16 track cassette?

I'd love to share it with you all, but apparently I never digitized any of the project (and the DAT master is long gone), and my only cassette deck (my old Onkyo TA-2058) is finally giving me problems after 35 years of service...capstan belt has worn out. I temporarily found a rubber band that sort of works but there is a fair amount of flutter audible on playback, so either the rubber band is just that bad of a solution, or there are issues with the pinch roller. :(
 
famous beagle said:
Yeah, exactly. I hear some cassette recordings that sound like a hail storm before the music starts, and I don't get it. I guess they're not using the NR and they're setting terrible levels or something. I don't know. But I couldn't produce that much hiss if I tried!
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The 244 has noise reduction on by default, and I don't think you can turn it off. Maybe with one of the jumpers, but I don't think so.
That machine sounds pretty incredible even today, imo. Especially if you only record 4 tracks then dump them into a DAW for mixing/plugins.
 
Yes, the 244 dbx n/r is permanently switched on, but it would t be hard to incorporate switches to control this if desired, but I'm not sure why anybody would want to except for the earlier mentioned need to defeat the dbx on one track for timecode sync purposes.
 
I just found a track diagram for the 238. The record tracks measure up at 0.25mm and the guard tracks at around 0.23mm. Maybe could have 0.125mm record tracks and 0.1mm guards with the 16er?

I guess a less elegant solution would be to have two synced decks within one machine!
 

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I once owned two Tascam 238 machines which were synced together with the Tascam synchroniser...with code on both machines, it gave you 14 tracks. The idea was to keep 'master' tapes from one machine and keep bouncing to the other machine for infinite one or two bounce recordings. The thing is, the sound was significantly different than an open reel recorder....even an MSR16 which probably has the same track width (or smaller). I moved up and up, and now have Fostex G24 machines and the Tascam MSR24...mainly because of availability of 1" tape when I was sourcing them.
 
Yeah the MSR16 would be vastly different than the 238...4x the tape speed and roughly double the track width as compared to cassette 8-track (the 388 and MSR16 track width is roughly the same as 4-track cassette, but the MSR16 operates at 15ips and the 388 at 7.5ips as compared to the 238's 3.75ips transport speed)...not to mention much higher output tape formulations and higher headroom amplifiers on something like the MSR16 compared to cassette tape formulations.
 
sweetbeats said:
Yeah the MSR16 would be vastly different than the 238...4x the tape speed and roughly double the track width as compared to cassette 8-track (the 388 and MSR16 track width is roughly the same as 4-track cassette, but the MSR16 operates at 15ips and the 388 at 7.5ips as compared to the 238's 3.75ips transport speed)...not to mention much higher output tape formulations and higher headroom amplifiers on something like the MSR16 compared to cassette tape formulations.
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I knew it sounded different....now I know why! Cheers Sweets.....not been here in a while.
Al
 
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