Thinking about adding a cassette deck to my set-up

That's album went through a digital delay during cutting. I am sure it sounds great. But it is not pure analog.

 

Not this problem again. I made my profile visible. I didn't even know it was not visible until another member told me a while back. Or are you talking about the other member? Why do you assume that because some member's profile isn't visible that he is trying to hide something?....

I am an open book. Most of us just assume that our profile is always visible.

I have been on this forum for 4 years. Everyone knows who I am and what I do for a living.

And in his defense. Many people's profiles are not visible through no fault of their own.

Oh you are blocked. Your are calling me a liar.

 

Agreed. For people who are just buying records as "collectors" or hipsters then yes. It is just an opinion. A lot of people started buying record again because of how bad smashed CDs sounded. Collectors don't care about sound quality. Case in point: All those Iron Maiden picture disks. And their was that live Rush FM show that they cut to vinyl from a mp3 file. Yep, no argument there.

I should have said, "People buying records for slsind quality...."

 

First off I have been on here for 4 years. Most members here no who I am and what I do for living. DRM you have been here just as long if not longer.

I assumed that the profile is on. Awhile back a member told me he couldn't see my profile.
I went on and tuned it on. I had no idea it was off. I just checked. It was off again. Why would I turn it off?

What does my profile have to do with what I have to say? Anyone could make up crap on a profile page.

 

It is just an opinion. Not a fact. And not a claim. A lot of people I know started buying records because the sound was better. Collectors and hipsters could careless about sound. No kidding.

 

Agreed. Maxwell XL 2 was my go for tape. It loved my Kenwood and my Kenwood loved it back. I miss type 2 and 4 tapes. Was there a funeral?

 

O.k. I think I can help. And this may sound strange and a bit unorthodox but bare with me here.. .

By another deck of the same brand and model number. Or a model number similar to what you have. The deck doesn't have to work because you only need it for the parts. In this case you should be able to get your model (unless it is really rare) for under $100 on Ebay in "sold as is" condition. It doesn't have to play or record. Just as long as the parts that you need still function.

Believe it or not this is what the Lord-Alge brothers have done with their aging DASH units. You can't buy a part for a Sony PCM 3348 HR anymore. Tom just purchased a few 3324s and 3348s. The parts are the same for the 3348 HR. So whenever he needs a new part for the 3348 HR he cannibalizes it from the the other used DASH units that he has stored away. The 3 extra DASH units cost him less than $8000 USD. He didn't need them working. Just the parts.

This is what Uncle Jack had been doing for over 15 years. When your Pro Digi or DASH multitracks breakdown where ya gonna go? Where are you going to get parts? From another machine just like it. An Ampex or Studer analog multitrack you can still get parts for. Even relap those nasty heads. But DASH and/or Pro Digi???
Either buy a few cheap DASH 3348s or.....Set up a machine shop in your basement and get grooving.

I know it sounds bizzare but remember you aren't looking to find the same model in perfect operating condition. All you need is the parts you are looking for and that they work. Plenty of people selling expense cassette decks in or near crap condition for Pennies. I would start looking there. You will also have extra parts in case something else needs to be replaced.

Another option. Many companies purchase their parts from elsewhere. You may find that another company (JVC, Pioneer, etc) had a cassette deck put out at some point that has exactly what you are looking for. In this case you buy the model cheap. Again, it doesn't have to be in great condition. You just need the parts.

Another option is to check Ebay and Reverb.

Hope this helps. Remember many of your machines are over 40 years old.


A few years ago some engineers restored to perfect working order a legendary Scully RTR 284 - 12. Now, imagine trying to get parts for a 51 year old 12 track RTR. Probably all tubes.
Because where would the world be without a 1 inch 12 track? It is the only 284-12 in working order.

Of course you can buy a 2 inch head stack that has 1 inch 12 track playback head on it. Just remove the 2 inch 24 track head stack off your Studer A827 (or whatever) and screw on one of these babies. Presto! Now you can play back all of those 1 inch 12 track tapes on your 24 track recorder. Hey! No laughing. 60, 284-12 sold between 1967 - 1969. Actually it is the rarest analog multitrack ever made. Although the Stephens 2 inch 40 track I think is ahead of it. All of John's tape machines were hand made (Not kidding!). I do think more than 40 were ever sold. But don't quote me on it.

 

Yawn!

You've killed a lot of digital ink on BS. Just own it and go on.

M~

 

That's good idea. actually one of my sony recorders digital display is dead. Ill probably gonna get a backup.
With a stroke of luck all of a sudden the tire came in last night so I was able to pop it in. All complete and running..... for now!

 

Buy a good refurbished 3 head deck (Dolby S) off of Ebay. $500 is a good limit but it depends on what you are looking at. Avoid Naks. Not that they aren't good but if they break down it will be difficult and real expensive to get your deck fixed right. Love Naks but oh my.......

 

I don't know if this makes any sense.. The nakamichi decks are really nice and performs well. The maintenance can be more than the other brand. When I was young, I was told by the guy that though me about high fidelity. try to stay away from deck that has a small head and pinch rollers. As the years go by, I had different decks along the way and I notice the small heads and pinch rollers gets out of alignment faster than the large ones like teac decks with their famous large heads. I have the bx-300 that I showed you before and I only use it on recording. Otherwise I never use it at all especially playbacks.
What decks are you using now?

 

Okay man... Now tell me something. Since 2001 to 2010 I was buying both blank and pre-recorded tapes for 25 cents. A lot of the guys I knew were making fun of me being too old school and not it the style anymore. They told me to start buying CD and I just play if off and said I cant afford it.
Now I don't know what happened?? all of as sudden people are buying cassettes again so its hurting me. from 25 cents it went $25.00.. What the ????

 

I think a Sith Lord is behind it all.

 

"Search your feelings.. You know which cassettes will be true."

 

I had a 1983, 3 head Denon deck. It has a small channel problem now. The guys at Bay and Bloor Radio could fix it but they are all closed down due to our Province being thrown back to Phase 1. Now I use a (refurbished) Sony Dubbing deck I purchased back in 2007 I think. It has Dolby B and C.

Specs:
30 - 16 000 hz +-3db Type 1 tape.
30 - 17 000 hz +-3db Type 2 tape.
30 - 18 000 hz +-3db Type 4 tape.

Not audiophile but good enough for transfering my collection of whatever to computer. All of my tapes are either Type 2 or 4. Pitty, the Denon I had was 25 - 21 000 hz +-3db with Metal tape. The right channel of the Denon still works so I use for for transfers of mono mixes.

My Kenwood (1991 - 2002) could pull 30 - 19 000 hz with Type 4 tapes, so I don't think I am losing too much with the Sony. I hope!

I had a good 2 head Denon back in 2004. A nice mid priced unit with a bias knob. One of the best I have ever had.

And there was the Hitachi 2 head in 1985.
$180 CAN.
30 - 14 000 hz +-3db Type 1 tape.
30 - 16 000 hz +-3db Type 2 tape.
30 - 17 000 hz +-3db Type 4 tape.

Signal to noise ratio with Type 2 tape 66 db 'A' weighted. It had VU meters, mechanical tape controls and tape counter.
-------------- --------------- ------------- ------------ -------

And back in 1980 my Father got me a Nak 581 for $25 though a Chapter 11 liquidation sale.
20 - 20 000 hz +-3db with Metal tape.
Mechanical peak meters. Very heavy! Very RTR sounding. It came with a Nackamachi Type 4 C-15 blank tape.

-------- ----------- ------------ -------- ---------- ------ --
My first really good cassette walkman was a Sony Pro walkman for $330 I purchased in August of 1988 at Bay Bloor Radio. What a sound? It came with a leather case.
20 - 19 000 hz +-3db. And with those Mega
bass headphones I was in heaven. For the first time I was getting home stereo sound on the go. Back then the Mega Bass Eq was set around 80 hz and not 150 hz..

 

I have a friend that works at hitachi corp 1984. I bought a tv for my step dad it was really nice. Next door company was proton. I bought a lot of car stereo from them..

 

Naks are great. But if they break down and they will, you can't just take it to anyone. Nak owners seem to fall into 2 categories: Those that have had no problems with their Nak decks and everyone else. The Naks from the 1971 - 1988 period are made in Japan and our fantastic. The 1990 to the end of their production is a different matter. This is the problem with Naks. Some users like yourself have had a great track record, but others have not. It isn't 1986 anymore. If you need your Nak deck fixed Willy Herman is the only guy I would trust with my Nakamichi deck.
They have been compared to Stephen's tape machines - They sound better than the competition but if they break down only John Stephen can fix if. Naks auto-azimuth alignment gave the biggest problems. And they broke down the most often..

Nak bashing is a new sport. It started 10 years ago with people buying used Nackamachi
Decks and having them fixed incompetent dim ninnies. Some guy on line claimed he had two Nak Dragon restored and and tested..And that they both measured 20 - 10 000 hz +-3db. Not kidding! It is obvious - either the guy is a troll or
His technical fellow screwed up the auto- azimuth. Instead of getting the maxium high frequency output of tape on playback the technician achieved the opposite. Hence the 10 khz top end response. He really thought that the flag ship of Nak would bottom out at a frequency even a $100 1977 deck could beat with normal tape.

 

D1 wasn't even widely used 20 years ago, at least by me in NYC. As far as I know, Betacam SP tape is metal, and I believe the HD formats were too(HDSR, D5,etc.).

But, TV is a file world now. Even the masters for all new programming are files, usually 23.98 pSf. Older shows remain on 1", Beta SP, D2, etc.


Dan

 

This is something that I don't haven't really experienced on digital or analog. How do you "feel the sound" on a headphone or Walkman? Well I use the headphone a lot on pre-recording so I can hear the clarity or distortion but as far as listening pleasure.. Ive never been there... Seriously!

...... Going back to cassettes. The one disadvantage about these is once I start listening to it, I don't wanna listen anymore to streaming or my usb media file.
The sound is addictive.

 

No argument there. Simple, if you want music on the go headphones/earbuds are the only way to go. We have better choices now then we did back in 1988 for portable use.

 

I think the D-1 was early high definition pro tape format but not to sure. At the TV ontario video library back in 2003 they had one guy whose job was transfer all the old Type B 1 inch cartridge videos and the 2 inch videos to D-1 cassette. The TV Ontario video vault library was at 1900 Yonge back in 2003. I don't know if they moved it.

No, they weren't used for transmission but for copying analog video to digtial. Perhaps for archival use. But D-1 is still use because hundreds of programs now only exist on D-1 tapes.. But yes, it is all files today.

The BBC was using them back between 2001 - 2014. Most of those Doctor who classic episodes were transfers to D1 tape between 2002 - 2014 from either 16 mm prints, 2 inch Quad 525 line NTSC copies or PAL 625 line, 2 inch Quad video masters. The recently found Patrick Troughton Doctor Who stories - The Web of Fear and The Enemy of The World was transfered to D1 tape in 2013. The 16 mm print had to be cleaned, restored and then run through the Spirit Scanner. I am not sure if a Wet Gate Scan was used. ??? No doubts these are all on a file somewhere sting on a hard drive.

Unfortunately hard drives are not that dependable. Best to have a hard backup copy.

 

Ahhh someone in the TV field. GOOD. I got a question sir. When did 2 inch Quad video give way to 3/4 inch Pro? When I needed to turn in my video portfolio (Aspiring actor that really didn't go anywhere....) to The CBC in 1988 they were only taking it on 3/4 video.

 

D1 is not HD, no, so I'm surprised that such an antiquated format was used by the dates you mention. But, it's not like a lot of things in TV make a whole lot of sense. My call would have been DigiBeta if we had to have a tape format. My focus would be for pulling things off of D1 rather than mastering to it. But hey, I've seen masters on every format--1', 3/4", D1/2/3, Beta/BetaSP, DVCPro, MII...it just gets exhausting after a bit

At least where I worked, D2 was used far more often than D1 before being supplanted by DigiBeta. It's different in terms of both cost as well as being composite versus D1's component, but who was really using analog component video?

Quad gave way to 1" rather than 3/4", which was invented in the early 70s and was briefly considered for home use. When I began in TV in the 80s, it was generally a 1" and (U-Matic) 3/4" world, with U-Matic SP in there for a little better performance. Betacam/BetaSP seemed to replace 3/4" in the ENG world.

Tape is all but gone. There are some who prefer an HDSR submaster, but generally it's all about "the cloud" now. That's what has been sold to the higher-ups, and they don't want to pay for expensive VTR/VCR overhauls anymore.


Dan

 

I wasn't sure weather D1 was HD or not. Sorry, I should have said 3/4 (Umatic). The Doctor Who extras are from DVDs that came out in 2018 or even later. Why was the BBC still using D1 in 2013?
Good question. They show the tech guy fixing the 16 mm print. Old film print needing to be fixed, etc. One guy even held up a D1 tape at one point. I will check my Doctor Who DVDs again.

I understand. By 1995 things went crazy in terms of Pro video formats. Why didn't the televison industry stick to one SD format and one HD format. Why so many different formats? It makes no sense.


My field of work is audio mastering/ mixing. There was some old hold outs as as well. The Ampex MM-1000 - 16 and 24 track recorders came out both at the same time in 1969. But the MM-1000 -24 was not too good and had teething problems. The 2 inch 24 head stack would crack. Ampex solved the problem with a 12 track staggered head design. But 24 tracks weren't really used until 1971. This is when: 3M, Studer, Tascam and other tape machine manufacturers started making good 2 inch 24 track recorders. By this point tape transports, head designs and tape had improved considerably. Most notable the introduction of the Scotch 306 tape formulations.

By 1973 most Pro studios had upgraded to 24 track. And yet many studios still continued to use 16 track. For example, Abbey Road. Alan Parsons had to bounce down to second 16 track tape to get all of the tracks he needed. This is why on the final 16 track tape (Dolby A encoded)
Bass and drums are mixed to stereo onto 2 tracks. Before he bounced it was 5 tracks:
1. Bass
2. Kick
3. Snare
4. Stereo overhead left
5. Stereo overhead right

As you can see here, Parsons certainly needed a 24 track recorder.

Worse yet was the first Rush Album that was recorded in 1974 was done to a 1 one inch 8 track in a "pro studio." Believe or not many albums in the U.K. up to 1972 were still being recorded to 8 track. ie ELO - "No Answer."
Motown had upgraded to 16 track in 1969, but even they went 24 track by 1972.

Here is a little quote from Motown writer/producer, Norman Whitfield when he was told that the company was moving to 2 inch 16 track:

".....16 tracks! What are we gonna do with 16 tracks? That's gonna be hard to mix....."

Actually if you throw in the 3 AUX/EFFECT sends the new board would have, it is more like 19 channels to mix.

24 track did not become the defacto standard in Pro studios until 1976. Seem late? They were heavily used before that but by 1976 any studio calling themselves PROFESSIONAL had to have a 2 inch 24 track machine. No client would expect less. And yet in the big Pro studios of The West Indies 2 inch 16 was still be used. Many of Bob Marley's records right up to 1976 were done on 2 inch 16 track.

And believe it or not they were the Stephens 2 inch 40 track format brought out in 1973. And earlier in 1967, the Scully 1 inch 12 track (284 -12).
No one else made a 2 inch 40 or a 1 inch 12 track. Very rare. The Scully 284-12 sold 60 units between 1967 - 1970. The 40 track is even rarer.

Playing back these tapes today on are tricky as heck. Only one 284-12 has been restored to perfect health. Lucky some clever boys manufactured a 1 inch 12 track playback head that fits on 2 inch head stack. So if you have a 12 track tape you need to remix / transfer just take off your 2 inch head stack off you Studer A827 (or whatever) and screw on the 2 head stack with the 1 inch 12 track playback head on it and PRESTO. Easy as pie!

But to play a 40 track tape you need a Stephens 2 inch 40 track machine. Thomas Roy Baker used 2 of them to record Queen. After 1975 I think. He would synchronize 2 of the 40 track tape machines up for 78 tracks. Not 80. 2 tracks are lost to sync pulses.


And instead of 1 digital pro multitrack format we got 4.

1979 - The original 3M 32 digital multitrack.
32 tracks over 1 inch pure metal tape running at 45 ips at 50 khz. ($136 000 USD)


PRO DIGI
1985 - Mitsubishi X-850 ($156 000 USD)
Simaliar to the one above but Completely incompatible.
32 tracks running over 1 inch Pro Digi (metal) tape over stationary heads at 30 ips. 44.1 or 48 khz.


DASH format
Sony 3324 / 3324A / 3324S ($150 000 USD) 1981
24 tracks of 16 bit PCM running on 1/2 DASH tape (pure metal) at 30 ips over stationary heads.
44.1 / 48 khz
- Any 3324 can play back the first 24 tracks of a 3348 tape. No, really!

Sony 3348 ($250 000 USD)
Same as above except 48 tracks.
One 14 inch reel at 44.1 khz = 1 hour rec. time
One 14 inch reel at 48 khz = 45 mins rec. time

Sony 3348 HR ($250 000 USD)
Same same as above except 24 /48 recording.
- can play back 3348 16 bit 44.1 / 48 khz recordings.

ADAT and D-88. (early 1990's)
8 tracks of 16 bit PCM on S-VHS tape (ADAT)
or 8 tracks of same on HI-8 MM (D-88)
$2000 - $3000 each depending on year purchased. ADAT can synchronize up to 16 units for 128 tracks. No, really!
Instead of $250 000 for 48 tracks of 16/48 it will now cost you less than $24 000 USD (including taxes, shipping, etc) to buy 6 units at $3000 plus the synchronizer unit. 48 tracks of 16/48 PCM for less than the cost of good analog 2 inch 24 track.


Thousands of albums were recorded with these machines. Many Pro Digi and DASH multitrack tapes from the 1980's will not play. On rare occasions they will. It depends on how the was stored and other factors. Unfortunately they will be no 5.1 mix of POWER WINDOWS, or HOLD YOUR FIRE. I hope I am wrong.

But you sir have to deal with even more dead formats than we do. I sympathize. Any video format you hate having to deal with?


Just a few questions. Most people I talk to in the TV industry are rather new. As in the last 15 years or so. You seem to have been around and then some.
Bare with me here. I have always wanted to know. Shows like DEEP SPACE NINE and later BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER were recorded to what video format?
Was Buffy D1? I know both were filmed. The first 2 seasons of BUFFY were filmed on 16 mm according to Josh Weadon. BUFFY started in 1996 but finished in 2003. I would imagine that the video tape formats must have changed. I know they scanned the film into a computer and edited it from there. When did the computer editing start?

Any info you can provide will be appreciated. Thank you.

 

Agreed. No auto-reverse decks. Two exceptions:
The Nak decks that actually span their tapes around back in the 1980's and the Nak units with auto-azimith. Just make sure the damn thing is working right. Do it for me.....Please.