Home Critic's Corner

Discuss a review. Provide constructive feedback. Talk to the industry.

RE: Bull! I have heard many of the popular megabuck CD players and I am unimpressed.

"Practically *any* CD outperforms practically *any* cassette by a wide margin, not to forget that they tend to wear out fairly quickly, losing their top end especially."


You are correct about the wear-out factor with cassette tapes. They also don't age so well in storage. However, under ideal conditions good quality cassette recordings can have excellent sound. I use a Nakamichi CR-7 to transfer tapes to digital and many of these cassette tapes have excellent sound, typically these are first generation cassette tapes that were made from reels to reel master tapes. It is possible to capture most of what is on these tapes digitally at 96/24, but at 44/16 there is noticeable degradation for the better tapes. High frequencies on the Nak go considerably higher than with CD, and noise is not much a factor with metal tapes, even without Dolby NR (which adds some artifacts). The major problem that I get with old tapes (e.g. from the 70's) comes from the occasional dropout. The CR-7 is a dual capstan design, which avoids the inevitable problems with old pressure pads which includes loss of head contact as well as scrape flutter.



Tony Lauck

"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar


This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
  Signature Sound   [ Signature Sound Lounge ]


Follow Ups Full Thread
Follow Ups
  • RE: Bull! I have heard many of the popular megabuck CD players and I am unimpressed. - Tony Lauck 09/6/1210:53:10 09/6/12 (0)

FAQ

Post a Message!

Forgot Password?
Moniker (Username):
Password (Optional):
  Remember my Moniker & Password  (What's this?)    Eat Me
E-Mail (Optional):
Subject:
Message:   (Posts are subject to Content Rules)
Optional Link URL:
Optional Link Title:
Optional Image URL:
Upload Image:
E-mail Replies:  Automagically notify you when someone responds.