Cassette Crosstalk

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by hlennarz, Apr 1, 2020.

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  1. john morris

    john morris Everybody's Favorite Quadron

    Location:
    Toronto, Ontario

    Stick to tube amps made in the last 30 years.
    I have seen some actual audiophile mini systems at Bay-Bloor radio. $800 - $2000. A good CD player. A tiny 25 watt per channel integrated tube amp and good Energy bookshelf speakers. I used to think good sound couldn't come at that size.
     
  2. AudioAddict

    AudioAddict Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    John: Your post is, as always, very knowledgeable and helpful. This statement is exactly what I have noted with the MR-1. It sounds more like a reel to reel than anything else.
    The azimuth adjustments on the MR-1 are very easy to access and have gotten a test tape (from Europe). Checking the 3 azimuth alignments of 333, 6300, and 10k the first is a little high, the second spot on, and the 3rd a bit low by comparison to 0 DB. The amounts are small enough so I have decided to just leave it alone. If it sounds great and works, why bother?
    BTW, have just been checking the Otari 2-track for 1k and 10k bias and alignment and, at 15 ips, it is rock solid. The front panel adjustments and test oscillators are simplicity itself and Otari defaults its overall FR so it records slightly strong at 10k (adjustable, of course). Should we call this the Otari sizzle (apologies to Neumann...)?
    Great explanation of Bias and Distortion.
     
  3. Classic Car Guy

    Classic Car Guy - Touch the Face of God -

    Location:
    Northwest, USA
    The only thing I'm wishing on the Nakamichi especially the one I got is if I can get my hands on swapping with a silver face or buy a silver face trimming, that would be great. But as far as what I see in the way how this was built and running. its light years away from the most cassettes I know.
     
  4. john morris

    john morris Everybody's Favorite Quadron

    Location:
    Toronto, Ontario
    Is that the new or used price? :shh:
    For example the SSL4098 G / G+ mixer used is $250 000 USD. And all the automation moves have to be stored on 3 1/2 inch floppy disks. Fun!! :goodie: Brand new back in the late 80's I believe it was 2 million. So the 250 K is a bargain.
     
  5. AudioAddict

    AudioAddict Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    John: On a more mundane level, do you know of anywhere to get the NAB hubs for the Otari 5050? Cannot find any on the web and the ones sent to me are not working right. It's a poor design and also wonder if there is another modern NAB hub that would work on this recorder. Getting harder and harder to get support stuff for these old machines.
    AND, HEY, if you need an extra $250,000, just contact my cavalier spaniels and ask them to loan you some of their weekly allowance. They're very friendly in this area...
     
  6. john morris

    john morris Everybody's Favorite Quadron

    Location:
    Toronto, Ontario
    I will get back to you on that.

    Try Ebay or Reverb. Or do we have done. Find a broken down Otari 5050 and purchase it for the spare parts. That is what we did for the Sony DASH 3348HR. I know it sounds drastic, but this way you always have the parts you need. This way you don't have to worry about getting a Head Report or even if it works. Any old "As is sale" of a 5050 would do.
     
  7. Classic Car Guy

    Classic Car Guy - Touch the Face of God -

    Location:
    Northwest, USA
    First off I don't know anything about vinyl for as far as I remember, I messed up so many 33's and 45's back then and several good stylus so I said to myself forget it since I already know my way around the tapes. . . Not too long ago, my beloved Teac up and died on my pretty much permanently so I was so desperate for another recorder. I didn't know that the cassette to a hype nowadays for I thought I still very rare people uses it. Ive seen cassette get sold $800.00 - $900.00 - another seller said excellent condition but it eats the tape for $400.00. "come one man., where do you get these guys...?"
    So I started looking at vinyl and I saw this recorder I'm not sure if its prototype but it doesn't look like a commercial grade...
    PHONOCUT. HOME VINYL RECORDER
    $518,000.00
     
  8. AudioAddict

    AudioAddict Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    Thanks, John. Am wondering if the Revox hub adaptors would work as there are new ones of those available:
    NEW! Pair of high quality nab hub adapters aluminium polished for Revox Akai etc | eBay
    The Parts option appears to be changing -- there are no "parts only" options now on EBay or Reverb. Instead, people appear to have bought these machines, stripped them, and are offering parts separately at astonishing prices. It's a sellor's market, I guess.
     
  9. AudioAddict

    AudioAddict Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    CCG: This is a low-cost, low-performance unit that is being developed and the $518,000 amount is what has been raised so far for development and early production. We discussed this on another thread and the consensus was that it would be a product of immense potential that was almost certain to fail...
     
  10. Classic Car Guy

    Classic Car Guy - Touch the Face of God -

    Location:
    Northwest, USA
    I know what you mean bro. Everyone went into that including myself. besides the mono 6av5 pa tube amps that I used as a mono block "my a..." in my early days, one of my first entry level real tube amp was those chinese made. The first one was a 37 wpc music angel. it was and okay amp to start with but there was a lot of fixing involve even being bought as brand new.
    I had a yaqin mc-100b 42 wpc/ The sound on this one is decent but somewhere along the way I went through a lot of hurdle with this amp for I was pushing it hard. I had it almost 7-1/2 years. I did a lot of modification from the power supply , tone stack and adding bias selection and motorized remote. Over all it was a great experience for me and I still have the amp today as a back up now for the primaluna. I'm not an electronics technician but I took that course in my teens on manpower program just for fun and I built my first 100 watts per channel solid state power amp from scratch. I etched the circuit board myself for I don't have enough funding to excel in buying expensive parts like other students.
    Anyways back to the tube amp... on my present situation, even I have a good job, I don't think I can afford to pay 10k or more for an exotic integrated tube amp. Because I already know what sound I want and I have all the right speakers and setup to satisfy myself even with a new $1,900.00 amp. As long as I have a 3 years extended warranty on it and the other formula is you gotta have atleast a similar type or sounding backup amp in-case your main amp picks up a Trojan horse along the way. I went to that episode and it was a limbo. So never again and atleast I'm more confident now.
     
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  11. Thanks for your info on bias. As I mostly used Basf Chrome Maxima II tapes I did bias adjustment by ear, I needed two of these 90 minutes tapes to get bias right or at least to my taste.
    I didn't do any mod to my JVC tape deck, I just opened it to see if there was a speed trimmer for fine speed adjustment, it happened that my JVC deck had one and it was labeled as such, I just pushed it with a jeweller's screwdriver (there was too little space for a regular one) to its top speed. Increasing tape speed got my 3 head JVC deck work like a charm despite the tapes not being standard and could only be played at the right speed on this deck,but it was MY tape deck.
     
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  12. Classic Car Guy

    Classic Car Guy - Touch the Face of God -

    Location:
    Northwest, USA
    Sorry to sidetrack a bit for were just talking about it the other day but., Holy guacamole and look a what I got yesterday for a song.:idea:
    1980 Onkyo TX-6500.
    [​IMG]
     
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  13. Classic Car Guy

    Classic Car Guy - Touch the Face of God -

    Location:
    Northwest, USA
    going back to your crosstalk issue, do you hear the song from side a to b or when youre playing its an audible few seconds delay?
    How did you fix this issue?
    I'm having the same issue now on my tape copier. I'm gonna try demagnetizing and cleaning it first before I start scredrivering it up...:wantsome:
     
  14. hlennarz

    hlennarz Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Germany
    Its an issue with some pre-recorded tapes apparently. Something must have been misaligned or something during duplication. Nothing you can do on your end.
     
    Last edited: Jul 7, 2020
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  15. Classic Car Guy

    Classic Car Guy - Touch the Face of God -

    Location:
    Northwest, USA
    I have a cassette fast copier / duplicator. when I dub the original to a blank its giving me a few seconds background like a repeat only on side a but I don't hear it on side b.
    Seems like my machine need some maintenance.
     
  16. john morris

    john morris Everybody's Favorite Quadron

    Location:
    Toronto, Ontario
    You can't bear the AM radio sections in classics like these. And back in the day when audiophile FM sound was a reality.
     
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  17. john morris

    john morris Everybody's Favorite Quadron

    Location:
    Toronto, Ontario
    You need a side kick to say, "The bias adjustment sounds good boss," or something.

    Seriously though, too many engineers fooled with bias to get higher frequencies but at a cost of higher distortion. And the reverse.
    Your bias experiments got you more highs but at the price of higher distortion. Have you tried recording test tones on your new mod-deck?

    Do you record really hot? To hot of a level will self erase the highs that you are trying to put on tape. Sometimes an entire octave. Or a half an octave. Or a small bit. This is why I advise persons to always buy a used deck with Dolby HX Pro and then the self erasure of highs can't happen. Of course those $@!#*% at Nackamichi never used Dolby HX Pro. Their reasons? Something about effecting the performance of their tape machines. Huh? Nackamachi is a consumer company. Otari (Not Atari guys!) is a (was a) professional tape company. So the Dolby HX Pro on the Ortari MX-80 2 inch 32 track is compromising the performance? Really? Maybe I need a drink!


    And this is for everyone. Yes, you can adjust your bias to get more highs but at a cost.
    For example: The specs of the 3M M23 1 inch 8 track (released on April 1966) were
    30 - 15 000 hz +1db / - 2db @ 15 ips.
    Can the machine that recorded Abbey Road go higher? The answer is YES and NO.
    They could have adjusted the bias on the M23 to be flat to 17 khz per say but the distortion would have jump significantly. So the highs would have had audible distortion. Maybe even to 20 khz. But that would make our distortion way worse. Talking about 3% here of THD. NOT COOL!
    The 30 - 15 000 hz +1 / - 2db spec was not locked in stone. In other words tape machines don't have brick wall filters. Analog doesn't work that way. But a higher frequency response would compromise the superior performance of the machines of those days. And most engineers didn't.
     
    Last edited: Jul 8, 2020
  18. Classic Car Guy

    Classic Car Guy - Touch the Face of God -

    Location:
    Northwest, USA
    I plug the amp today for a test drive on my setup setting aside my primaluna temporarily.
    This amp is very clean sounding when it locks to the FM channel. Even on the cassette "play in" connection. its power is different. it sounds very dimensional, a lot of depth and excellent clarity. Pretty much can run without smoothly eq. Very strong bass, very clean high and no headaches on midrange.
    It doesn't have the "extended-killer roll-offs" of the quality tube sound. example when the bass player plucks the string, on a mosfet amp like this will give you a nice roll off on bass with a punch in the chest.
    On the real good tube amp the bass pluck extends and would feel the speakers continuously flowing bass. especially if the amp has a toroidal transformer. its very dimensional and has more musical character.
    I didn't try the AM at all. I know if nothing but a can of bees...
     
  19. john morris

    john morris Everybody's Favorite Quadron

    Location:
    Toronto, Ontario

    Keep it at least as a FM tuner. They don't know how to build them anymore.
     
  20. john morris

    john morris Everybody's Favorite Quadron

    Location:
    Toronto, Ontario
    It should be "beat" not "bear." Excuse me.
     
  21. Classic Car Guy

    Classic Car Guy - Touch the Face of God -

    Location:
    Northwest, USA
    maybe I should look for a vintage stand alone fm tuner locally?
    I already packed the onkyo receiver and kept it underneath my bed.
     
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  22. john morris

    john morris Everybody's Favorite Quadron

    Location:
    Toronto, Ontario

    You want a tuner that can be used as a repeater. Nothing better in that class of tuners.
     
  23. Classic Car Guy

    Classic Car Guy - Touch the Face of God -

    Location:
    Northwest, USA
    Youre right. I have an internet tuner and network player and when I switch to FM its equals headache..:wtf:
     
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  24. Nooooo, it's not my new deck, I got that deck back in 1990 and I did the speed "mod" in late 1991, when I was almost 18 years old.
    Let's go to bias and tape speed increase. I saw a documentary about 1970's Rock music and I saw a pro reel to reel tape deck working and I noticed at how fast the reels were running. I had a friend who worked at a studio in Madrid so I called him back (long distance calls were expensive back in 1991 in Spain) and told him about this. He answered me that increasing tape speed got and increase on recordable frequency response, and he adviced me to lower bias if I was to do my cassette deck speed mod, and so I did,testing and testing and testing, and doing more testing. I got to the conclusion that lowering bias was the right advice from my friend. With the speed mod I could record a bit more high frequencies lowering bias, but also lowering distorsion, and that lower distorsion was quite noticiable as from the tape deck came from the factory. There was a different sense of sound, sound was easier to my ears, more pleasing.
    I recorded a bit, just a little bit hot as Basf Chrome Maxima II tape was made of actual chrome dioxide, I think it had a double coating of it, and it wasn't an easy tape to record on, it had a high coercitivity for a Chrome tape. Letting the recording level get on the red zone, something that I had avoided like the plague before,helped to get the most out of Basf's Chrome Maxima II tape, a tape that when/if recorded right sounded OUTSTANDING. But I only let ocasional incursions onto the red zone and not record on the red zone the whole time.
    But I was young at the time, young people are easy to impress, and I got impressed with digital tape recording at less than half the price of DAT decks and tapes. I made the mistake of reverting the speed mod of my tape deck, sell it, and get a Philips DCC 900 deck, their top of the line.
    After two or three hours of "playing" with the DCC 900 I had regreted of buying it and selling my beloved JVC analogue cassette tape deck. DCC was a mean and unfriendly format.
     
  25. Classic Car Guy

    Classic Car Guy - Touch the Face of God -

    Location:
    Northwest, USA
    Hi guys,
    Going back to the cassette labeling. I got the format going all on PDF like fill in the blanks.
    Pretty much its all covered beside I cant attach the main cover which is the shaded blue on the cassette folder layout.
    I just wanna use a just PDF (if I can) to complete it but I couldn't attach the main cover with picture unless if I use my photoshop which is another step. My question is how do I insert that main cover just using pdf. what am I no clicking. PS my pdf is just basic..
    or do I really have to use the photoshop or convert it to word and insert the front cover?
    Thanks,,,,,

    [​IMG]
     
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