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

Dolby sucks !

 

I had a three headed Denon, can't remember the model (mid 80's model). I felt that Dolby diminished the sound, although Dolby C was a lot better.

 

Dolby or any NR is not my dish of tea, but neither are cassettes. Except for convenience. I prefer open reel.

 

Yep, 10" reels were slightly difficult to listen to while bicycling around...

 

Yes, but at home nothing beats them.

 

I bought a Harmon/Kardon cassette deck back in the 80's and used it for about a year before I sold it off....
I never really warmed up to it.... Yes... Dolby certainly seemed to suck the life out of the music..

 

I'm enjoying CD more after reading this thread. I recall Ferri-Chrome, a kind of hybrid Sony brought out. It threw the Dolby levels off, but it prevented the highs from being lopped off in playback. My Sony TC-152 cassette deck was an early Chrome-accepting cassette deck, that only encoded for Chrome (no playback eq change) which took advantage of Chrome's extended high end, and I thought it sounded decent with Dolby, at least on my own machine.

Didn't JVC try their own ANSR (or something similar)? I thought it was their own proprietary Dolby-like system. But, I never heard it, so I can't compare. When I find old tapes now of my family (I did a lot of documenting family events) I hope they aren't Dolby encoded. They usually sound better un-Dolbyized.

 

Pushed the Dolby button once. Quickly pushed it again and that's the way it stayed....off.

 

The 122 was a consumer version of DBX and was not at all compatible with the pro versions. It was a totally different beast.

 

I generally experienced the following:

1. Dolby B worked great when the bias default matched the tape formulation used and the tape sensitivity (level recorded vs. level played back) was fairly even - 0dB.
2. Dolby C was similar, plus the cassette enough headroom on the high end.
3. dbx worked well when all of the above was true and the tape had a good headroom across the board with wide dynamic range. i.e. metal tapes with good recording characteristics worked great.

Meaning the default calibration tapes for decks that I had generally worked best or ones that had equivalent settings. My decks had no bias adjust.

For example,
Normal - TDK AD or Maxell XLI
High/CrO2 - TDK SA or Maxell XLII or Denon DX7/Scotch XSII/3M 2020
Metal - TDK MA

Using any of the 'extra' formulations, despite being better tapes (TDK SA-X, Maxell XLII-S, etc.) resulted in worse performance due to the bias mismatch and occasional sensitivity mismatch. On a deck that can correct for this, these tapes were better.

 

I could never figure out what the friggin point of Dolby was. I thought cassette playback always sounded worse with it on and never used it.

 

I used Dolby to get more treble out of cheap tapes ... record with Dolby on, then play back with it off. I used to get those blue-box normal bias Ampex C-90s for dirt cheap (less than a buck at the drug store? Or maybe a buck or so for a pack of three!) and Dolby really brought them to life. Dubs for yonks!

I never considered cassette a high-fidelity thing, really.

 

You need to hear a high end cassette deck and tape properly recorded.

 

Jazz at the Pawnshop was recorded using Dolby (A). Regardless of its musical value (or lack of) the vast majority would agree that the sound is exceptional.

 

For me, if I had to depend on cassettes every day, there would be fewer than 5 machines ever made I'd call remotely dependable either. None of the 5 has Dolby S either. Studer and ReVox the best mechanically, Technics with 2 or 3 models which are close, and one Teac which Vidiot owned or still owns. And even these are still no open reel either no matter what trick tape formulation or NR system used either. My tapes must play back on the machine across the hall or at work like they do at home. Azimuth and speed must agree too. Hardly ever in cassette do they agree. As cassettes are a sloppy medium to a degree. And Dolby A is open reel only, and not intended for consumer machines. It is intended for studio machines. 1/2 track or full track, and 7 1/2 IPS upwards only. Not relevant to home users. Except few.

 

Dolby A can be used with cassettes also; I did it once as a lark and I know others who did as well, just to see what happened. The thing about Dolby A, and the big reason Dolby B was developed for home use, is that Dolby A is even more critical of good alignment, azimuth and flat frequency response. The chances of getting a good "decode" on any cassette deck other than the one used for recording are slim to none.

 

Nakamichi took an interesting approach to the problems of playing back Dolby B tapes on a deck other than the recording deck. In addition to adjustable azimuth (continuously automatically adjusting in the case of the Dragon) their playback response curve rose steadily above about 5 kHz to be +3 or +4 dB at 20 KHz. This reduced the amount of treble "cut" by the companding circuitry. Of course this meant there was no chance at all of a Dolby encoded tape made on a Nakamichi ever sounding good on a non-Nakamichi deck.

 

It's true, you know. You get a metal tape on a $2000 Nakamichi Dragon, and it'll almost sound as good as a compact disc.

 

Yes, and nobody's making new metal tape and not even type II is being made. Type 1 is all that's currently manufactured.

 

Discovering this fact was of unending disappointment to me when I finally was able to obtain a Nakamichi machine. As a closed-loop entertainment device it was very good. But, as a master recording deck for all my various cassette players and for my quest of sharing near-master quality recordings of my own music for friends and promotion, I was disappointed. I even entertained the possibility of re-heading it with supposedly more universal compatibility heads, but digital arrived and I abandoned both the thought and the machine.

 

Clearly you did not.

 

In my 50 plus years of listening and the moment I used Dolby (For the 1st time) in one of my old systems I knew then years ago it killed everything in the sound, kind of like radiation.

 

Someone told me that Elton John's piano was recorded and mixed the same way. Recorded with Dolby encoding and mixed with it off. Anyone here know for certain?

Perhaps a little off topic.

 

I had one of these and thought what's the point of this Dolby switch? Never used it hardly, but kept hoping it would have a purpose, if I could only figure it out.

 

Ha!! I was listening to some Elton John recently at a friends' home (I have no EJ in my collection) and thought at one point, "Woah, pianos were sure recorded bright in the Seventies!"