cassettes, who knew
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I have always heard it pronounced Sha-day.Marantz AV-7705 PrePro, Classé 5 channel 200wpc Amp, Oppo 103 BluRay, Rotel RCD-1072 CDP, Sony XBR-49X800E TV, Polk S60 Main Speakers, Polk ES30 Center Channel, Polk S15 Surround Speakers SVS SB12-NSD x2
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Thanks & I'll go w/that!"Wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then." Bob Seger
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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.
The VHS HiFi machines layer the audio track in the helical scan of the tape. The tape to head speed of the helical scan is in the neighborhood of 20 feet per second. I don't recall the exact speed. This speed was required to record video frequencies. Placing the audio track on the scan gave you a virtually flat 20-20kHz audio response; much better than the stationary audio heads.
I have always used dbx type II noise reduction. I still have a three head Sony ES machine and an external dbx 224x unit. I tried the cassette deck several years ago and was almost fell over when I heard the audio quality. One day I will unpack the 600-700 Maxell cassettes I have recorded in this format and continue listening to tapes.
Arthur SchopenhauerAll truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed and third, it is accepted as self evident. -
danger boy wrote: »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.
I've been telling the guys on here for a long time that cassettes are awesome2 CHANNEL
Speaker - Klipsch Heresy II
Under construction -
I only have a few store bought cassettes.. but they do sound very nice dynamics on the SDA's. I didn't expect them to sound quite as good as they do.PolkFest 2012, who's going>?
Vancouver, Canada Sept 30th, 2012 - Madonna concert :cheesygrin: -
danger boy wrote: »I only have a few store bought cassettes.. but they do sound very nice dynamics on the SDA's. I didn't expect them to sound quite as good as they do.
I had ALWAYS had a lack of performance out of factory recorded tapes UNTIL one day it hit me while alligning the head. Set up perfectly with the one screw you can always get to you can dial in either your own recordings OR factory recordings to be the best. The trick then became to set the angle using the other screw you can almost never get to. After much fiddling (and removing the whole face off my deck, I got to the point of perfect reproduction off of prerecorded cassettes AND my own recordings. Whew, what an exercise that was, but well worth it.
madmaxVinyl, the final frontier...
Avantgarde horns, 300b tubes, thats the kinda crap I want...
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What I found interesting about taping onto hi-fi vcr, was that you could ALMOST put the entire Beatles record catalog on one or two T-160 tapes if you recorded at EP speed. I'm not a Beatles freak so I never did. Videotape is tough to accomodate in the vehicle however.
Mr. Brick, I have been touting the benefits of cassette on this forum since 1999. THAT, would be considered a long time. -
I had ALWAYS had a lack of performance out of factory recorded tapes UNTIL one day it hit me while alligning the head. Set up perfectly with the one screw you can always get to you can dial in either your own recordings OR factory recordings to be the best. The trick then became to set the angle using the other screw you can almost never get to. After much fiddling (and removing the whole face off my deck, I got to the point of perfect reproduction off of prerecorded cassettes AND my own recordings. Whew, what an exercise that was, but well worth it.
madmax
The Dragon had auto azimuth alignment and it helped for pre-recorded cassettes but they still were leaps and bounds worse from the ones I recorded. Every tape played in the Dragon sounded as good as possible because one of the biggest issues with playing tapes across multiple machines was the very slightly different azimuth angle each unit used. They were fairly consistent though not perfect across manufacturer's but not across brands.
Thr Dragon solved that problem and work quite well.
H9"Appreciation of audio is a completely subjective human experience. Measurements can provide a measure of insight, but are no substitute for human judgment. Why are we looking to reduce a subjective experience to objective criteria anyway? The subtleties of music and audio reproduction are for those who appreciate it. Differentiation by numbers is for those who do not".--Nelson Pass Pass Labs XA25 | EE Avant Pre | EE Mini Max Supreme DAC | MIT Shotgun S1 | Pangea AC14SE MKII | Legend L600 | BlueSound Node 3 - Tubes add soul! -
From what I remember of my tape days is that it sounds good the first time you play it and then it starts going to hell. I remember Def Leppard Pyromania, I listed to that tape so much that in its end days it was practically total hiss. Same thing happened with my Start Wars VHS that got played at least once a week for a few years there lol.Testing
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George Grand wrote: »What I found interesting about taping onto hi-fi vcr, was that you could ALMOST put the entire Beatles record catalog on one or two T-160 tapes if you recorded at EP speed. I'm not a Beatles freak so I never did. Videotape is tough to accomodate in the vehicle however.
Mr. Brick, I have been touting the benefits of cassette on this forum since 1999. THAT, would be considered a long time.
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Speaker - Klipsch Heresy II
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You and I don't see eye to eye on all things Yashu [as with most people], but I have to tell you that you are the only person I have encountered in the audio community that I have run across that has made that statement. I agree, I have an older Mitsubishi HS-U50 HI-FI VCR [yes it's a dinosaur, I know] that I can't seem to let myself get rid of just because of that fact. Better sound than any of my older Sony, Denon tape decks [and Akia RTR] with all the bells and whistles, and I can make a long recording for parties without that tape hiss that drove me up the wall with cassettes. As soon as I discovered that fact, I immediately sold all tape decks and RTR's and I haven't looked back since.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.
One of these day's I'll break her back out and enjoy, but for now SACD and my recent re-introduction to Vinyl has got my listenin' goin' on.~ In search of accurate reproduction of music. Real sound is my reference and while perfection may not be attainable? If I chase it, I might just catch excellence. ~ -
Damn, next time I'll read the whole thread before posting. I see you and I are not alone.~ In search of accurate reproduction of music. Real sound is my reference and while perfection may not be attainable? If I chase it, I might just catch excellence. ~
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Mr. Brick, my father passed away about 3 weeks ago. In fact, today we had a real good memorial service for him.
Next? I really enjoy some of the things you say. -
George Grand wrote: »Mr. Brick, my father passed away about 3 weeks ago. In fact, today we had a real good memorial service for him.
Next? I really enjoy some of the things you say.
sorry about that dude I didn't know. I was just kidding around though no offence was meant 2 CHANNEL
Speaker - Klipsch Heresy II
Under construction -
First rule of show biz Mr. Brick: Know your audience.
Second rule of show biz Mr. Brick: Timing is everything.
There's your lesson.........dude. -
This club has been doing the VHS thing for years, I recall Russman posting up years ago about the VHS tape.
And of course George.
RT1 -
George Grand wrote: »First rule of show biz Mr. Brick: Know your audience.
Second rule of show biz Mr. Brick: Timing is everything.
There's your lesson.........dude.
:rolleyes:2 CHANNEL
Speaker - Klipsch Heresy II
Under construction -
Forgive me, I didn't even know that "forums" existed until last October. It's actually pretty cool to me to know that others have had my same observations. My god, I've blown so much money since then...and F1 started all of it for me. Damn him.:preeltrouble1 wrote:This club has been doing the VHS thing for years....~ In search of accurate reproduction of music. Real sound is my reference and while perfection may not be attainable? If I chase it, I might just catch excellence. ~ -
Mr. Brick, you've probably had the nickname "Thick As A" for some time now I'd wager. It is completely understandable.
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George Grand wrote: »Mr. Brick, you've probably had the nickname "Thick As A" for some time now I'd wager. It is completely understandable.
Actually Brick has 2 meaning 1, where I work and 2, my nickname from the army. They called me Brick cause I was built like a brick shithouse2 CHANNEL
Speaker - Klipsch Heresy II
Under construction -
Actually Brick has 2 meaning 1, where I work and 2, my nickname from the army. They called me Brick cause I was built like a brick shithouse
What's that saying? Oh yeah, all brawn, no brain.Political Correctness'.........defined
"A doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a t-u-r-d by the clean end."
President of Club Polk -
I was just going to post "Built like a brick shithouse, from the neck up."
Thank you Jesse. I apologize, I owe you a phone call brother. I'm getting my **** handed to me lately with my dad's affairs, and cleaning his PACKRAT freakin' home out. -
What's that saying? Oh yeah, all brawn, no brain.
Yeah that was it. An officer in the artillery and university graduate. Thank god I have no brain.2 CHANNEL
Speaker - Klipsch Heresy II
Under construction -
Let me get this straight... Are you saying that you have been INTENTIONALLY misleading us with your post contents? If so, you should've said so at the outset. Allowances are made for such things.
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Hell I loved cassettes. I thought they where the way to go plus you could make custom recording. Finding the best recordable cassettes was always fun.
Cassette always sounded great the first few times you played them. But over time they lost there ability.
DanDan
My personal quest is to save to world of bad audio, one thread at a time. -
Hell I loved cassettes. I thought they where the way to go plus you could make custom recording. Finding the best recordable cassettes was always fun.
Cassette always sounded great the first few times you played them. But over time they lost there ability.
Dan
true, then you just recorded another cassette.. it certainly would have had a longer shelf life had CD's not come along when they did.
I always got confused with all the different tape types.. CRo2, Metal, ferrite or something like that.. i always made sure I would buy the higher quality blank cassette tapes and my recordings I think would turn out ok. but I don't know for sure.. as my gear back then was sub par. :eek:PolkFest 2012, who's going>?
Vancouver, Canada Sept 30th, 2012 - Madonna concert :cheesygrin: -
Metal was the best... but you needed a tape deck that had the bias settings for metal.
Cro2 was the best that most tape players and recorders supported, as in... if you couldn't get metal, because of price, or support, this was the next best thing. MOST commercially recorded tapes were of the standard ferris-oxide. These tapes were the cheapest and had the most hiss. Most commercially recorded tapes were of this low quality tape, and they usually recorded them at multiple speed, so not only were you getting cheap tape material, you were getting a cheap recording (speeding up the music to be able to spin the tape faster and, so, produce a tape quicker).
The best tapes were by and far the ones you made on your own, but the beauty of tape was, that even the bad ones were still analog, and sometimes the warm and fuzzy sound worked, but sometimes it was just not near what you could get at home. See that was why tape did not take off like it could have, because the only way to make a GREAT tape, was to record it yourself from either a record or a CD. So, in the hifi market, tapes were only good for making mixes and copies, both worthy adventures, but they weren't going to get enough good tape decks into homes/cars/walkmen to increase the standard of the tape sold from regular Fe, to cr02 or Metal.
In fact, the record companies hated tapes, so it was probably their plan... tapes were the Mp3s of the 70s and 80s... They sued and lost when they tried to make home taping illegal. I suppose their low quality 4X recorded Fe tapes were their way of trying to kill off consumer support for the medium, and to give a little middle finger to the fans of tape that fought so hard to keep their right to fair use.
I don't mind seeing these same companies failing, but I feel one of the reasons we still do not have a proper hi-def audio standard, mass supported, is what is going on with filesharing in the digital realm. Here the record companies are again, keeping the masses from a better medium, for their own gains, or revenge, or whatever is in their warped heads. -
Yahsu, thanks for the explanation, you hit on alot of good points that i never knew about.PolkFest 2012, who's going>?
Vancouver, Canada Sept 30th, 2012 - Madonna concert :cheesygrin: -
Some of the torque controlled assembly equipment programs in the automotive world is still backed up electronically on cassette tapes.
Its a little scarey too... considering that some of those cassettes are 20+ years old and the factory isn't air conditioned. Never-the-less, they still work pretty well. -
I don't care about hiss. The tapes I use at home are not classical, so there aren't many quiet parts. I hate Dolby, and refuse to use it. Tape hiss becomes a little more negligible as you age, and your ears start to naturally roll off the high end. I don't think I can hear a freakin' thing over 7 or 8K. 30 years of -135's will do that to you.
