if I would ever use it. I don't even know who makes a good deck anymore, and I don't remember what vintage models were the best.

Being in audio sales back then I went thru a lot of decks and the Dragon by far was the ultimate deck. I owned several Pioneer CTF models of the day which were work horses, but I was always impressed with Nakamichi.

I owned a BX 125, BX 300, CR 7, RX 505 and a Dragon over the years. Some swear by Teac or Tandberg and they were no slouches but Nak had so many great innovations when it came to cassette technology.

They were the best and a vintage Nak deck in my mind is still the best if that's a medium you want to revive.

H9

madmax

I was always very impressed with vcr recordings. I should give that a try again to see what I think of it today.
madmax

jcaut

Yashu wrote: »

EDIT:

I am talking about the track that was NOT recorded diagonally... VHS tapes did have a space for this, and I could have sworn 4-head HIFI VCRs using this... it was why it sounded so good. I did it all the time, use VHS tapes to record friend's albums... the VCR had recording levels just like cassette decks.

The linear audio track is there even on the hifi machines, and can be stereo, but both VHS HiFi and Beta hi fi use helical scan for the hifi audio. I believe the tape speed of VHS at SP quality is still slower than audio cassette: Slightly above 3cm/sec versus 1-7/8" per second (which would work out to about 4.75cm). The track width of the linear audio track is probably wider than compact cassette, so possibly that's better. I still think the slow tape speed kept the linear audio below "hi fi" frequency response, but I could be all wrong.


I still use cassettes occasionally, as I have a cassette player in my work truck and sometimes I record stuff to listen to. The deck I use is a three head JVC machine that uses closed loop direct drive, and while it's not in the same league as the Nak Dragon or the nice Sony ES machines, it still sounds very good. I used to have a Sony (inexpensive) that had Dolby S-- I think that was the best noise reduction system I had tried, with the possible exception of dbx, but it wasn't available on many machines until after CD had already taken over.

hearingimpared

Yashu wrote: »

I used to take so much time making the perfect cassette... I would buy the best metal oxide tapes I could find and I would spend a bunch of time setting the bias up perfectly. I used to love it.

While I could still hear the hiss, and dolby C reduced the dynamic range too much for me to find it useful, it was the only real way for me to get vinyl onto another format so I could get the vinyl experience without wearing out my records.

Until:

You know what I used to do also? Sony made some very high quality 4 head VCRs back in the day... The audio track on a VHS tape is much wider than a cassette, and running at a normal speed, you could still fit 2 straight hours of music on a VHS cassette. This sounded even BETTER than audio cassettes, less hiss, more range, and the tapes lasted longer. A quality VCR was like a poor man's reel to reel.

HI-FI VCR were the best. There was absolutely no tape hiss.

schwarcw

I've been saying on this Forum for years that cassettes are the best value in audio. A good player can be purchased at a garage sale or on the 'Bay for $15 - $150. I've purchased cassettes for any where from $0.10 to $1.00. Most of the time I get them for about $0.25 - $0.50. Do they sound as good as CD's? NO! Close? Sometimes. My point is for the price you can get a lot of good music. I bought an entire collection of classical music, Deutsche Grammaphone box sets, artist box sets, all "audiophile" quality Cassettes (more than 500 of them) for $5.00. I play them on the big rig, or on my vintage Marantz and Carvers and they sound great.

I think cassettes are one of the best kept secrets in audio. They are poo pah'ed by the audio snobs because they give up a little in sound quality, and they are not easy to skip from track to track. But if you have a good, well maintained machine and quality pre/amp/speaks then they can be quite enjoyable. IMHO

hearingimpared

I owned a Nak Dragon and a BX 300. I've been trying to land a Dragon of late. I saw one recently for $600 but I didn't want to pay that much. I would love to get a BX 300 too.

Back to Sha Day!

heiney9

schwarcw wrote: »

I've been saying on this Forum for years that cassettes are the best value in audio. A good player can be purchased at a garage sale or on the 'Bay for $15 - $150. I've purchased cassettes for any where from $0.10 to $1.00. Most of the time I get them for about $0.25 - $0.50. Do they sound as good as CD's? NO! Close? Sometimes. My point is for the price you can get a lot of good music. I bought an entire collection of classical music, Deutsche Grammaphone box sets, artist box sets, all "audiophile" quality Cassettes (more than 500 of them) for $5.00. I play them on the big rig, or on my vintage Marantz and Carvers and they sound great.

I think cassettes are one of the best kept secrets in audio. They are poo pah'ed by the audio snobs because they give up a little in sound quality, and they are not easy to skip from track to track. But if you have a good, well maintained machine and quality pre/amp/speaks then they can be quite enjoyable. IMHO

The pre-recorded cassettes in most cases leave a lot to be desired, but at the price you get them for used it seems like a good value. When cassette decks were big I never bought pre-recorded cassettes I only made my own and those were leaps and bounds better than anything pre-recorded (with some exceptions).

The medium of pre-recorded was a huge compromise even before cd's arrived. It was the convenience over lp's that lauched the pre-recorded cassette.

H9

shack

I used to make some really good cassette recordings with my Pioneer deck. I used TDK high bias tapes with Dolby S. I played a few of them not long ago and they sounded much better than I expected. I still have the deck and quite a few blank tapes left over. As I recall, I recorded tapes for use in my car because I wasn't sold on the shock absorbsion ability of HUs to not skip when playing CDs. I also "borrowed" CDs from friends and "copied" them (if the RIAA comes knocking it was simply for providing a "back-up copy" for my friends in case their CD was damaged beyond repair...nothing more...that's my story and I'm sticking to it ).

Anything I recorded was far superior to anything you could buy. The mass market stuff really sounded like crap. I think I only owned a handfully of pre-recorded cassettes. Most everything I listened to on cassette was copied from LPs or CDs...

heiney9

Before cd's were popular I always made a cassette copy of a new LP. The very first play was to record it to cassette and in many cases I ended up only playing the LP a handful of times.

I wish I still had those LP's because most were in pristine condition because they hardly ever got played. I'd just listen to the tape I made. The big factor was getting both sides of the LP on one side of the cassette; a great convenience.

H9

steveinaz

Yashu wrote: »

You know what I used to do also? Sony made some very high quality 4 head VCRs back in the day... The audio track on a VHS tape is much wider than a cassette, and running at a normal speed, you could still fit 2 straight hours of music on a VHS cassette. This sounded even BETTER than audio cassettes, less hiss, more range, and the tapes lasted longer. A quality VCR was like a poor man's reel to reel.

I did this for many years also. I had a Panasonic "hi-fi" 4 head VHS. It sounded fantastic. I would record CD's to it. No hiss and hours of music.

shack

heiney9 wrote: »

The big factor was getting both sides of the LP on one side of the cassette; a great convenience.

Yep...90 minute cassettes rocked! Two LP/CDs = One cassette.

All that changed when the studios realized they could put up to 70 ± minutes on a single CD vs the 45 ± minutes for LPs.

Yashu

I think I might hit this pawn shop that is next to a pizza place I like... I go in there all the time and look at the electronics and they have all kinds. They got hifi vcrs up the wazoo and a bunch of old tape stuff... I will see if they have anything good. They also have a set of vintage infinity speakers that I have always wondered if they were any good... they have a woofer with a coax driver in the middle, but also a tweeter at the top... strange speakers.

danger boy

there are no DAC's in tape decks... DAC's are only found in CD players and DVD players.. and receivers. for digital media. not in analog media which a cassette is. so are albums.

cfrizz

I copied all of my 45 records & songs off of albums on to tape. They sound pretty good. I still have them.

I agree though with the recorded stuff, most of it sounds lousy. Hiss up the wazoo! My own recordings sound better.

BottomFeeder

Yeah, yeah, but how do you REALLY pronounce "Sade?"