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

I doubt it. The piano would sound horribly compressed.

 

I never found the differences in playback decks that extreme.

 

I had a couple 8 track recorders. I wonder if any 8 track decks had dolby

 

Wollensak 3M put out an 8-track deck that had Dolby and could use regular and "special bias" tapes, which I think were ferrichrome. Someone correct me if I'm wrong on that.

Unless you meant 8-track cassettes? My friend had a TASCAM Portastudio and I think it had only DBX.

 

I think this kind of 'compression' effect has been used on studio recordings in the 1960s/1970s.

Doesn't the piano on "Hey Jude" have a compression type effect on it?

 

Aiwa XK-007 was a very good deck for recording/playback with noise reduction IME.

Rock solid, clear sound without artefacts using either dbx or Dolby B/C HX Pro.

 

Hi Shak. Maybe that's true. If I recall, SH once posted about very close mic'd pianos, like the Stones' She's Like a Rainbow, but Elton's piano is so bright, I think there's an additional effect. To be honest, I've never heard un-decoded Dolby A played back, that is unless EJ's piano really is this effect. Sorry to bring this up during a cassette thread, but it's so Dolbyized, that I couldn't help it.

 

I liked Dolby on my Walkman more than my home stereo. I have a Harmon Kardon tape deck still and at the time it was a rather high end one with Dolby B and C. I never liked Dolby C but it did take away most if not all of the hiss sound but it didn't sound natural at all.

 

Here's a Pioneer with dolby

 

I have no issues with Dolby B, C or S. I have many old pre-recorded tapes with Dolby B that sound very, very good. Fresh Cream comes to mind. But, as mentioned, I've learned the "secret". I keep my decks in good nick (aligned electrically and mechanically) and make sure the azimuth matches the tape.

 

Very true, the variables are the demise of Dolby. All Dolby versions are subject to Dolby calibration errors, (Dolby B being the least affected) head azimuth errors, tape magnetic flux loss over time. Very slight errors are magnified and devastating to the reproduced sound, usually accompanied by dulled sound.

The high end decks are more consistent. Nakamichi decks perform very consistently I have found, starting with the 480, 480z, 482 (three head) 582, 682, and the Dragon (and probably a few other Nak high end models) The Naks are nothing less than spectacular in the playback of pre-recorded Dolby tapes, only perhaps 10% of the tapes do not, which I assume those tapes were duped out of cal.

On my former Pioneer CT-550, most pre-recorded tapes sounded dull. (decades ago, however now I'd look into lining it up) So I'd settle for a more aspirate, hissy sound with the Dolby out. Tapes recorded and played back in Dolby on the same Pioneer CT-550 sounded very good, and that's mostly the common experience in cassette-land.

My most recent light rebuild of a Nak 480 played the pre-recorded tapes beautifully in Dolby. The head azim needed minor adjustment, and that locked it in. I would love to upload sound clips just to demonstrate how well a good deck performs, and will try to do that if time allows.. before the deck sells.

 

Oh I don't know, my Nakamichi Dragon with Dolby C used to make pretty good tapes. My Harmon Kardon 492 sucked though.

 

Yes.

 

The pre recorded cassettes I had always sounded low in volume as well. I always recorded right up to zero with needle just flashing above every now and then. My Journey Escape tape barely moved the needle much at all. I eventually went and got the LP and made my own dub

 

I was obsessive about comparing my recordings to the source. Some tape could handle the higher levels, some not so much. If the transients were dulled even slightly, i'd back off the levels. Of course, too low a level would sound better, but the tape hiss would take over.

 

I just listened to a recording I just bought - the Speakers Corner LP reissue of the 1966 recording of Solti conducting Mahler Symphony No. 2. And to be honest it is one of the very few recordings I own that is disappointing. I strongly suspect this was one of Decca's earliest Dolby A recordings, as Ray Dolby apparently sold his first processor to Decca in London in early 1966 (and this was a London Symphony recording in the brightly lit and relatively hard acoustic of the Kingsway Hall). There are some obvious differences between this recording and nearly all others I own (that are otherwise all pre-Dolby). You can hear very deeply into the ambience and can hear the tinniest things easily that are otherwise lost in the tape hiss on earlier recordings. But the sound otherwise just isn't quite right. The violins are a bit thin sounding and can get quite steely and abrasive - that is a bad combination and doesn't happen on any pre-Dolby recordings I own, even made by Decca in the exact same hall. And this thinness and abrasive sound is not consistent - it is as if the encoding and decoding of Dolby A isn't perfectly calibrated across different pitches and modulation levels. Maybe I'm wrong here but the thin and inconsistent sound isn't worth the lowered noise floor.

To make matters worse, Kingsway has a very hard and arguably thin-ish / dry acoustic in any case and the combination of that with Dolby A doesn't seem to be a very good one to be honest. I have later Decca Dolby A recordings made in US halls and they are OK, as US halls tend to be much better damped, don't thin out the sound and don't emphasise the upper midrange like Kingsway does.

Note to self: Avoid Dolby A Kingsway Hall recordings!

 

Yes, and no. On most cheaper decks, yes it sounded pretty muffled. On the better sounding decks it didn't seem to have any effect on the audible pass band. It seems that in those decks the filter corner frequency was considerable higher.

 

I have a number of promotional cassettes from the labels and they are all recorded WITHOUT Dolby...what does that tell you?

 

I say it had something to do with the frequency response of the cheaper deck.

 

DOLBY C was the Devil!

 

I always felt like Dolby B was hardly worth the effort. Yeah, you got rid of some high-end hiss, but it felt like you were left with a dull, muffled result.

With Dolby C I never felt the results were entirely natural, but it smashed so much hiss so far down into the spectrum I felt like it was worth the tradeoff. And the tapes I recorded on my old Sony deck with Dolby C sounded OK played back on my Walkman with Dolby B - too bright and a bit shrill, but acceptable.

Dolby S was a thing of beauty . . . and at least 5 years too late to market . . .

 

I don't agree with you about Dolby B -- on an extremely well-aligned machine -- but Dolby S was dynamite. That was an amazing system, and I wish they had come out with it in the 1980s. We were using Dolby SR a lot on studio projects in that era, and SR was fantastic as well.

I have to say, it was very problematic on cheap cassette decks with marginal alignment. Which a lot of them had.

 

Dolby C I had problems with moving between Dolby C decks. Played back on the same deck, it sounded good - well, good enough to be worth the tradeoff.

Dolby B seemed less problematic in that regard. On the other hand, I virtually always recorded with Dolby, B or C, whichever was available. Especially if I was recording something with quiet passages.

I was always worried about overloads though and tended to keep my levels way too low. And I couldn't afford metal tape as much as I'd have liked. Knowing what I know now about tape saturation, I'd have recorded a lot hotter and more on metal tape (and probably gotten the tape cheaper via mail order instead of local retail).

 

Huge Dolby S user here, amazing to say the least. I have 4 decks with it right now.

 

Not with great decks and working as it should.