Conference cookie::notes$archive:cd_v1

Cassettes can come very close to the performance of a CD player.
... but the "Garbage-In-Garbage-Out" rule still applies so it really
is important to record the cassettes directly from compact discs
recordings.  Good quality tape cassettes and a good cassette deck
are also important.

You don't get the other advantages of a CD, but I'm not going to
go into that because that doesn't seem to apply to your question.

As for sound quality, try it yourself.  Make a recording from a
CD on a good tape, then have someone else switch back and forth
from tape to CD and see if you can tell the difference.  I was
given this demonstration in a listening room, and I couldn't tell.
It was my CD too.

Glenn

I think that .0 was referring to pre-recorded cassettes, though I could be
wrong. (What? Me? Wrong? :-))

Pre-recorded cassettes are getting better all the time. Mostly, I think the
impetus for this is to get people to buy the cassette rather make a better
copy from someone's LP.

As a previous response said, it's still a matter of GIGO. If the recording
company puts care into making the cassettes, they'll come out good; if not,
they won't. The tapes put out today using HX-Pro, XDR, or whatever alphabet
soup you can insert here are *extremely* clean and sound *extremely* good.
I've been buying them over the last year for two reasons: (1) because I
haven't owned a turntable for a couple of years and don't now have access
to one, and (2) because most of my music listening is done in the car. I
have been very pleased with the tapes being produced today.

But compared to CD's? No, the tapes aren't quite up to CD's.

--- jerry

For automobile listening, tapes made from CDs are completely adequate
(assuming good recorder, etc).  Since a quiet car environment is over 
60 dBA, the difference in signal-to-noise and hiss get lost in the background
noise.  You might want to compress the tape a bit to hear quiet passages!
 Chris

When I record with my Nak 300Bx and switch between
tape and source, I am hard pressed to tell the difference.
The tape does have the hiss though.

Mike "Who like cd because you can play them again and again ..."

    I'm so far behind in catching up with these notes that I doubt anyone
    will ever read this--but here goes anyway:
    
    I have a Nakamichi "Dragon" cassette deck, and a few days ago I
    tried to record a CD on it. (I'd done this before using a Maxell
    Gold tape and had no trouble.) The tape I was using was a Nakamichi
    metal tape, even though there is a warning, buried away in the guts
    of the Nakamichi "Dragon" instruction manual, not to use metal tape
    in the deck. It doesn't say why--just warns you not to. The same
    people who sold me the "Dragon" (Goodwin's Music Systems in Cambridge)
    also sold me the Nakamichi metal tapes--although it was months after
    I bought the deck. At any rate, I've used those metal tapes on a
    number of occasions to record LPs and never had any trouble doing
    that either.
    
    But last week, trying to record the CD, the deck would come to a
    stop at random points during the recording. I made about six efforts
    to record the thing. Sometimes the deck would stop 15 minutes into
    the side, sometimes it would stop 5 minutes in, and once it managed
    almost 30 minutes before stopping. The CD is a fairly recent issue
    on the London label. I'm wondering now if it has been recorded with
    the record-foil missing frequency wedge and if something in my tape
    deck is responding to that (even though it's not a digital recorder
    and is over a year old). Or is it a result of using a forbidden
    metal tape? Or has somethin' busted in the tape deck?
    
    Any suggestions about this that might spare me having to take the
    deck in for repairs (particularly if the problem is really not in
    the deck at all!) would be MOST APPRECIATED!
    
    Jack Truslow
    

    First of all, I am surprised to hear that the Dragon is not supposed
    to use metal tape.  This sounds rediculous, since the Dragon is
    supposedly the best deck on the market, and metal tape should give
    the best results of any tape formula.  Anyway, I don't really see
    how the tape formulation can have an effect on the tape's motion
    through the deck.  Have you tried recording using some other types
    of tape?  I'm quite sure that it has nothing to do with copyguard,
    as this has not yet been implemented on any equipment or CDs (to
    my knowledge, anyway).  My suggestion would be to try different
    tape (although I would expect the same thing to happen, unless the
    metal tape you're using is mechanically-defective).
    If anyone else knows anything about this warning about metal tapes,
    I'd be interested in any info, as I don't understand this at all
    (especially from Nak).
    
    	Steve

>    I'm so far behind in catching up with these notes that I doubt anyone
>    will ever read this--but here goes anyway:

    No problem - are you aware of the "next unseen" aspects of Notes?
    
    I have a Dragon, and have recorded many CDs (for use in car or work
    or for rearranging selections) with no difficulty. Did you have
    the auto-record-pause mode set, and were there lengthy pauses
    in the program material perhaps? I have seen the auto-record-pause
    trigger when the program material got very quiet for an extended
    period (over 30 seconds) - a lengthy pianissimo, for example
    - I think it triggers if the signal is below -15dB for 30-45
    seconds. 
    
    I have used metal tape with excellent results. I don't recall
    the warning - but I suspect they're not talking about metal
    formulation tape but rather tapes with metal strips intended
    to trigger auto-reverse mechanisms. (They used to make them in
    reel-to-reels - weren't there some cassettes made the same way?)
    After all - the Dragon has a specific bias adjustment for metal
    bias tapes - why include it if you can't use it?

    To answer a few questions from .7 and .8:
    
    I've used a number of different brands of tape (I mentioned having
    used a Maxell, and it was only a couple of weeks ago--worked fine
    then), and I've even used the Nakamichi metal tape with no previous
    problems (to record LPs, though, not CDs).
    
    The first time that I had a problem was when I taped an LP of George
    Szell conducting Beethoven's Sixth, followed by a CD of Arthur Fiedler
    conducting the overture to "William Tell," and then a cut from the
    CD of Michaelangeli playing Chopin. I used the timing information
    from the booklets and had worked out the program so that it lasted
    approximately 43 minutes. On the reverse side of the tape I recorded
    nothing but CDs. I gave the tape to a friend, who hasn't listened
    to the second side (so I don't know how it came out). But I listened
    to the first side in the car coming to work--and discovered the
    Chopin mazurka had interrupted the final movement of the Beethoven!
    It was as though the tape had recorded to the end and had then rewound.
    But the same day that that happened, I made ANOTHER tape (almost
    entirely CDs) right after it, and it came out fine.
    
    As for the CD that I was trying to record when the deck started
    shutting down on me--it was the Sutherland/Pavarotti "Il Trovatore"
    which is anything but a quiet work full of pianissimi. From what
    the two of you have said, I'm afraid the problem must be with the
    deck.
    
    I have one other question: one of you mentioned that the Dragon
    has a special bias setting for metal tapes. My unit has no such
    thing on it--the instruction book divides tapes into two (three?)
    categories which you choose when you set the bias. But the Nakamichi
    metal tape doesn't appear in the list. The top of the line Nakamichi
    tape uses a setting of 120mus; the other categories use 70. I've
    been picking the category labeled (in Roman numerals) II. Does that
    sound like the wrong decision?
    
    Thanks for your help,
    Jack Truslow
    
    P.S. If you'd like to communicate directly about this, send me MAIL
    at DELNI::TRUSLOW.