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

Indeed !!

 

Dolby sounded like crud.

 

In my years of recording and trading Grateful Dead cassettes, Dolby was always a huge no, no. I always felt that was developed to reduce tape hiss and it came at the expense of the high end of the sound. Pure garbage, I don't know how Dolby labs was able to stay in business.

 

I always thought it killed the top end. I only used it for very noisey tapes, but that was rare.

 

Never liked it. Made things sound like they were under water sometimes.
The music with the hiss was much better fidelity imho.

I thought DBX sounded much better.

 

Actually there were only a few NR systems commonly used, Dolby A and DBX, but that was in my day. Since then Dolby went to the SR. There were other compander NR systems but they were not widely used.

Pretty much all of the major studios had NR systems and it was just a normal part of the daily studio setup to align the NR units. So it was really no big deal to take a NR project to another studio. It's nothing at all like some of the problems with Dolby B on cassette, where they generally only play well on the machine that made them.

At first the systems were totally distinct, in that if you had both DBX and Dolby you had to have separate units. Then they started making crossover cards (K9) so that you could use DBX cards in a Dolby rack. That meant just changing out the cards and keeping the wiring and power requirements the same. It was still a fair amount of work to change from one system to the other but it was tolerable when one saved the money and real estate involved with duplicate systems.

Frankly, IMO most of the studio alignment was somewhat unnecessary. It was basically a safeguard to verify that everything is working. The settings really don't drift so much that they would really change from day to day. Variations in tape response of course were there, which meant that the recorder setup could vary from head to tail, or from reel to reel, but the NR settings didn't really drift. If they did, how stable could one expect them to sound?

 

We must be specific about which Dolby versions we are talking about. I thought this thread was about the consumer versions of B, C, and S. The professional versions are A and SR.

 

How old are you, sonny?

 

Hence my belief that you guys were trying to use Dolby on non-Dolby tapes.

 

I'm suspecting the same.

On the no Dolby in tape trading circles, I thought that was about the possibility/likelyhood of multiple encode/decode occurrences or mistakenly decoding a non-encoded tape (or vice-versa) and the problems that could result from that rather than an inherent problem with Dolby B itself.

 

That's one possibility and it does seem like a little of that was definitely going on. And there are some other possibilities. Like a three-head machine with rec/play head alignment issues. Or a lot of recording on one deck and playing back on another, also with head alignment issues. (I think the latter was always an issue for tape traders.) I always used a typical two-head deck for both recording and playback. I never had a problem with Dolby rolling off the treble unless it was recorded on another machine that didn't line up with mine. So I'd really like to know under what circumstances was Dolby B/C "muffling" the sound. Curious.

 

I have a never-been-serviced Pioneer CTF-7272 two-head machine here from the late 70s. I should record something onto some TDK D tapes with and without Dolby B and post the clips. That is, if it runs.

 

thousands and thousands of XLII and XLIIS. I experimented many different ways with from a Sony d5 master and then a D7 DAT. If you recorded the master with the processing on (or from the DAT) it was better than just dubbing a tape with the Dolby on but it always unquestionably clipped the high end. noise reduction was and is sound reduction.

 

I thought "She Blinded me with Science" sounded great

 

Good call.

Another possibility that comes to mind, pre-recorded Dolby B cassettes from the major labels. I don't think quality controll was sufficient to properly encode/decode Dolby B. I only had two of these, but I heard other people's tapes. They always sounded muffled/dull with Dolby B decoding to me.

 

That's true. I never heard a great pre-recorded cassette until I put one in my Teac V-970X and adjusted the playback head azimuth to match it. It was a Police album on a Type II tape with Dolby B and it was apparently a better transfer than the typical pre-recorded tape. The other pre-recorded tapes I tried using the same method didn't sound as good. Okay but not great. Nothing that would make me want to ditch my LPs and buy a Nakamichi CR-7A and start scouring eBay for tapes.

 

Bought my first cassette deck in 75. It was a Sony mid level unit with Dolby B and analog VU meters. (I mention the VU meters to illustrate age. ) While this deck made tapes good enough for the car, they did not sound great with Dolby.
Ten years and a couple decks later I bought a 3 head Teac V800X (I think) with Dolby B,C and DBX. The V800X with either Dolby B or C made tapes that were nearly indistinguishable from the source. And believe me, I would sit with headphones on and listen intently for differences. I did this to find the best tape to use. In the end I felt Dolby C was better than Dolby B or DBX.
While we were living in Champaign, IL one of the local high end shops had a Nachamichi rep come in to talk about his products. During his stay there the rep offered to evaluate customers decks along with a professional cleaning. I took my Teac down for this and was pleasantly surprised with the results. According to his tests, the Teac had an exceptionally smooth and extended frequency response along with a very low noise floor. He was duly impressed and didn't try to sell me a Nak.

 

Teac made some great decks. I've got a Teac V8030-S and a 2030-S.

 

There are two kinds of Dolby B, correctly calibrated and not calibrated. If not aligned and adjusted correctly, sounds poor. Very level sensitive.

 

My old BIC did 1-7/8 & 3-1/2 IPS, sounded great back then.

 

Dolby S is standard for me, been for many years. I've got outstanding, consistent results with it.

 

One noise reduction system (professional) I think did an excellent job was Telefunken's Telcom C4. There's only one recording I own that I'm aware of using Telcmo C4 and that is the soundtrack for Star Trek The Motion Picture. It wasn't really recorded using digital equipment, it was tracked to analog using Telcom C4 and the original soundtracl album mixed to Sony digital. I guess the mix used for the actual film was all analog. It sounds very quiet and noise free even by today's standards.
Steve, do you have any experience with Telcom C4?

 

I prefer no NR myself. But I use 1/2 track open reel at 7 1/2 IPS with IEC I equalization and have superb signal to noise ratio.

 

I'd rather have a bit of hiss, than do that to the signal.