Just heard "Dolby S" ... not bad.

Dolby-C was finicky as hell. It sounded bad when played back without proper decoding (though not nearly as bad as dbx). In my experience Dolby-C tapes really only sounded good when played back on the same deck that recorded them. Back in the late 80s/early 90s I had a Nakamichi CR-1A, and when I recorded and played back on a good high bias or metal tape in Dolby C the playback was extremely excellent (though not in the same league as Dolby S on the Sony ES deck I got in the mid-90s). However, in my car and in other decks the sound was nowhere near as good. I used it for a few years and then went back to Dolby-B. It didn't help that the CR-1A didn't have HX Pro encoding.

 

And you are correct. Dolby S was a consumer market adaptation of SR optimized for slow speed, narrow track formats like cassettes.

 

Yeah, my Dolby C deck was stolen and not replaced - I moved on to CDs, and used my uncles old Mitsubishi deck with only Dolby B to make tapes - but even when I had the opportunity (with friends decks, at college), I never used Dolby C again...

 

I picked up a bunch of tapes at a yard sale recently. Among them were a Prince greatest hits tape and the soundtrack from the show Friends, both commercial cassettes with Dolby S encoded. Again, this happened near the end of the cassettes reign, so there aren't many of them. Listening to the Friends cassette now. Not bad.*

*For a commercial high-speed duplicated cassette.

 

Never had it, but it, as others have said, turned up too late in the day. Technology had moved on and the time for tape was ending.

DAT was another late arrival that never took off (though it was a musician's and bootlegger's delight and scared the record labels) that deserved praise.

 

DAT although having "good" sound quality was hampered by poor head life and tape issues. I had a DAT deck in my Cougar XR7. I preferred a well working cassette deck honestly.

But my TOTL Dolby S cassette decks still knock my socks off with their sound and lack of "issues" even in 2017. It's rather amazing what so little tape real-estate can accomplish with a killer deck.

 

DAT's real benefit was the removal of generational loss. So you have your copy, then you have another copy, and another and they're all the same. Not so with regular cassettes.

Tape swappers would well up at a recording of indeterminate origin of some classic show...on a fourth generation tape. Then again, the original recording could be anything from great to dire.

 

I always used pro machines, but from what I recall they crippled domestic DAT machines with SCMS, so you could only clone one generation, it's all a bit hazy, but I do recall getting tapes to transfer with copy protection built in due to the deck used, I can't remember whether my Tascams could override it or I just kept those transfers analogue.

 

For a lot of folks though generational copies were not a fact of their situation, as many folks just made single generation copies. So DAT had little to offer in that regard. I had zero use for DAT.

 

Yes, one more strike against DAT.

 

Let's do a what if for a minute. What if optical disc media (CD, CD-R, DVD, DVD-R(W), etc. ) never came to fruition. DAT would have flourished because of all the reasons that digital media did. It would, however, have never been capable of what we call hi-rez today because it was too small to do anything other than 48 KS.p.s. / 16 bits and still have a reasonable shot at having a complete album on one cassette. Weather it is digital of analog the size of the cassette limits how much fidelity you get and still have a reasonable amount of content.

 

They made 16/96 DAT machines back in the early nineties so although I agree that the cassette size was a limiting factor I'm pretty sure that if the Japanese manufacturers had carried on and invested all out in R & D we may well have got an equivalent to hi res, plus they may have cracked the fixed head problem.

 

Well, good for you. But it wasn't you I was referring to - you've already made your needs and requirements clear - but a different sector.

 

The final cassette deck I ever owned was a Dolby S Pioneer. Nice deck but not built as well as my old favorite Teac I had many years before that.

 

Your memory of that period is better than mine.

 

Barely, but I did lust after a 96kHz capable Pioneer my local shop had on display, pretty sure there was another company that produced 96kHz capable DAT machines as well, but which one I can't recall.

 

Dolby S was a consumer version of Dolby SR designed for cassette use. Based on Dolby SR. But different.

 

From Clinton Heylin's excellent book on the bootleg industry, the BPI and the RIAA were VERY keen to crush DAT when it came out. Much like the "home taping is killing music" campaign of the 80s, they saw DAT as a threat to their profits.

Never used it, by then, CDs and LPs were enough for me and cassette was coming to an end in my system.

 

Tascam made a 24 bit DAT machine, just so ya know.

 

Over 98% of Dolby C issues were caused by machines which should never have had Dolby C NR to begin with, and poor if not outright careless alignment and setup issues. Dolby Laboratories wisely tightened up licensee requirements for tape machine frequency response accuracy and mechanical and electrical standards when Dolby S was launched before Dolby Laboratories would allow Dolby S NR to be offered. For the record, the only machines I have ever heard where Dolby C was set up correctly were Nakamichis and the Studer/ReVox machines in the cassette world. There was a period in time where cassette deck manufacturers but few got sloppy on mechanical and electrical alignment, and quality control. Dolby must be aligned and set up correctly to work correctly. Any machine which is not set up correctly will never function as intended.

 

Given how unreliable DAT proved over the longterm, maybe they did us all a favor. Then again, if more DAT decks had been manufactured and sold, maybe they'd have worked more of the bugs out...

 

That's completely true, but most non-Dolby-adjustable Japanese decks were set up correctly for using Dolby B and C with Maxell UD.

 

Probably. All history now though.

 

Do you have a picture of that? I don't think I've ever seen the Ford DAT player. I'm guessing it was made by Sony, like the CD players...

 

No pic, 1989 XR7, factory DAT.