Topic: any analog/tape dinosaurs left?

[weroflu]

Listening to some older cassette walkman recordings vs sony m10, I have to be honest, the cassette wins. Granted it was a wm-d6 so it's on the higher end of the cassette spectrum.

Noise never bothered me much from cassette. Same for the missing information above 15-17k.

Trying to decide to go cassette or pony up for a nagra/stella.

[vanark]

While I never recorded to cassette, I've done a fair number of transfers and the transfer time alone is worth the switch to solid state/hard disk recorders.  I would never get stuff transferred if I had to do it via cassette.

[raymonda]

Listening to some older cassette walkman recordings vs sony m10, I have to be honest, the cassette wins. Granted it was a wm-d6 so it's on the higher end of the cassette spectrum.

Noise never bothered me much from cassette. Same for the missing information above 15-17k.

Trying to decide to go cassette or pony up for a nagra/stella.

Trust your own ears. If you prefer the sound of cassette over today's digital, well then you have answered your own question. That being said, good luck trying to buy cassette tapes.

I have always preferred digital over cassette tape. I bought a Panasonic SV 250 back in 1989 and felt it was a big jump in performance over my Sony D5. Digital has come along way since 1989, and short of having a R2R, is the best for in field recording. R2R is impractical for field recordings, so I guess digital is the best for in field.

If you really enjoy the sound of cassettes, you could always do what many studios do, which would be to go DAD. Or, buy a tube preamp or buffer.

BTW, what is it about day's digital don't you like?

[runonce]

You might enjoy this thread

http://taperssection.com/index.php?topic=156713

[John Willett]

I always hated cassette sound - distorted, noisy and tape speed variations.

The same problems with open reel, but to a lesser extent.

Digital is far far better.

BUT

Digital reveals microphone deficiencies that analogue hides and you need to learn different techniques to get the best out of digital.

But I would never want to go back to analogue recording due to the high level and high quantity of distortions.

It's just that some people prefer all that distortion to clean and accurate sound - just like some people prefer MP3 and, in the old days, some people preferred AM radio over FM (before they learned that FM was much better).

[yltfan]

A friend back East has been a cassette enthusiast for years, but when I saw him last December, he was using an R-09.

These days, I can see no reason to use tapes--even the DAT kind. Or mini disc, jb3, anything without the ease, quality of our current options.

[acidjack]

I think one reason cassettes could sound "better" to someone for taping is that cassettes tend to provide some bass rolloff relative to digital.  At least, that's what I felt like was the case when I went to DAT from my D6. 

HQ open reels are a bit of a different story, at least IMO; for the same reasons people like listening to vinyl, a really HQ reel may provide a certain "analog warmth" that pleasing to the ear.  I think a lot of older studio recordings on reels sound more pleasant, and the ones done in today's world on reel to be "retro" tend to sound good to me, too.  Of course, the physical medium isn't the only factor in why something from the 1970s sounds different than something from 2013, for a host of reasons...

[John Willett]

Of course, the physical medium isn't the only factor in why something from the 1970s sounds different than something from 2013, for a host of reasons...

I agree with this - recording technique was, in many ways, much better in the 60's and 70's.

Mainly because the lack of tracks meant that they were more disciplined and also it was more about recording a "performance", rather than stitching together musical notes without any real performance or feeling in them.

[rastasean]

I had only a few tapes in my youth but they were pretty much all destroyed with subpar tape players eating my tapes. CDs can get scratched but it doesn't mean the entire album is destroyed.

The vintage thing for music these days is listening to modern music on records. I can understand if you have an actual album for when they were mass produced, but are the records today just a digital recording written to an analog format?

[acidjack]

The vintage thing for music these days is listening to modern music on records. I can understand if you have an actual album for when they were mass produced, but are the records today just a digital recording written to an analog format?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no.  Also, mastering for vinyl is (as I understand it) fundamentally different, resulting in a mix that may have a tone the listener likes more (I won't say "warmer" or "more natural" since those are not quantifiable).  For one, I think you cannot totally slam the levels on vinyl with compressors the way you do on digital, from what I've read.

Most vinyl I buy comes with a download card.  There's clearly a difference in the sound of the record and an MP3 - and not just the usual "MP3s are compressed and therefore terrible" type argument.  They just sound rather different.  I find some stuff makes more sense to listen to on vinyl than others.  Stuff like, say, Bob Dylan's new record, made with beautiful vintage gear, really sounds good on record and maybe has a different flavor than on digital (the record comes with a CD, too).  Something like a modern keyboard-driven, overcompressed band like Passion Pit, owning the record was just owning a giant less portable copy of a CD. 

[OOK]

That being said, good luck trying to buy cassette tapes.

http://nationalaudiocompany.com/Audio-Cassettes-C1.aspx

[raymonda]

That being said, good luck trying to buy cassette tapes.

http://nationalaudiocompany.com/Audio-Cassettes-C1.aspx

$50.00 for 10 tapes, which is about the same cost for metal tapes 20 years ago given inflation, maybe a little less. If this is the path the OP wants to go, well, here is a resource for tapes. My experience with BASF tapes were never as favorable as it was with Maxell metal tapes but they might work just as well.

If this pleases the OP ears, then there are plenty of D5's and 6's over at ebay. You can pick one up one in good condition for somewhere around $300-1500. I owned both a D6 and D5 and IMO the D5 made much better tapes. The D6 was really second rate. Sure it made good recordings but when compared to the D5 in the same chain was no where near as good. Also, the best D5's sounded best with the erase head removed, something Oade did as mods back in the day. finally using an external mic pre-amp would also benefit, since the mic pre's in the 5 are a bit less than desirable, unless this is the sound desired.

Also, many of today's LP's are cut from digital masters. Very few are pure analog, and some from 44/16 masters, e.g. the most recent Beatles box set from 48/16. If anything was deserving of using the analog masters for an ultimate analog release you would think this would have been it........but the engineers at Apple felt otherwise....just like many others do.

IMO, although a great LP set up will give you things that digital won't......I have $5000 invested in my turntable/cartridge and phono pre-amp, (not really a lot of money...but a lot to me) own over 2500 albums, and only buy LP's as new releases not cd's or down loads, believe that truly great analog sound comes from a top shelf R2R not from a turntable. Not that truly great sound can't come from a $200,000 TT front end but the actual masters or R2R copies from the masters are really where the great sound resides.

One last thought or two.......sometimes we confuse...."What sounds better vs was sounds more accurate to the original source". At the end of the day I can always make something sound better when I start with something that begins with more accurate but if something is too colored it is very difficult to make it sound accurate to the original source.

So, I go the path with the most accurate recording system and make it sound more pleasing afterwards, either through post editing software or playback hardware. Sometimes the right pre-amp, amp, speaker, D2A or tube buffer does the job in a better way than a colored recording chain. All bets are off though when I choose mics for multi-tracking, where I will pick a mic for the interaction with the instrument I'm capturing. However, even in this case there is something about the choice I make that goes along way to truth to timbre in the critical zone of the instrument's voice.

Anyway, this is how I trust my own ears and for the OP I stand by "Trust your own ears". At the end of the day you have to be happy with the sound you are capturing and creating.

[DSatz]

I'm sorry but I really wouldn't consider the Sony WM-D6 to be a very good cassette recorder, despite its having Dolby noise reduction; it had high levels of scrape flutter and modulation noise, and was damn near impossible to set up for flat response and low distortion with any given type of cassette tape. Among Sony's portable, two-head recorders, the TCD-D5 was quite a bit better sounding (with a much better transport), but still a bear to set up properly--there were no continuously adjustable bias or EQ controls; you had to solder and unsolder various bridges on the circuit board for an approximate adjustment.

Any decent three-head, closed-loop dual capstan deck (Tandberg, Nakamichi) would outperform either of those machines, but such designs weren't available in battery-powered models; even Nakamichi's portable decks were two-head, and rather hard to set up. Superscope and later Marantz sold a three-head portable, but it had a mediocre single-capstan transport.

Here's the thing: If a recording device changes the sound of whatever signals you feed in to it, it is fundamentally IMPOSSIBLE for that alteration in the sound to be a good thing in every instance. Whatever form of distortion is being perpetrated may sound good some of the time, but if there was a form of distortion that ALWAYS made a recording sound better, then you could further improve all your recordings by re-recording them through the same form of distortion again, and if you repeated the exercise they would again sound even better, and so on ad infinitum.

Since that's obviously absurd, I think you should just consider yourself lucky if you like the results that you got.

--best regards

[bombdiggity]

The thing that "unretired" me from this was taking my old d6 and little Sony single point ms9xx mic (which wasn't my a rig even then) to a last minute find on a lark since that was all I had at that point that I had cable for (included of course) and knew still worked.   

I've been to the venue a few times since and it is still the best sounding thing I've come out of there with.  I attribute that to the mix - which was phenomenal in a hall that is quite difficult.  I don't think the dinosaur rig did any real damage though.  Maybe I would have gotten better all other things equal but I have no complaints.  It was really a good recording. 

I wouldn't spend $1000 on a d5 or d6 though.  And I still haven't had time to do a proper digital transfer of that tape (either). 

[George2]

I'm still here. I recorded The Dead a couple of times with D5 and AKG C33 for a friend.. my gear.....he bought tickets and the rest.