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Re: [ARSCLIST] Can 78s sound better than LPs?



Hi Lou:

This has been discussed, I think on this list, but it was a while back. You are a good businessman! It is VERY smart to have a client bring in his deck if it's a Nak. Nak has some non-standard things with Dolby (non-standard = not compatible with other manufacturers). If you have, say, a Nak Dragon, you should be able to reproduce his tapes perfectly (and then some since the Dragon's transport is more stable), but if his portable got dropped a few times, it might have unique azimuth and speed issues all its own. I forgot the particulars, but I think some argue that Nak is the only one who followed the Dolby B standard to the letter while everyone else didn't, but whatever the reason, Dolby B tapes made on another deck can sound wrong played back on a Nak and vice-versa. Not all the time, but sometimes. I'm hoping Richard Hess pipes up with the technical particulars on this.

-- Tom Fine

PS -- Your client is not so crazy about using the original deck. The tapes I made on my late Teac deck, which made it through high school, college and beyond and probably played 2500+ 45-minute cycles, never sound as good on other decks, including the Naks in the studio. That Teac deck was definitely in standard azimuth per a STL cassette, as are the decks in the studio. It just sounded brighter and more alive with tapes it made.

PPS -- Given the advantage of age and the advances of science/technology, I'd classify cassettes as a junk medium. But, less junky than Minidisc to my ears. At least cassettes tried to capture the full audio spectrum instead of come up with some robo-"perceptual encoding" scheme to avoid it!


----- Original Message ----- From: "Lou Judson" <loujudson@xxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, August 26, 2006 2:04 AM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Can 78s sound better than LPs?



All I can say it it is the client's machine and he thinks it is fine... Were it mine I would check all the parameters. It's a Nakamichi portable.

I resisted changing the subject to, can cassettes sound as good as 78s?

<L>

Lou Judson • Intuitive Audio
415-883-2689

On Aug 25, 2006, at 2:34 PM, Michael Shoshani wrote:

On Friday 25 August 2006 13.49, Tom Fine wrote:

Using the original tape machine, especially with cassettes, and a direct
signal path will beat any claims on any cable any day.

Well...


Assuming that the heads were demagnetized at the time of recording and are
demagnetized now, assuming the azimuth is correct, AND assuming that the
speed of the tape transport hasn't changed since the recording was
made...yes :)

Michael Shoshani
Chicago
Who inherently distrusts cassettes at all since working in a studio with three
different cassette decks, NONE of which ran at the exact same speed as the
other two...


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