Re: [ARSCLIST] need audio cassette deck suggestions

[Eric Jacobs <ericj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

David,

I would second Richard's recommendation for Nakamichi.  The 
Nakamichi's have very long head life as well.  I would add the
Nakamichi CR-7A to the list of prospective cassette decks,
especially if you are doing mono work.  The CR-7A provides 
manual azimuth adjust (as opposed to the Dragon's automatic).
For the most part, the Dragon is great since you don't need
to think about azimuth.  However, the Dragon needs at least
a 3kHz signal before it can track azimuth.  So in some rare
cases (usually spoken word), the CR-7A allows you to adjust 
the azimuth where the Dragon might not.  But again, this is 
usually a non-issue.

Since your collection is large, the more automation you have
the better.  So the Dragon's automatic azimuth adjustment can
give you maximum quality without much fuss, especially if you
are dealing primarily with musical content.  I like to have
maximum control over the transfer process, so prefer the 
CR-7A for this reason alone.  Setting the azimuth on the 
CR-7A is very easy - just watch your phase plot and rotate 
the azimuth adjustment knob to minimize phase error.  Takes
a few seconds, that's all.

Eric Jacobs

The Audio Archive
EricJ@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
tel: 408.221.2128
fax: 408.549.9867


-----Original Message-----
From: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List
[mailto:ARSCLIST@xxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Richard L. Hess
Sent: Tuesday, November 08, 2005 7:00 AM
To: ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] need audio cassette deck suggestions


Hello, David,

The quality of the heads in Nakamichis in general and the auto-play 
azimuth feature of the Dragon in particular (and the manual play 
azimuth of the CR-7 and perhaps a few others) allows for optimizing 
playback to get the highest quality possible from the transfers.

While I was originally focusing on reel-tape restoration, a good 
friend of mine who used to work in the standard tape lab (and 
evaluated tapes and recorders) at Ampex, told me if I was thinking of 
expanding into cassettes there was no substitute, overall, for the 
Dragon. He thought that the Studers might have better transports and 
the Tandbergs might have better electronics (I hope I got that 
correct), but the heads and the azimuth-adjust feature made the 
Nakamichis really the only choice for quality work.

The current setup of my tape restoration suite features two Dragons, 
and they see a lot of use.TAP Electronics in southern California can 
still maintain them, I believe. They have maintained several of mine.

The Tascam 122B is a workhorse, but it's difficult to adjust its 
azimuth and recently (could have been a defective machine) the work I 
heard done on one (at the ARSC conference) wasn't up to par.

One thing to consider if you've got a massive project and quality is 
of less of a concern, would be to consider a Tascam 234 and transfer 
all four tracks of each cassette at double speed. That would require 
re-equalization and re-speeding and reversing two of the four tracks 
in the computer, but it would cut the time to 1/4 while maintaining 
let's say 60% of the quality you would get from the Dragon -- perhaps 
a bit more.

Cheers,

Richard

Cheers,

Richard


Richard L. Hess                              richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Aurora, Ontario, Canada             http://www.richardhess.com/
Detailed contact information: http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm