Frequency Response for Maxel XL II 90's?

I hope you're not looking for a "warmy tubey" sound from that HK!

 

The frequency response from cassettes can be improved quite a bit by using noise reduction - Dolby S was quite good a this. Without, it tends to roll off around 15-16kHz IIRC - probably not enough to matter much.

What I hated the most about cassettes wasn't the rolled off frequency response, which I doubt I could detect, but it was wow and flutter, which I definitely could. A triangle (nearly pure sine wave) did not sound like a triangle on my $800 HK TD4600, with Dolby S on a Maxel XLIIS - it was all warbly (and I even sent my 1st on back for a second one thinking it was a defect; it was just a flaw of the medium).

So for me, frequency response is one of the least worrisome aspects of cassettes.

 

Agreed, and also incorrect tape speed is a pretty prevalent thing with Dead tapes since different decks are involved before you get your tape to be played on your deck. I don’t know how to correct for it other than to say plenty of shows on the Archives are speed corrected. It can have a big impact on the sound of a show, so hopefully you have some shows where say Miller has a speed corrected version to compare what you are transferring to make sure it is on target. I would guess plenty of tapers could simply hear this back in the day before computer tools and the Archives; I know I had a few Jerry & the Chipmunk tapes to be sure, I just never knew enough to know what was correct or how to get there.

 

YEAH! My first CD player was a portable which I played in-car via a cassette adaptor. The sound was way better. I believe wow-and-flutter was the reason.

As for the OPs question, frequency response is not just frequency response. It is a manifestation of time response, which is much more than just "phase." And also in amplifier circuits, wide bandwidth was touted as a manifestation of good circuit design, i.e. less feedback or more graceful overload and so on. So it's not that wide frequency response is so important in and of itself, rather that it is seen as an easily measurable proxy for things that are harder to measure or that we don't know how to measure well at all.

 

I've also heard that single capstan decks have a problem with the azimuth knocking out of sync during playback. Is this so?

 

*alignment not sync ^

Anyways this is more or less word for word what a fellow taper told me:

"depending on mechanism quality, pinch roller(s) might change the exact direction of the tape itself, when it passes through the head after the cassette was manually reversed or even during the playback. Prerecorded tapes in single capstan decks often have that problem."

My Kenwood KX-1030 just so happens to be a single capstan deck.

 

Oh boy! Cassette tape? I haven't though about cassette tape in decades. Please pardon me while I lmao. I can't believe someone is using cassette tape and frequency response in the same sentence.
Having used tapes professionally, yes, there are different levels of quality in tape. Frequency range is more dependent on your tape equipment than the tape itself. I can run the cheapest quality recording tape known to man at 15 ips and blow away the quality of the best cassette tape on the best cassette tape machine. That's why recording studios recorded at 30 ips so that they could cheap out on tape.
Seriously, my favorite brand of cassette tape was Maxell. They initially had one grade of tape in different lengths. When they introduced the UD, the old basic tape went down in quality so you had to buy the new type to get good sound. Then came the UD XLI and then the UD XLII. I used the Sony FeCr for awhile and liked it better. Then I discovered the TDK SA cassettes and they were the best I ever heard.
In this digital age of CD's and sound files, cassettes are the last things on my mind. If you insist on using cassette tapes at home, if you want the best frequency range that you can get, if you want to upgrade, find a 2-speed cassette deck, 1 7/8 ips and 3 3/4 ips, and use the higher speed. It will blow you away.
The most important thing is that you get something which sounds good to you, no matter what anyone else says. As an old tube amp guy, a good quality tube amp is about as good as it gets.

 

Your Kenwood should be ok with the azimuth. Azimuth drift occurs as the transport and guides become worn, and the capstan bearing and pinch roller bearings become worn. You have to be careful to inspect the cassette pressure pads, as they tend to fall off over the decades, and the pressure pad is necessary to maintain tape to head contact. A single capstan transport with a heavy flywheel can perform as well, or better than a dual capstan design. Many professional open reel decks are single capstan.

With any kind of transport, tape to head contact must be maintained. This is accomplished by several methods, the pressure pad, supply reel back tension, or a dual capstan design.. sometimes a combination of them. Nakamichi's asymmetrical dual capstan transport lifts the pressure pad, which extends head life while maintaining constant tape to head contact.

You can test for azimuth drift by playback in mono. Simply flip the mono switch on your pre-amp, or connect your player with a double Y cable for mono. Azimuth drift can be detected by listening, no special measurement is necessary. Listen for high frequency shifts, both in level and phase. Azimuth drift sounds a lot like a phasor effect pedal for guitar, or a doppler-like effect. If the azimuth is locked in and not drifting, there should be no difference (or very little difference) in high frequency level and quality as you switch from stereo to mono. The music program should contain instruments sharing both channels for this test to work.

The technical explanation: The principle is that any two tracks containing common recorded material (instruments/vocals) will mix perfectly providing the time and phase are locked in perfectly. Any skew or drift, alters the time relationship between the two, and will degrade the mixed signal, which will sound "phasey" and a decrease in high frequency output.

This is an essential piece of knowledge to get the most from your tape formats, also that all professional sound engineers know.

 

I used to use Maxell UD XL II tapes for my cars back in the late 70's through the mid 80's. They cost about $3.50 a piece back then, which I thought was reasonable. Chrome tapes were better, but for my cars, the UD XL2's were fine, good bass response. Back in the day, everyone, who was even half of an audiophile, had had their records, "vinyl" to the youngin's", for home systems. Most people that I knew, used records to record (think - needle drop), vinyl to the cassette to play in the car.

 

I taped my records to preserve the records. If I wanted to hear an album, or a bunch of 45s, i'd just play the tape.
I bought and used plenty of Maxell UD II, XLII, and XLSII tape, but my main brand was TDK. Sorry. .

 

I bought a few of those 1982, and wished I hadn't. They never gave me good sound. Then, I went to BASF chrome, and those were just as bad because most modern decks weren't set up for pure chrome tape.

 

Yep, I made plenty of cassette tapes to use in my car, made from records. They sounded great! That's what you did for mobile music way back when. The best tapes to use in your car were the high-bias type, like the XL-II's and TDK SA's. They could thump as well as reproduce the highs. Most "factory" original album tapes were duped at high speed and used fairly low-grade tape. As we discovered at the radio stations, tape carts(7.5 ips) and r2r at 7.5 ips or 15 ips sounded better than the records we made them from. In the case of the cassette tapes, when played on a home stereo system, they could never sound as good as the records which they were made from.
Although I burn my own CD compilations and have transferred 100's(with 100's more to go) CD's to mp3 files. I still have a warm spot in my heart for 4-track and quad r2r tapes. If I make a new r2r tape, I use exclusively Maxell UD, UD-XL I and UD-XL II at 7.5 ips. For those "needle-drops", I save those in .wav format for the best sound.

 

Meant to ask, read this quote in the link you provided regarding a question asked to miller:

"you ever do any experiments with analog EQs and say...OK, the Dead's console of choice was a 80-series Neve, so I should use 1073 EQs for all my frequency tweaks. Or even geekier.. "I've got a 6/75 tape here from Weir's home studio from the Blues For Allah sessions and since the Dead were using API 312 preamps and 550a EQs for these sessions, I should use those circuits for the transfer."

The interviewer makes it sound like preamps do effect the sound when transferring onto a computer. How would this be so?

 

Preamps? Most tape decks I've seen have an output at line level and need no preamps. But, yes, preamps can alter the sound just like any amp. Preamps are a stage between source, amp and final output. The more stages the more possible changes in sound.

 

I don't think there is any music above 18k