rob aylestone
Moderator
I've deliberately put this here because it's a sore topic, and even talking about digital within earshot of the analogue folk causes issues.
I was in trouble recently because my reel to reels didn't perform too well - so I had this idea.
Take some non-commercial music. All recorded by me in Cubase with just a few real instruments bolstering the ones created inside the computer. The 'best' quality I could start with. 48K, 24 bit. I merged 4 tracks each with content that can make digital sound a bit brash, and make analogue hiss in the quiet bits.
What I did was output the audio via line level to a cassette machione, a Tascam 112, a DAT - a Tascam DA-20 and then a Mini Disc machine - a portable HHB Portadisc, and then to the two reel to reels, the Revox and the Tascam 34B. This was clearly performing badly and after a demag, clean and tidy, nothing very much changed - and ch1 is working fine, 2 is less good and 3 and 4 poorer still - even more oddly, switching from source to tape, changes the output as you expect, but NOT the meters. Switch to tape and the meters are dead? I'm thinking that sending it for an overhaul and repair will be wasted money - so I think I might sell it, and get something back and let somebody else invest time and money on it. The Revox with the dodgy brake was fixed pretty esily and that's working fine now.
Listening carefully, the DAT and MD are too close for me to call, the cassette actually beat the Revox I think, and the Tascam R-R was the worst because it's faulty.
The video is long and boring and repetive with the audio clips. What I will do is put the clips on my server so the few that are really interested can download them as wav files, rather than trust Youtube's audio 'adjustments'.
I was in trouble recently because my reel to reels didn't perform too well - so I had this idea.
Take some non-commercial music. All recorded by me in Cubase with just a few real instruments bolstering the ones created inside the computer. The 'best' quality I could start with. 48K, 24 bit. I merged 4 tracks each with content that can make digital sound a bit brash, and make analogue hiss in the quiet bits.
What I did was output the audio via line level to a cassette machione, a Tascam 112, a DAT - a Tascam DA-20 and then a Mini Disc machine - a portable HHB Portadisc, and then to the two reel to reels, the Revox and the Tascam 34B. This was clearly performing badly and after a demag, clean and tidy, nothing very much changed - and ch1 is working fine, 2 is less good and 3 and 4 poorer still - even more oddly, switching from source to tape, changes the output as you expect, but NOT the meters. Switch to tape and the meters are dead? I'm thinking that sending it for an overhaul and repair will be wasted money - so I think I might sell it, and get something back and let somebody else invest time and money on it. The Revox with the dodgy brake was fixed pretty esily and that's working fine now.
Listening carefully, the DAT and MD are too close for me to call, the cassette actually beat the Revox I think, and the Tascam R-R was the worst because it's faulty.
The video is long and boring and repetive with the audio clips. What I will do is put the clips on my server so the few that are really interested can download them as wav files, rather than trust Youtube's audio 'adjustments'.