Tape Trail Reel to reel, cassette and other analogue tape formats.

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RE: why the interest in cassette decks and reel to reels

Posted by MHugo (A) on October 6, 2007 at 13:30:46

In Reply to: RE: why the interest in cassette decks and reel to reels posted by J.L on October 4, 2007 at 06:45:16:

Minidisc is very neat - I have one - a Sony 930 series. Atrac 5.0. I really wanted a 555ES and couldn't afford it at the time in 2001. I admit, its outrageously cute and better by miles than any data reduced MP3, 2/4, or the MSoft one - better than them all with the one exception of DCC. I have a Philips DCC 600 and that is subtlety better again - but of course much less sexy and much less convenient. But genuine lossless (don't mention Apple or Meridian) - i.e. pure analogue wins the day. Smooth extended highs, no grittiness, seamless integration of frequencies, no vagueing out on busy passages (even DCC and the best of mini-disc does this and as for lossy anything, they are unlistenable even at 192kHz). Also bear in mind that mini-disc truncates frequencies below 20hz and above 16kHz - yes I know your spec manual says that the frequency response is from 2hz and up to 22khz - the machines circuitry may indeed perform on those parameters - the media and ATRAC coding doesn't. Not a chance – no space. PASC is slightly better with an 18 bit word and 18kHz upper threshold.

3dB, if you're still there, I listen to tapes because they offer superior recording - I don't much like CD recording. Media is sometimes a reliability hassle and odd order distortion rises as dither, clocking and other errors are successively re-approximated by the error correction chipware. This is aggravated if using yellow and orange (RW) book devices instead of red book machines working in real time.

And analogue is more fun. Recording on them, which I do often, is rewarding. I copy to CD for friends and relations who are unfortunate enough not to have a cassette deck or place instant track access above sonic quality.

Cheers all - MH

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