Digital too analog. tell me if you like my idea.

[SouthSIDE Glen]

I don't get the point of the OP's process, but cassette tape can sound quite good on its own...

Done right, yeah, cassette can sound decent enough for most folks. Certainly far better than the worst format ever created for audio, which was the 8-track cartridge tape.

But it's the first part of your sentence that counts here, IMHO; I mean, who would purposely want to recreate the sound of even a decent cassette? Sounding acceptable or perfectly fine for most folks does not necessarily mean that it has a sound *to be desired*, or even a nostalgic "warmth".

My Chevy Impala is a perfectly acceptable automobile, but I don't think it's a *goal* that any auto engineer wishes to strive for or recreate.

G.

 

[NL5]

Argh! you guys are killing me here...this is my bread and butter...surely there must be some format that is worse..? Like mp3?

Are you kidding? A 320 kbps MP3 is almost impossible to tell from a 16/44.1 CD file. Cassettes sound like shit. Period.

 

[heatmiser]

Are you kidding? Cassettes sound like shit. Period.

Ummm...no I wasn't...and they don't

 

[Seafroggys]

To be honest, I never thought cassettes sounded bad. They don't have the pops and crackle of vinyl.

 

[heatmiser]

Done right, yeah, cassette can sound decent enough for most folks. Certainly far better than the worst format ever created for audio, which was the 8-track cartridge tape.

But it's the first part of your sentence that counts here, IMHO; I mean, who would purposely want to recreate the sound of even a decent cassette? Sounding acceptable or perfectly fine for most folks does not necessarily mean that it has a sound *to be desired*, or even a nostalgic "warmth".

My Chevy Impala is a perfectly acceptable automobile, but I don't think it's a *goal* that any auto engineer wishes to strive for or recreate.

G.

Fair enough...and I wouldn't presume to try to get in the head of an auto or audio engineer, but to the listener (or driver in your analogy) there absolutely is the possibility of real desirable, nostalgic qualities to older audio mediums or automobiles despite any statistical shortcomings.

I have an old volvo wagon, and in many ways I much prefer it to the '06 XC90 I test drove 2 days ago. This despite the fact that an auto engineer might say that the newer model is a "better" car.

I think the ceiling is lower with cassette than most mediums in terms of noise, frequency response, etc., but there seem to be other qualities that can make up for those deficiencies.

Agreed on the 8-track thing .

Sorry for the thread-jacking !

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

To be honest, I never thought cassettes sounded bad. They don't have the pops and crackle of vinyl.

And on a decent recorder such as an upper-line Teac or Nakamichi with proper bias settings, a decent chrome tape (Maxell UDXLII was usually my choice), proper recording gain (depending upon the deck), and NO Dolby NR whatsoever (dbx NR was nice if you could find it), one could get a very faithful reproduction for anybody who didn't play the part of purist audiophiliac (and even then we were able to fool them once in a while.)

But (and this is just an IMHO, not any kind of sermon on the mount) as far as imparting a warmth or nostalgic sound that would be desirable to emulate, I'd have a hard time buying that too may folks would actually *prefer* to emulate the limitations of the cassette sound - which never really had any kind of positive "color" that anyone I know could identify - over much of anything other than maybe the sound of a 8-track cartridge....

Hey, I think I just stumbled upon an idea! I think I'll made a CD that four different times during the album does a fade right in the middle of the song followed the loud "ker-chunk" of the heads moving to the next track pair and the motor reversing direction. Real 8-track nostalgia! Add in an emulation plug for a Craig 5" full range speaker unhoused and sitting on the rear deck, and it'll sound "dynamite"

G.

 

[TeyshaBlue]

Hey, I think I just stumbled upon an idea! I think I'll made a CD that four different times during the album does a fade right in the middle of the song followed the loud "ker-chunk" of the heads moving to the next track pair and the motor reversing direction. Real 8-track nostalgia! Add in an emulation plug for a Craig 5" full range speaker unhoused and sitting on the rear deck, and it'll sound "dynamite"

G.

That would be the "Craig PowerPlay" plug. Make sure the speaker lights up when it hits 10 watts just like the ones on the deck of my old Mustang used to.

 

[Bguzaldo]

I did some research on the whole "analog warmth" vs "Digital" issue and my attraction to analog is simply that its less artificial than Digital. Of course both processes are artificial in a sense but at least when you have a tape recording, if im not mistaken, its not at 44,100 samples per second. Your getting every nuance of the perfomance, the air moving thru the room and whatnot, and that's what drew me to tape. When you record everything in digital right from the start your losing those nuances and then gain nothing by transferring to tape, you just end up losing what you gained digitally. I can say this because I had the exact same Idea a few months ago. I got a reel to reel from a friend and used it to master my digital tracks. While it was a cool "effect" it didn't better my recordings totally. It's a cool thought and at least you're thinking. Keep thinking and keep experimenting.

-Barrett

 

[MCI2424]

here is what i do to get that analog warmth from my digital setup. i have a boss br1200-cd i use it to its fullest. after the tracks are laid down, i mix it till im satisfied everything is sitting in the right place. after that, i run the line outs into two analog eq's and two analog cassette decks. i use Maxell Professional Industrial C90 tapes. i play the recording back through the first eq ( set flat,) and into the first recording tape deck. then i take the recording on that first cassette (of the already mixed song,) and run the line outs of the first tape deck to the second. record again. now i have two tapes of the song. were now seeing alot of analog warmth. then i run the line outs of the second deck through the second eq ( adjust eq too taste,) and back into the line inputs of my boss br1200. that's it. really simple and adds a whole lot of that old school analog warmth and vibe. then after all is said and done i can master in my br1200 or ill export to protools for mastering, and use my choice of mastering plug-ins. im a knobs and buttons kind of guy. as the others have said ITS NOT WHAT YOU HAVE BUT WHAT YOU DO WITH WHAT YOU HAVE.

the eq's are 1. 1980's marantz 7 band stereo eq
2. early 90's Mitsubishi 7 band stereo eq

the tape decks are 1. a 1980's marantz dual tape deck
2. a 90's Mitsubishi dual tape deck


also, please let me know what you all think of this type of setup. it has done wonders for me.


go to tapeop.com for a free subscription to one of the best recording magazines on the planet. i live on that mag and it doesnt cost me anything. great for budget conscious producers.

To each his own I say!

 

[Tim Gillett]

And on a decent recorder such as an upper-line Teac or Nakamichi with proper bias settings, a decent chrome tape (Maxell UDXLII was usually my choice), proper recording gain (depending upon the deck), and NO Dolby NR whatsoever (dbx NR was nice if you could find it), one could get a very faithful reproduction for anybody who didn't play the part of purist audiophiliac (and even then we were able to fool them once in a while.)

This is is only a side issue here Glen, but a word of defence for Dolby NR even on cassette.

Dolby B and C got a bad rap among amateurs because they were rarely told that unless you were fussy about machine and tape record/play alignment you risked artifacts. Listen carefully to later commercially prerecorded Dolbyised cassettes and there is often (though very brief) a full set of line up tones right at the start of the tape, on all four tracks.
How many Dolby encoded amateur recordings on cassette included lineup tones too? How many even understood the value of it for later retrieval?

I work with old recordings for digitisation. It's possible, though sometimes time consuming, to decode old Dolbyised cassette tapes even when they were never recorded in calibration and would have not tracked properly even at the time. The line up tones do take the guesswork out of it though.

Today we're used to digital recorder signal to noise of well over 100db.
With cassettes it was maybe 50db without NR and 60b to 70db with Dolby B or C. In its day that was a huge improvement and often the difference between a clean recording and one with annoying distortion/hiss/print through.

I'd prefer to be given for digital remastering an old, irreplaceable Dolbyised tape than one with no Dolby encoding, because even though more work is involved to avoid NR artifacts on playback, the result will usually be considerably less tape noise than without Dolby encoding. Of course some recordists never understood NR and continued to peg out the VU meters to get over the tape hiss that NR was there to reduce!

By contrast, the standard advice often offered to people in some amateur recording situations such as oral history was "dont use Dolby!" Today there are countless such recordings in process of digitisation which are hissier/distorted/ print through, and sometimes indecipherable, than if they had been Dolby encoded.

What is often poorly understood today with the plethora of digital denoising plugins available is that the real "denoising" in systems like Dolby and dbx was done at the encode recording stage. Decoding just gets rid of the encode artifacts. The best "after the fact" denoising plugin in the world cant hold a candle to genuine compansion, whatever the brand or type. You cant "retrieve" information that never made its way onto the tape.

Cheers Tim

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Dolby B and C got a bad rap among amateurs because they were rarely told that unless you were fussy about machine and tape record/play alignment you risked artifacts. Listen carefully to later commercially prerecorded Dolbyised cassettes and there is often (though very brief) a full set of line up tones right at the start of the tape, on all four tracks.
How many Dolby encoded amateur recordings on cassette included lineup tones too? How many even understood the value of it for later retrieval?

The problem is that there was no way provided on the consumer machines to do anything with such tones, whether it be generate them or align to them. So, if those were necessary for proper B or C use, then that renders the "half-a-system" they provide of just selecting whether encode/decode was on or off without being able to calibrate it pretty much useless, doesn't it? (It was hard enough to find a deck with a bias calibration, Dolby calibration was pretty much unheard of, at least on a consumer level.)

I will say that Dolby C was a bit of an improvement over Dolby B, but without being able to lab-calibrate the Dolby signal (something I never got to try or had a chance to actully do, to be honest), I'd still rather just make sure I picked the best tape to match the bias calibration for that machine, or just stick with the venerable UDXLII or (later on) XLII-S if I didn't have the luxury time for testing tapes on a particular model, set up the incoming gain setting to sound best for that machine, and record it un-encoded. But I'm not saying that's written in stone, I heard some good stuff on Dolby C-encoded tapes; just my personal preference.

I work with old recordings for digitisation. It's possible, though sometimes time consuming, to decode old Dolbyised cassette tapes even when they were never recorded in calibration and would have not tracked properly even at the time. The line up tones do take the guesswork out of it though.

You didn't really expect me to anticipate or plan for that when I was making my cassette demo copies back in 1982, did you? "Hey, Glen, make sure you use Dolby because those digital archivists of the 21st Century will find their jobs made easier. At least that's what they'll be discussing on the Internet." Me: "Digi-what?? Inter-What?? Hell, in the 21st Century they'll be too busy with their pocket-fusion-powered flying cars to give a whit about my cassette tapes. (JUST KIDDING! Not about the flying cars though.)

What is often poorly understood today with the plethora of digital denoising plugins available is that the real "denoising" in systems like Dolby and dbx was done at the encode recording stage. Decoding just gets rid of the encode artifacts. The best "after the fact" denoising plugin in the world cant hold a candle to genuine compansion, whatever the brand or type. You cant "retrieve" information that never made its way onto the tape.

I'm all for genuine quality compansion, which is why I was a fan of the old dbx NR system. Unfortunately it never took off on the consumer level the way Dolby did. The biggest problem there was that with the dbx you had to have the decoder end for it to sound even halfway decent. With Dolby, however - from the standpoint of Joe Average Listener who didn't know any better - you could encode in Dolby, play back without it and Mr. J.A.L. thought the HF harshness sounded even better because his playback system had no HF response to begin with.

I'm pissed. Where are the flying cars? They promised us flying cars by now.

G.

 

[starbuck26]

I had this really great idea the other day to build a wood-burning car to solve global warming. While drawing the blueprints I remembered that deforestation is bad. So I tweaked my schematic to produce a car that runs on Hay.

But then my bass player called the idea "horseshit."

 

[noisedude]

I miss Walters.

He'd know the right question to ask that'd help us get to the bottom of this creamy analogue warmth issue.

 

[Tim Gillett]

The problem is that there was no way provided on the consumer machines to do anything with such tones, whether it be generate them or align to them. So, if those were necessary for proper B or C use, then that renders the "half-a-system" they provide of just selecting whether encode/decode was on or off without being able to calibrate it pretty much useless, doesn't it? (It was hard enough to find a deck with a bias calibration, Dolby calibration was pretty much unheard of, at least on a consumer level.)

I will say that Dolby C was a bit of an improvement over Dolby B, but without being able to lab-calibrate the Dolby signal (something I never got to try or had a chance to actully do, to be honest), I'd still rather just make sure I picked the best tape to match the bias calibration for that machine, or just stick with the venerable UDXLII or (later on) XLII-S if I didn't have the luxury time for testing tapes on a particular model, set up the incoming gain setting to sound best for that machine, and record it un-encoded. But I'm not saying that's written in stone, I heard some good stuff on Dolby C-encoded tapes; just my personal preference.You didn't really expect me to anticipate or plan for that when I was making my cassette demo copies back in 1982, did you? "Hey, Glen, make sure you use Dolby because those digital archivists of the 21st Century will find their jobs made easier. At least that's what they'll be discussing on the Internet." Me: "Digi-what?? Inter-What?? Hell, in the 21st Century they'll be too busy with their pocket-fusion-powered flying cars to give a whit about my cassette tapes. (JUST KIDDING! Not about the flying cars though.) I'm all for genuine quality compansion, which is why I was a fan of the old dbx NR system. Unfortunately it never took off on the consumer level the way Dolby did. The biggest problem there was that with the dbx you had to have the decoder end for it to sound even halfway decent. With Dolby, however - from the standpoint of Joe Average Listener who didn't know any better - you could encode in Dolby, play back without it and Mr. J.A.L. thought the HF harshness sounded even better because his playback system had no HF response to begin with.

I'm pissed. Where are the flying cars? They promised us flying cars by now.

G.

Glen, basically, if your deck wouldnt make play back its own Dolby recording without audible artifacts, it wasnt aligned to the tape well enough. Like many others users, and I hardly blame you, you switched the Dolby off and put up with the hiss. But your deck still wasnt well aligned, Dolby or not. The Dolby mistracking just exaggerated the misalignment you chose to put up with without Dolby.

Dolby calibration in practice was nothing more than a machine that recorded and played back flat, with unity gain. Aligning the machine to the tape - the standard professional chore - would have fixed it. The electronic calibration generally didnt drift.

Some later cassette decks had a "bias trim" front panel control which was quite good for trimming a slightly different tape for Dolby tracking. Sadly of the "portastudio" type machines that the sorts of people who frequent these forums might have once used, none that I know of had such a user "bias trim" control. That in my view was a design omission. As a result of the inevitable mistracking, many users switched off the NR whether it was Dolby or dbx.

Sure, Dolby B was a trade off for consumers so that it didnt sound too bad undecoded.
Sure, undecoded, the highs are distorted, but at least they are there! Without encoding they would most likely have been buried in hiss forever. And usually they can be made undistorted via careful decoding. No fancy digital technique. Just care and a good ear.

Cassettes being noisy needed NR the most but for other reasons were the hardest to implement NR well. Still with tight calibration standards and NR they could sound very good. It just took more work.

BTW this really has nothing to do with remastering to digits. I'm talking about analog playback of an analog recording. It's just that remastering to digits is usually the time when the tapes come out of their boxes and these issues arise.

Both Dolby and dbx made well designed compansion systems for pro's and for amateurs. Both more or less required quite accurate recorder-to-tape alignment. Each had its own costs and benefits in different situations. From this distance now, prejudice for one brand against the other seems to me a bit silly.

Cheers Tim

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

With the understanding that this is neither full disagreement nor debate, just "shop talk"...

Glen, basically, if your deck wouldnt make play back its own Dolby recording without audible artifacts, it wasnt aligned to the tape well enough.

I won't dispute that . All I'm saying is that for the average stereo cassette user - which practically by definition meant consumer or early-level prosumer - that's a rather academic point because such folks had no real way or even knowledge to do such alignment. They went down to their local Pacific Stereo, bought a cassette deck that had - at most - two switches; Dolby On/Off and a selector between Dolby B and C. Even *if* a tape had calibration tones on the front of it, and none of the blank tapes one would buy at the same place they bought their decks did, they had no way of taking advantage of those tones without taking their machine to a technician. Sure, some over $300 decks had bias fine adjustment, but it's not much help in calibration if the user is not a technician who is aware of the process, which 99.99% of users of such gear were not.

So what it seems to come down to (IMHO, the way I see it only) is that any system that was that dependent upon such proper aftermarket calibration to function properly is kinda useless. And from what I have heard, except for maybe the best of the cassette decks out there, most Dolby encoding was indeed pretty useless by that definition, because I only rare ever heard a recording that was not adversely affected in it's high-end response by consumer Dolby encoding. And I'm not just talking golden-ear artifacting, I'm talking high end loss easily audible even to Joe Sixpack.

I guess it comes down to I'm not so much knocking the Dolby design on paper, but rather it's real-world implementation.

Like many others users, and I hardly blame you, you switched the Dolby off and put up with the hiss.

Absolutely. because frankly, some hiss down around -55 dBVU or so but a fairly intact (within the limits of the deck and the medium) high end response was a far better trade off than the use of Dolby that resulted in a high end response that made it sound like you were listening with ear plugs in you ears. Hell, in the car, the hiss was so far below the road noise that it was a non-issue. And like I say, with good tape in a half-way decent machine recorded with proper levels for both, and the tape hiss was not all that incredibly awful - at least on par with the vinyl of the time. (Remember, we're not exactly taking a pro medium or pro setup here.)

Sure, Dolby B was a trade off for consumers so that it didnt sound too bad undecoded.
Sure, undecoded, the highs are distorted, but at least they are there! Without encoding they would most likely have been buried in hiss forever.

As implied by my above response, I think "buried in hiss" is rather an overstatement. Perhaps after the tapes have rusted away on their reels or shedded all their useful particles onto the tape heads over time, that Dolby encoding may have helped extend the HF live via it's artificial HF boost. But I can;t recall that many folks - if any at all - that actually looked at or considered cassette as a good archiving or long-term medium. You wanted something that would give you copyable playback for the next year or two maximum, after which the tape would probably be long retired and replaced with new program material anyway.

But for that year, a properly recorded and stored tape would have some hiss, sure, but for all but audiophile or engineering purposes should be perfectly listenable. Of course if you're using some cheap-ass BASF or Realistic ferric tape, or some other rust on a reel formulation, you'd be lucky to get it out to your car before the high end was replaced by a noise floor you needed an escalator to get up to.

Both Dolby and dbx made well designed compansion systems for pro's and for amateurs. Both more or less required quite accurate recorder-to-tape alignment. Each had its own costs and benefits in different situations. From this distance now, prejudice for one brand against the other seems to me a bit silly.

Personally (YMMV), I heard a whole world of difference between the Dolby systems and the dbx system, with dbx being to my ears unquestionably superior - as long as you had the decoder. That was it's big drawback; Dolby could get away with non-decoded playback in many situations, especially on the cheaper decks with horseshit high end to begin with.

G.

 

[Tim Gillett]

Glen, I mostly agree with you. The real world implementation with cassettes was where NR fell down, whereas in pro analog applications either Dolby or dbx (and the careful alignment required plus the associated costs) was just par for the course.

Cheers Tim

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Glen, I mostly agree with you. The real world implementation with cassettes was where NR fell down, whereas in pro analog applications either Dolby or dbx (and the careful alignment required plus the associated costs) was just par for the course.

Also most of the Dolby boxes made for professional use were not using the same Dolby scheme as the consumer B and C circuitry on cassette decks were. The main difference being that Dolby A (or the initial pro version of Dolby NR) was a multiband compander that cost much more than the cheaper HF-broadband B and C, and was worth in in the difference in sound quality. Dolby A was a good match for dbx, but to put Dolby B and dbx in even the same class sure didn't seem right by my ears.

And another real-world detail that hasn't been mentioned uet is that you can adjust bias and calibrate Dolby test tones all you want on the recording deck, but the minute you bring that tape over to another machine for playback - whether it be the mix tape you made to get into your girlfriend's ...er...inner sanctums, or the demo you brought to the college radio station, all Dolby calibration bets are off.

Anyway, this is a HUGE sidetrack off the main thread topic, but fun to re-hash. Now back to the serious stuff: I'm still pissed about the flying cars.



G.

 

[stevieb]

All detractors would do well to remember that the medium was created in 1959, and was originally intended for low-fidelity spoken word- dictation. Also, given the complexity of the shell, it is simply amazing that they were as cheap as were (I once bought some blank cassette tapes that sold for less than I could bought the 4 screws holding the shell together, for! Wow!)

It is truly amazing that such a humble medium could be hot-rodded so much, and still remain affordable.

And for heaven's sake, give the OP a break- there is a HUGE gulf between being honest and truthful with someone, and gleefully stomping on his ideas. Some of you guys should be ashamed of yourselves. In your zeal to appear to be "experts," you forgot to be people.

 

[Tim Gillett]

Actually it was closer to 1963/64.

Cassette recordings could vary hugely in audio quality from abysmal to very respectable. It depended on so many things like the tape, the machine, its condition, whether NR was used, which type of NR and how well aligned the machine was to the tape. The tapes and machine definitely got better over the years.

What I dislike is the generalisations from people who think they know it all. On the one hand here people who bag cassettes because they regard themselves as "professionals" and above all that consumer stuff, and on the other the person who perhaps innocently thinks there is a "vintage teac sound" or something similar.

Audio recorders were just audio recorders. They performed to a certain level of quality. It depended on many factors not least the competence of the persons operating them.

Cheers Tim

 

[jgharding]

I just got a Tascam 122 MKII for free, got a new tape for 25p, and tried sending a master to it. It just sounded shit.

But just running through monitor mode of it, balancing the input output, and recording back into the computer took the edge off the recording, and gave a more central focus to the soundstage. Still stereo, but a different more central feel!

Is this the gain stage of the deck doing this? The overload sounds quite fun too.

You could see it in the waveform too, where the brickwall edges had gone soft, and it never touched a magnetic tape. I've heard you can get this from dolby units too.