234 VS 238 (tracks width effect on quality)?

IronWine

Member
Hola !

So to make it short
both the 234 and the 238 got some great specs and lots of love in the analog 'scene'. but one issue that hasn't been adressed afaik is the significant difference in track(s) width use on both machine.

the 234 uses the 4 tracks on the cassette just as any other fourtrack.
but the 238 divides the tape into 8 tracks, that means half of the tape surface area for a given task, compared to the 234.

thats, basically, as if i woul'd record at 1 7/8 ips ..half of the surface area. (not quit, as theres other factors regarding tape speed, but you get my point eh)


Has anyone got some experience putting these two machines head to head, or can shed some light over the facts? how's the relationship between track width to quality can be explained?


have a good one folks
 
I don't know those machines, but I avoid high track counts. It is amazing what they did with that. I have two open reel 4-channel, but prefer going to a disk recorder and then to 2-track tape. There, I get my 1/8-inch track width. You should be able to hear track width if the electronics are any good
 
I've not used these machines but I've heard you can achieve pretty good results from 8 tracks on cassette. You could write a paper about the effect of track width, but in a nutshell, my understanding is that if you halve the track width you cut the S/N ratio by 3dB. There shouldn't be any effect on frequency response. The main problem is the increased chance of dropouts due to the reduced magnetic surface area. dbx can cope with the 3dB S/N drop well enough but in my experience with the 244 dropouts are magnified by dbx and this is incredibly frustrating. If you have really good quality tape, I don’t think there would be much sonic difference at the end of the day, so long as everything is well set up. I’ve found I can eliminate dropouts using type I tape (Maxell UR) on my 244 after re-biasing and would like someone to try this on an 8-track!
 
thanks Findlay for your awesome input! iv'e learned somthin' today . yes, freq response was my first concern. the S/N ratio is important, but one of the fact i turned to analog recordings is the noise :) and the 238 seems really well build so i'd think they used the best parts to make the recordings as good as possible.

i have the 238 i got off ebay with the remote control. suffers from the famous capstan issue. waiting for some funds and it's off to the tech. woul'd love to make some test recordings head to head with my other fourtracks.
 
Well, they moved that same small sound to open reel and I see no reason to go there, either. I don't want to sound like I'm knocking it, as I love cassettes. But, we have a choice of what tape fidelity we think best meets the need. So, what's the best use of tape width. We had consumer 8-track before compact cassette.

"The Stereo 8 version doubled the amount of programming on the tape by providing eight total tracks, usually comprising four programs of two tracks each. Lear touted this as a great improvement, because much more music could be held inside a standard cartridge housing, but in practice this resulted in a slight loss of sound quality and an increase in background noise from the narrower tape tracks".
 
I went directly from a tascam 246 4 track to a 238 8 track. I noticed no difference in fidelity. As a matter of fact, i was thoroughly amazed with how good the 8 track sounded.

Edit: keep in mind my 246 was used, and my 238 I bought brand new. :)
 
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I've compared my 244/246 machines with my 688 (which has the same transport as the 238) and to me there's a difference in both headroom and overall frequency response. The dropout issue is another legit worry when using 8-track cassette recorders, but it's not really a problem if you're using quality tapes (although I did have a problem once with a Maxell MS which is supposed to be made especially for "studio use.")

I know that the 238 has a couple different models with different noise reduction right? One with dbx and another with Dolby S or something? Anyways, that could make a difference in overall sound but not all that much. My whole thing is that I have to work harder to get a good sound out of the 688 but when it works it really has a special character to it. 4-track does too for that matter.

If yr 238 needs a new capstan direct drive motor, that's gonna be a tough one. Hope you know a good tech that has a spare or knows how to fix the one you have if you do decide to fix it up.
 
I've had numerous 4-tracks and a 488 (the tape format ought to have generally similar performance with the possible exception of wow & flutter... 238 has a DD capstan) and you might wish to know that the signal-to-noise ratio on cassette 8-track is absolutely unusable without some form of noise reduction. With the dbx in the "breathing" artifacts are screamingly obvious if you solo a bass track or something. [On a regular cassette 3.75ips 4-track like a 246 or something you can just about get away with using no NR if you compress and print stuff really hot]

If you print sine wave test tones they come back notably rough sounding (modulation noise) just due to the small number of oxide particles the signal is registered on.

It also does this weird thing where, due to the narrow tracks and staggered/interleaved head, loud bass stuff printed on tracks 1-4 can have a pre-echo on 5-8 in the form of the usually expected LF crosstalk (but displaced in time about 50msec.) Becomes a post-echo 1-4 if you print the bass stuff on 5-8, so I always did it that way. This artifact is mostly eliminated by the NR in any case.

That said, none of the problems with cassette 8-track, other than not being able to cut and splice the tape, ever really bothered me that much, and I still use it for demos and field recordings and stuff when I don't want to haul out a 1" reel. The sounds I want to record are mostly crunchy and synthetic so YMMV if you're trying to do anything "nice" sounding. This was made entirely on a 488: https://slugbug.bandcamp.com/album/pointless-journey
 
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