Topic: Zero bit recording

[DSatz]

Sorry, my mistake -- that circuit was in the Nakamichi 600, not the 500.

--When setting up a deck for a specific type of tape, the Dolby level match is the final step after bias and equalization. Setting bias is a particularly painstaking process on any two-head tape deck; EQ and Dolby level, somewhat less so, but 15-20 minutes is a reasonable amount of time to set aside for the whole procedure. The same process takes only about two to three minutes with a three-head deck since you can vary the setting and observe the results in more or less real time, without continually recording, rewinding and checking the output. Also, the optimal gap width for a record head vs. a playback head are quite different from each other. I'm still fond of analog tape (I've been transferring some of my own, decades-old recordings in the past few years) but two-head decks are always a major compromise.

[grawk]

They’re here

[Gone Fishin']

Memories!

We used to raid the local department stores when the Cello-packed 6 (or Bonus Tape 7) packs went on sale.
I remember the weird looks carrying 72 cassettes to the register.
"Mom likes polkas!" I used to tell 'em.

[goodcooker]

I thought I was going to have to abandon my plan when the FOH for BHTM said no way on AC power but my friend the house guy was like "I'll put out a quad box for the house light board and he'll just have to deal" Nothing else was said and I set up two rigs on one stand - KM140>Mixpre6 and Nak CM300/CP1 > Nak 500. Ran the A10 off the output of the tape deck and I'm glad I did. The Blues Traveler set ran over 1.5 hours so the encore "Hot For Teacher" and the last few minutes of the last song only got written to the A10. When the tape ran out I put it on record pause to feed the A10.

Stayed with cardioid stereo mics instead of 3, used Dolby and the limiter because it was super loud. Packed in the Nak inside a 60s Samsonite powder blue lady's carry on. Right before BT's set their FOH guy looks over into the suitcase and says "That's awesome". All the crew guys were kinda cracking up but also really nice about letting me share their space.

It sounds killer in the headphones from the little bit that I played back after I got home.

[Gutbucket]

Right on!

[rocksuitcase]

I thought I was going to have to abandon my plan when the FOH for BHTM said no way on AC power but my friend the house guy was like "I'll put out a quad box for the house light board and he'll just have to deal" Nothing else was said and I set up two rigs on one stand - KM140>Mixpre6 and Nak CM300/CP1 > Nak 500. Ran the A10 off the output of the tape deck and I'm glad I did. The Blues Traveler set ran over 1.5 hours so the encore "Hot For Teacher" and the last few minutes of the last song only got written to the A10. When the tape ran out I put it on record pause to feed the A10.

Stayed with cardioid stereo mics instead of 3, used Dolby and the limiter because it was super loud. Packed in the Nak inside a 60s Samsonite powder blue lady's carry on. Right before BT's set their FOH guy looks over into the suitcase and says "That's awesome". All the crew guys were kinda cracking up but also really nice about letting me share their space.

It sounds killer in the headphones from the little bit that I played back after I got home.

Awesome! SO COOL!

[goodcooker]

https://archive.org/details/bt2024-08-06.CM300.Nak500

Big Head Todd up next...

[audBall]

^ Awesome, thanks for sharing your efforts, sounds great!! I'm hearing some Salt Peanuts on that bass solo.

[goodcooker]

^ Awesome, thanks for sharing your efforts, sounds great!! I'm hearing some Salt Peanuts on that bass solo.

Good ear! I went over to an unpopulated area to burn one during that part of the show and my GF sent me a text "He's playing Salt Peanuts!". She has a music degree but isn't really into jazz all that much. But she is really sharp.

[Billy Mumphrey]

Digging the sound, goodcooker. It's really interesting to listen to the "Hot For Teacher" encore as it was only written to digital. Might be biased but after a quick listen on studio monitors, I prefer the analog recording.

I know you're busy with the restaurant, but hoping you'll transfer the Neumann > MixPre digital source at some point (no rush). Interested to hear your thoughts on both sources, particularly since you were at the show and standing next to/close to the mics.

Little things, like Todd's guitar sound (when he guests on Carolina Blues) sound really cool to me on analog. Idk why.

Tad Kinchla, their (sadly) 2nd bass player, has always been a badass IMO.

[goodcooker]

Digging the sound, goodcooker. It's really interesting to listen to the "Hot For Teacher" encore as it was only written to digital. Might be biased but after a quick listen on studio monitors, I prefer the analog recording.
I know you're busy with the restaurant, but hoping you'll transfer the Neumann > MixPre digital source at some point (no rush). Interested to hear your thoughts on both sources, particularly since you were at the show and standing next to/close to the mics.
Little things, like Todd's guitar sound (when he guests on Carolina Blues) sound really cool to me on analog. Idk why.
Tad Kinchla, their (sadly) 2nd bass player, has always been a badass IMO.

I prefer the tape source sound as well. I need to track out the KM140 source and I'll upload it to give a comparison. The waveforms were very different but I ran it like I usually do - with lots of headroom to boost gain in post. It sounds kind of anemic compared to the Naks but I was running the tape deck up against the limiter all night.

The Nak500 I ran with the limiter on and the preamps slightly hotter than was really necessary (and it felt very counter intuitive). I tested the limiter somewhat at home and it sounded very transparent so I had hopes that I could push the levels past zero to get that "saturation" that people emulate with plug ins nowadays and it panned out. The VU meters were in the red quite often but I didn't really notice any clipping that sounded bad but during the BT set you can hear things get a little fuzzy around the edges. To me just enough pleasant sounding distortion = analog warmth. This was a loud ass rock band not a string quartet. Having things a little fuzzed out is a feature not a shortcoming. I'm not always after a pristine, clear recording and this is a great example of that.

Here's the Big Head Todd and the Monsters set -
https://archive.org/details/bhtm2024-08-06.nak500

The levels for them were a little more conservative. I set levels based on their set and left them there all night but prob should have reduced a touch for BT - they really cranked it up.

[Gutbucket]

Haven't had a chance to listen yet but plan to this weekend. Just want to make sure I understand correctly before I do.

I set up two rigs on one stand - KM140>Mixpre6 and Nak CM300/CP1 > Nak 500. Ran the A10 off the output of the tape deck and I'm glad I did. The Blues Traveler set ran over 1.5 hours so the encore "Hot For Teacher" and the last few minutes of the last song only got written to the A10. When the tape ran out I put it on record pause to feed the A10.

Okay so just the "HFT" encore portion of this recording > (https://archive.org/details/bhtm2024-08-06.nak500) is from the A10, spliced in to complete the Nak500 tape source, and it transitions just prior to the encore.  Good so far?

What I'm wondering about is the signal path through the Nak500 to it's line-outs feeding the A10.  Are Nak's limiters in that signal path?  They might only be effecting the signal to tape, in the same way as the Dolby circuit, and not the line-out.  That would be a pretty significant influence on the sonic differences.

Getting further into the sonic differences, it would be interesting to transfer the A10 recording back to the Nak500 (with the Nak set the exactly same as it was for the original recording, and the signal level out of the A10 or out of the computer adjusted to hit approximately the same meter levels as the original recording into the Nak), to see how different that is from the straight-to-Nak500 recording.  I'd bet very similar, maybe indistinguishable.

[Gutbucket]

^ If close enough, a taper that really digs the cassette tape sound but doesn't want to deal with the hassles at the gig could just record digitally then transfer to cassette as a post-production operation.  Won't get the nostalgia rush or a FOH guy looking over with a "That's awesome" though.  And would need to do both a real time record and real time transfer back to digital each time afterward.

[Gutbucket]

Hmmm, that gets me thinking about a far wackier idea that would totally eliminate flips, end of tape, and all real-time transfers. How much of "the sound" is actually imparted by the actual tape medium itself?  If most of "the sound" is imparted by the tape deck rather than the tape - the preamps, limiters, analog circuitry and last but not least the response, hysteresis, and other aspects of the magnetic tape head - what about using one of those old cassette adapters but in reverse? Pop one into the Nak500 set to record and plug the cassette adapter output into the A10.  You'd then get everything the analog tape deck imparts except the actual tape itself.. but also the influence of the cassette adapter too, which might be the deal killer. The ones I had back in the day were not the ultimate in high fidelity.  But maybe ok if the tape recorder was properly setup with the cassette adapter in place instead of a tape?  If it works, the tapeless deck then becomes a preamp/tape-emulation color box just ahead of the digital recorder. 
 


Wikipedia link for those too young to remember- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassette_tape_adapter

[Gutbucket]

Ok back to a minor, yet perhaps related observation about the recording using the current setup-

When tape ran out during to the encore and the Nak deck stopped, did that cut signal to the A10 until you were able to switch the Nak back to rec/pause again?  If it did, I presume you needed to patch it with the KM140>Mp6 source.  But if it didn't, it would seem unnecessary to have to switch the Nak back into rec/pause after the tape stopped in order to retain signal out to the A10.  I mention this because if you don't need to do that it will make for one less thing to be concerned with when recording with the Nak500 and a backup digital recorder.

That's actually what got me thinking about where the limiters are in the signal paths.