Did anyone else think that Dolby NR made sound quality worse back in the day?

I would always record with NR on but always played back off. The sound was so muffled. It wasn't until later with Doly C/D that I found it halfway acceptable. I rather hear the hiss vs having all the life sucked out of the music.

Pre recorded Dolby tapes----forget it. I never had one sound decent with Dolby on

 

Back in the day I thought cassettes, with or without Dolby B, sounded mediocre at best. And if a Dolby B cassette wasn't recorded on the deck it was played back on, I usually turned Dolby off because it was too muffled. Dolby C was even worse.

But after I found a Teac V-970X a few years back, I was blown away that I could record on even Type 1 cassettes (TDK D, Maxell UR) with Dolby B/C and have results that were virtually indistinguishable from the source. I knew there were decks that could do that, I just never thought I'd find one for next to nothing. The V-970X was at or near Teac's top-of-the-line in the late 1980s. To calibrate the deck for recording, I record pink noise and make the necessary adjustments until the source and tape sound identical. What's more is that its azimuth adjustment screws are easily accessible so even pre-recorded tapes can sound great after some fine-tuning. It also has DBX noise reduction but I can never get the source and tape to match up with that. Too many artifacts. Dolby B is the sweet spot for me, not that I'm recording cassettes much these days.

 

Alan Parsons once said that the cassette deck was one of the worst audio inventions ever because of Dolby.

 

The problem with Dolby is not that it didn't work...it did...as long as all of the other variables were equal, from the EQ to the head alignment. And, the compander worked correctly.

The problem with prerecorded tape is that it was duped at high speed on cheap tape stock, the tape cartridge shells were not precision, and the playback deck was not aligned, or ran at the correct pitch.

Your best bet for your own tapes was to play the tape on the same deck on which it was recorded, but even home decks fell out of alignment over time, especially three-head decks.

For the best compatibility, if you used Dolby, was to use Dolby B with a good ferric oxide tape. Dolby C was the worst to use for compatibility.

I favored TDK AD for that bit of extra treble to help offset the loss in treble over time, or the playback on a slightly-off aligned head.

Today, if I ever have to make a tape recording, I will not use NR at all.

I fail to understand all these people having dull tape playback with Dolby unless something is very wrong with their decks.

 

I got so used to that muffled sound that when engineers started using noise reduction on CDs, I didn't notice. Yet, the vinyl guys were howling.

 

In the late '80s I messed around with Dolby B and then Dolby C on my Nakamichi and had a large number of well recorded tapes, which we played all the time. The rest of the system included a Linn Sondek, Garrott P77 and Grado Sig 8M, Russell Woolcock hybrid preamp, Kotsas Metaxas class A amp, Yamaha NS1000s and Celestion SL6. I had great sound.

I ended up determining that the best tapes I could make were with high quality TDK Metal tapes and no Dolby and turning up the recording levels. This made for very lively tapes that had terrific presence and played back extremely well.

 

Back in the day on the level of system I had, I thought it was a good thing. I'm sure by my standards today I would hate it. I think it would compare to heavy declicking on needledrops. You might think it sounds good if you don't know any better.

 

What you say is mostly correct. If you had a good deck which was in alignment, Dolby worked pretty-much as advertised. The problem was that most decks were not in alignment, and also that Ferric-Cobalt tapes would gradually loose their sensitivity over time, which even made perfectly aligned tapes begin to sound dull over time. And Dolby only made this effect worse.

That, combined with the fact any two decks were rarely in identical states of alignment, meant that machine-to-machine Dolby mistracking was the norm, not the exception. And the result was: dull highs.

 

NEVER used Dolby.

 

It was like a blanket over the speakers.

jerol

 

Dolby S is AMAZING on cassettes....period.

B&C were iffy depending on the deck and the tapes used and deck to deck playing.

S blows me away on all my S capable decks. So sad it was not a decade earlier in release, it really gave cassette a new, amazing edge in sound quality coupled with HX PRO.

I had a Sony ES car deck head unit that had Dolby C and honestly it had the best playback of C from my home deck tapes at that time I've ever heard.

It has a lot to do with the deck(s) the recording process and the tape used, Dolby B/C could suck big time under bad circumstances, but B&C when the stars aligned could sound great too, but never even close to the amazing sound Dolby S delivers.

Take a great deck with Dolby S/HX PRO, a killer blank tape, music properly recorded under those circumstances can still sound amazing in this day and age in comparison to more modern advanced audio formats.

 

That's what I wrote, right?

I guess i'm getting the idea that people mean really dull, not slightly dull.

What I used to do is hit the mono button on the receiver, take off the cassette door, and tweak the azimuth by ear until the treble was as crisp as I could get it, while constantly engaging and disengaging the mono button until I no longer heard and phase shift or any other change in the treble.. The trick was to get a tape that was known to have been recorded in perfect alignment. What I would do is when I got a deck and it was perfectly aligned and demagnetized, I would make a clean dub of the song "The Love I Lost" by Harold Melvin & The Bluenotes in stereo without the Dolby on a fresh TDK AD tape and use it as my reference.

I didn't stop there. If it was a deck with no user adjustable bias, i'd get my favorite TDK tapes, open up the case, and tweak the bias until I got an optimum setting. My three-head decks already had this as being adjustable on the front panel, along with a reference tone.

 

But, even then, I found Dolby "S" worked better with some tapes than others.

 

Then, something was off somewhere in your deck and/or tapes. That should not have happened.

 

I've pretty much used only high end tapes so I can't comment on that point too deep other than all the tapes I've used worked very well with S.

If I get time I'll play around with a cheap Walmart available current blank tape and see how good or bad it performs with S/HX PRO. Should be interesting.


Thanks for your insightful input regardless!

 

I had 2 DBX capable decks.

I always ended up with some "pumping" when trying to used DBX. I know some folks who swear by DBX and perhaps they know some tricks I don't, but for me DBX never delivered the goods.

I had better results with JVC ANRS/Super ANRS.

 

I didn't like Dolby B - it seemed to cut the high frequencies as well as the hiss. However, Dolby C seemed to be worthwhile.

 

im under the age of 50, so using the term 'back in the day' is banned from my vocabulary.

oh yeah dolby...when the deck was calibrated properly, was a wonderful thing

 

I never used cheap tape in my decks. I always used TDK, Maxell, Sony, and Fuji.

 

In my opinion the biggest problem with cassettes was the fact that they only ran at 1⅞ ips.

 

Dolby C did add a treble boost to the signal. That may be why. But, again, recording, then playing back a tape with Dolby should not dull the highs at all. If it happens, something is wrong. Ray Dolby would not market a technology that dulled the highs...unless you guys think that tape hiss is part of the highs. The only other thing I can think of is that you are playing tapes recorded on another deck, and one of the two is out of alignment, or you are trying to play a non-Dolby tape with Dolby. Dolby is a two-ended system, meaning that it does not apply NR to a non-Dolby tape.

 

My main tapes are Maxell Metal Vertex & TDK MA-XG.

I've used some Sony Super Metal Master and Sony XR &SR with great results recently.

I do have a lot of one offs using various tapes over the years, but for critical recording I always return to the Maxell Metal Vertex more than any other tape. They age well, play very quiet, and the record/playback amazing.

Regardless I never get more than a 60 minute tape.

 

Dolby B is a classic example of tech that generally made recordings sound worse, especially if you were playing back on a different deck to the one used for recording. Once I took the trouble to compare with and without, never used it again.

Tim

 

I always used TDK sa tapes. I had 5 decks in my lifetime...1970's Sharp, Teac, Akai, beige Pioneer (total junk) and finally a later black Pioneer double deck. The Teac was the best of the bunch before the last Pioneer. I only purchased the last pioneer because my dad wanted copies of older tapes of us kids. I made a couple of cd dubs for the car and noticed it sounded quite good. I remember seeing a Fischer deck once that had a slower playback recording speed option. Probably ok for voice transcripts, but terrible on music.

 

I had the Tandberg 3034 which had Actilinear and Dyneq, patented NR technology alongside Dolby B. Great deck although from Tandbergs lower price range. Always used either Maxell XL1S or XL2S.