Cassette Deck?

Serendipity · February 2012

So - I am looking for a new cassette deck such as the Sony TC-WE475, or an older cassette deck like the Nakamichi Dragon because I find that I prefer the analog sound of cassette tapes over the harsh sound of digital. The roll-off at approximately 16-18kHz of tapes sounds really pleasant to my ears.

I spent the past week listening to old cassette tapes (most of them were of myself performing in piano competitions, talent shows, etc.) and really like the warmth of the sound vs. the harshness of digital.

That being said, what would be best for *playback only* of old cassette tapes? I have a collection of approximately 50 cassettes with serious nostalgic value that I could never part with. Some of them can never be replaced, so I'd like to keep the tapes and deck for as long as possible.

Would a Nakamichi Dragon be the best choice?

Also, since I find that I really like the analog sound, I might buy a turntable in the future. How is the Music Hall MMF-9.1 as a starter turntable? I have some vinyl (33's and 45's) but absolutely NOTHING to play them with.

Fongolio · February 2012

I just purchased an old classic cassette deck, a Pioneer CT-F1250 which sounds really good and looks fantastic. The Nak Dragon is one of the ultimate best cassette decks but are usually still in the $1000 plus range. There are other Nak's to be had that are fantastic for slightly less money. Any of the Nak decks ending in ZX are superb units; the 680ZX for example. Just make sure it doesn't require a huge amount of service to put it into perfect working order.

As for the Music Hall table. That is an excellent table starter or otherwise. You can't go wrong there. Good luck and happy huntiing. Let us know what you end up with. I love the analog sound of cassette as well.

Kelvin

Serendipity · February 2012

Thanks! Service isn't really an issue as I'm not afraid of repairing old electronics. I'm a DIY type of person so replacing worn belts or re-capping a power supply is no big deal to me.

Just got done listening to some tapes I haven't played in about 10 years, and the sound quality really amazed me. That's why I really want to get a nice tape deck. Don't laugh, one of the tapes I found was Baha Men's "Who Let the Dogs Out" and at silly volume levels there was no sign of harshness or digital fatigue. For a brief moment I turned up the volume to 0db and could hear the tape hiss, but even then it wasn't painful to listen to. Just really, really loud.

Polkersince85 · February 2012

Many people laugh at cassettes now. Back in January I tweeked up a vintage 10wpc EL-84 intergrated to give to my son who has a one bedroom apartment in Atlanta. He didn't need a big system so I hooked it up to a pair of Roy Allison Mini-Refs that I had laying around. To test it out, I plugged in my Dragon and popped a Roy Oribson tape in and hit play. I was amazed at the sound. Each individual background singer could be picked out. This was off a tape I bought at the thrift store for ten cents. I sat and listened to both sides. Analog is where it's at, whether tape or vinyl.

Tour2ma · February 2012

In my experience looking for the deck you used to record your Cassettes is worthwhile. But then most of my experience was with a Sony TC134D, one of the first mass produced Dolby B decks at the dawn of home audio quality cassette recording. My original Sony aged very poorly and I went through a couple of replacements that really didn't track my old cassettes well.

If as in my case the above is not practical, then look for a deck with adjustable tracking. I finally settled on a 90's model Aiwa (F600 IIRC) that did it all. With Dolby C and HX Pro, it could even duplicate CD's faithfully... of course that'd defeat the OP's purpose... :cheesygrin:

Roy Allison is a name you don't see too often anymore... Besides being an AR mainstay amny of his Allison Acoustics' designs were beautiful on the eyes and ears...

heiney9 · February 2012

Polkersince85 wrote: »

Many people laugh at cassettes now. Back in January I tweeked up a vintage 10wpc EL-84 intergrated to give to my son who has a one bedroom apartment in Atlanta. He didn't need a big system so I hooked it up to a pair of Roy Allison Mini-Refs that I had laying around. To test it out, I plugged in my Dragon and popped a Roy Oribson tape in and hit play. I was amazed at the sound. Each individual background singer could be picked out. This was off a tape I bought at the thrift store for ten cents. I sat and listened to both sides. Analog is where it's at, whether tape or vinyl.

To be absolutely fair, the DRAGON isn't your everyday ordinary cassette deck. Try it on a run of the mill deck and I doubt you'd be so amazed.

To the OP, if cassettes sound so much better than your cd's, you have other issues in your rig and or your room.

H9

Serendipity · February 2012

Uhm, maybe because I don't have a multi-thousand dollar CDP or transport/DAC?

If I hooked up a tube Jolida, Shanling, or other high-end CDP, I'm sure the sound would be much better.

Heck my VHS decks cost more than my CDP, the JVC S-VHS VCR was $1200.

Serendipity · February 2012

heiney9 wrote: »

To be absolutely fair, the DRAGON isn't your everyday ordinary cassette deck. Try it on a run of the mill deck and I doubt you'd be so amazed.

To the OP, if cassettes sound so much better than your cd's, you have other issues in your rig and or your room.

H9

Keep in mind that a good number of these cassettes were of myself performing in large auditoriums. So the recording quality varies based on what was used to record them. At one point, a neighbor recorded one performance for me on a portable and dubbed it onto a regular TDK D-90 cassette. Some of the better recordings were on Type II (CrO2) cassettes.

I don't have any CDs of myself performing.

heiney9 · February 2012

According to your first post you are interested in a Nak Dragon, why not take that $700-1K and spend it on a real digital front end? That money is MUCH better spent there than on a dead format. Pre-recorded tapes sucked when they were brand new out of the package, anything now has to be positively awful. Pre-recorded cassettes were never designed to last more than a couple hundred plays. The tape formulation was cheap and actually could be harmful to a higher end deck and the shells were way too flimsy for any kind of accurate tracking, etc.....

H9

heiney9 · February 2012

Serendipity wrote: »

Keep in mind that a good number of these cassettes were of myself performing in large auditoriums. So the recording quality varies based on what was used to record them. At one point, a neighbor recorded one performance for me on a portable and dubbed it onto a regular TDK D-90 cassette. Some of the better recordings were on Type II (CrO2) cassettes.

I don't have any CDs of myself performing.

That's all fine and good to keep something to play one of a kind irreplaceable things. But I'd transfer those to cdr ASAP before they are lost forever.

H9

Serendipity · February 2012

I'm just trying to preserve recordings that have personal nostalgic value and cannot be replaced. The only other way would be to contact other families of performances, etc. and see if they had any recordings of my performances.

There were no tape recorders allowed at Carnegie Hall the day I performed, but I know somebody must have brought one in and recorded the performance. I still have the program, and the names of the other families that performed, maybe someday I will be able to find a recording...

heiney9 · February 2012

Serendipity wrote: »

I'm just trying to preserve recordings that have personal nostalgic value and cannot be replaced. The only other way would be to contact other families of performances, etc. and see if they had any recordings of my performances.

There were no tape recorders allowed at Carnegie Hall the day I performed, but I know somebody must have brought one in and recorded the performance. I still have the program, and the names of the other families that performed, maybe someday I will be able to find a recording...

Put them on cdr, ASAP and they will be preserved forever. It's a very simple process, a little time consuming but if they are that important to you then I'm sure you won't mind.

H9

Serendipity · February 2012

Which CD-R deck would you recommend? Sony RCD-W500C? Or one of the professional units from Tascam?

heiney9 · February 2012

Umm......tape deck you have now to your computer. You don't need a cdr deck to put it on cd, in fact you can record it to a hard drive and leave it there if you want.

tonyb · February 2012

http://chicago.craigslist.org/wcl/eld/2814590860.html

This may be up your alley for what your looking for.

Serendipity · February 2012

I take it the quality of the sound card matters, right? If so then out of the following:

1. HP Digital Entertainment Center z560
2. Apple Mac Mini 2010

I assume the dedicated sound card of the HP vs. the onboard audio of the Mac should be better?

heiney9 · February 2012

It does to a point, unless you want to make an audiophile recording.

I don't know anything about those, but I'm sure if you GOOGLE each one you'll get all the info you need. Be sure to over analyze it to death. I simply gave you a much better solution to preserving your nostalgic recordings rather than leaving them on cassette which will be compromised, and depending on how old they are now, are probably already starting to deteriorate.

I have preserved a lot of old cassettes via the soundcard on my computer. They turned out perfect and my soundcard at the time wasn't anything special. I'm in the process of transfereing some old VHS to DVD for preservation. That's a bit more complicated and time consuming.

H9

Serendipity · February 2012

I know. Looks like the HP won, as it has RCA's on the back made for recording whereas the Mac has a silly 1/8" input jack. I'm just going to save them as WAV files and then burn to CD-R.

heiney9 · February 2012

That's what I would do and have done. It works surprisingly well actually.

In order to keep if from being one large single WAV, you'll have to create a table of contents and figure out manually where your track "marks" need to be if you want to be able to access each song individually on the cdr. For me, that was the time consuming part and the fact that it has to be transfered in real time. A 90 min cassette takes 90 minutes to transfer, etc.

H9

Serendipity · February 2012

That's no problem. I kept the original programs given out during the performances, so I know where to start the recording and exactly where I need it. There was a lot of "wasted space" on the original tape from adjusting the piano bench, audience clapping, etc. that I can omit. A 90 minute tape then becomes 5 minutes or so because I only performed once or so per recording.

jon s · February 2012

do NOT get a Sony cassette deck. Most of their high end stuff used a dual capstan tape transport which is a real pain to align. I had three units and they all exhibit the same problems.
1. they left a crease along the center of the tape.
2. the record/playback heads were misaligned so that tapes from other recorders sounded muffled.

The best cassette decks were the Nakamichis... Nothing could touch them. The only problem now is that all these cassette decks are going to be really old. The decks had a LOT of moving parts and belts, clutches, etc. The moving parts will be getting brittle, the heads will be worn, the belts will break and the clutches will be slipping. I know, I used to work on some. Getting parts now will be very difficult in many cases. Good luck.

Tour2ma · February 2012

heiney9 wrote: »

To the OP, if cassettes sound so much better than your cd's, you have other issues in your rig and or your room.

Rig maybe, but room? How does that figure?

Serendipity wrote: »

Heck my VHS decks cost more than my CDP, the JVC S-VHS VCR was $1200.

LOL... as with my old $1100 Zenith. Effer is built like a tank...

Serendipity wrote: »

Which CD-R deck would you recommend?

I nabbed a Phillips' CD-R off of Craigslist years ago that is sweet. Going with the outfit that invented the medium seemed logical.

Serendipity · February 2012

Tour2ma wrote: »

LOL... as with my old $1100 Zenith. Effer is built like a tank...

I have the JVC HR-S7000U. One of the heaviest VCR's I have ever seen.

Drop this on someone and it will HURT!

Pics below...

http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?126413-Jvc-hr-s7000u

TECHNOKID · February 2012

Personally, I'd much prefer to do cassette transfert from quality gear such as the Tascam CDR over any computer. You have to get the proper gear for the job, the main task of a computer is far from being quality audio recording. A good CDR such as the Tascam can be had in the area of 300$ nowadays due to smaller recorders being available and more popular such as the smaller Marrantz CDR. More convenient and versatile but IMO, not as good quality as a good ole Tascam CDR. However, I'd move tapes to CDs with a Marrantz CDR way before I'd do it on a computer any time of the day. An option might be to look if you can rent one (Tascam) from a local proffesional audio shop?

Fongolio · February 2012

fanny.ezra78 reported for sapm

Tour2ma · February 2012

Tour2ma wrote: »

I finally settled on a 90's model Aiwa (F600 IIRC) that did it all. With Dolby C and HX Pro, it could even duplicate CD's faithfully...

Meant Dolby S... The ultimate Dolby noise reduction system that came very late in the cassette life cycle.

George Grand · February 2012

I had one of those Aiwa 600 jobs. Nice machine until the computer brain crapped out. Maybe it was a 660.

Hey Ken, I got a pair of those Allison Mini's also. I was lost in the area with my wife and girls in the car, trying to find some relatives of ours up there in Mass. Drove right by the "RA Labs" factory/warehouse, pulled a U, and left the girls in the car while I browsed around inside. Ended up with a pair of the Mini for $224.

mhardy6647 · February 2012

"up there in Mass", eh?
Next time you're "up there in Mass", you oughta stop by...

cnh · February 2012

Newer AIWA, AKAI, and TEAC (80s-early 90s) made some very decent three head cassette decks. Maybe not Dragon status but good enough for the tapes you have. You'd be surprised just how good some of these sound. I am currently grading papers and listening to an LP cassette recording of Glass's soundtrack for the Mishima film on a pair of B.A. A100s and my 20 year old tweaked AIWA. Can you say "nice". Very nice!

I started out on cassettes as a grad student but could NEVER afford something like a Dragon. lol. So I went mid-fi and I was, am still quite happy. Although as Brock says, a nice CDP or transport and DAC will do "wonders" for your system with CDs. I can barely listen to anything but a Tube CDP anymore! Unless it's a cheaper CDP on Vintage gear which blunts the high end digital glare.

cnh

Polkersince85 · February 2012

George Grand wrote: »

Drove right by the "RA Labs" factory/warehouse, pulled a U, and left the girls in the car while I browsed around inside. Ended up with a pair of the Mini for $224.

I drove by my local Salvation Army store where they had a minty looking pair for $14, but it was 1/2 price Sat. afternoon so I got change back from a 10 spot. Not too bad sounding little speakers.

madmax · February 2012

Maybe a little off topic but you could always record from the cassettes to hi-fi VCR. I use the Sony CD recorder and it makes my vinyl sound exactly like the vinyl but through my CD player.

Cassette Deck?

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