What am I missing?

F

FrankD

New member
I'm doing some very basic recording of a sax playing along with a midi file, and not getting as good a result as I think I should.

Setup: sax via EV PL95 mic into Mackie 408S mixer. Yamaha synth output into another channel of same mixer. All input sensitivites optimized, channel and master EQ basically flat w/some high end boost. The output of the mixer section (not the power amp) goes into a portable Marantz tape deck. Heads have been cleaned, demag'd etc.

The playbacks sound OK on the Marantz, but when I pop the cassette (CrO2) into my stereo or car, the levels are low, and the high end is really lacking, making it sound like there's a blanket over the speakers.

I've tried pushing the record level and mixer output levels past the point of distortion, and still can't get a hotter signal. Ditto w/maxing the EQ.

Besides trying a metal tape, I'm stumped. Any ideas?
 
I am thinking you need some compression on that mo-fo. I know you lose 10db on mixdown but i dunno about the way you are doing it. Try using compression between the mixer and the tape deck. See if that works. I could be way off here. Help me out somebody.
-thomas
 
You are just experiencing the normal problems associated with the Cassette format! Most cassette recorders will play back a tape that was recorded on the same deck just fine. But try to play the same tape on another machine and it's hit or miss! This is due to the mis-alignment of the tiny tape heads and guide rollers on a cassette. You have to pay big bucks to get a "Professional Mastering Cassette deck".
(I don't know of any Pro's who would trust a cassette for anything permanent) You can align the recording heads, and adjust the Bias voltage of the recording/playback amplifiers inside the machine. I have tried this and screwed up a few recorders myself! You really need a test tape with Odb hi/low/mid frequency signals to play back and adjust your recorder accordingly.... nuff said?

Try a few different decks, borrow or buy a new one. Mabye it's your car stereo's deck that's messed up?

Sincerely;

Dom Franco
 
That makes sense. So if I record to mini disc instead of cassette, I should be able to get an acceptable signal level on the MD, since I've eliminated the mechanical problem.

Can anyone elaborate on the pitfalls, if any, of recording to MD?
 
Sorry I just got here, but...is it possible you were recording with Dolby and playing it back without? That alone would explain this problem.
 
Good theory, but not the case. Didn't record or playback in Dolby, or Dubly as they say in "Spinal Tap"
 
It's a bit mysterious to me too. But when I first starting mixing cassette tapes, I also had bad results on the car stereo. By any chance, are you listening to the Marantz on headphones? Before I got good monitor speakers, it took me a long time to figure out how to set EQ so that things would sound good on random cassette players and it was tons harder when I attempted to mix with headphones.

You sound like you've covered all the other bases, but this is partly just to make sure...some decks can't properly handle CrO2 tapes because they don't have enough bias to record on them, and some can't play them back correctly (although that's less likely these days)...in either case, you sometimes have to flip a switch to set bias manually.

Recording on Minidisc will get some data compression that some folks dislike, but the end result is generally better than cassette. Of course, at some point you'll still probably want to mix down to cassette.
 
For those of you following the continuing saga of my home recording experiments, I switced to a Sony JE520 mini-disc recorder this weekend. Still mixing guitar and sax thru the Mackie, then into the MD. I did jack up the analog record level, which will come into play later.

Initial playback of the MD thru the PA was astounding. It's quite a leap from tape.

After doing a few tunes on the MD, I hooked it up to my stereo's cassette deck to dub a tape. Found that the signal output level of the MD was way hotter than my CD deck, for example. Had to turn the record level down to 2 (usually use 4-5 to tape CDs) to keep from pegging the meters. The resulting tape was good, but again, the signal was a lot weaker than recording a CD on the same deck. Signal to noise was still good, as the tape sounds OK, you just have to turn it up.

I think I may have brought this on myself by pumping up the record level on the MD as mentioned above, so I'm going to try it again at the default level.

Thanks for all the suggestions, etc. I think the comment about compression is especially true.
 
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