Cassette vs. Reel

[petsematary]

Just curious...if one buys an analog tape machine and only uses 2 channels - what's the difference between a cassette deck and an opel reel machine? In fidelity I mean. They're both analog tapes, right? So what's the difference if any and what's causing it?

[djwayne]

A lot will depend on what type and the age of the machine. Most reel to reels, the tape speed is either 3 3/4", 7 1/2", or 15" per second, while the cassettes tape speed is 1 7/8" (?) I believe, so the faster tape speed will get you a better recording on some machines.

I recently did some sound checks with an old Teac A4010S reel to reel machine, and a Tascam 202MKI Cassette machine, both produced decent quality for consumer use, but not really professional mastering grade. Then again the Teac is decades old. The pre-amps sound nice in it though.

I have a cassette player in my car, and wanted to make a few tapes for listening while driving, I was really surprised on how good the cassette tapes I made sounded.
Maybe we've all been brainwashed into thinking "cassettes = bad sound".

You also have to take in consideration the quality of each deck, the pre-amps, the tape transport system.....quality of the tape.......there's a lot of variables as every machine is not create equal, and as with all electronic components, their quality varies with age.

[johnnyblotter]

Ah yes, there has been a brainwashing about cassettes.

Put it this way, I get better results tracking to cassette on a nice cassette deck,then recording that to the computer, then I do through my rme multiface to computer. It just sits much better. I highly recommend it. At least try it.

[djwayne]

Yes, try it, but make sure you use quality tape and a quality machine, and a quality playback deck, with quality speakers, and a quality source like a cd or dvd, with a quality recording to begin with. Your recording will only sound as good as your weakest link in the audio chain.

For my tests, I ran a 300-440 hrtz signal out of Adobe's Audition program, recorded it to cassette tape then re-recorded that, back into Audition and ran the signal thru the analyzer graph. I got a nice looking strong, steady signal on both channels.

For my audio test in the car, I used the Cowboy Junkies's cd, "The Trinity Session", for my demo. It's a quiet cd with lots of soft music, with great acoustics, which sounded great in the car. A nice warm, full sound. I also made a few other tapes, which also sounded very good.

What was fun about the whole experiment was, once everything was setup, I could burn one tape after the next, and get quality recordings everytime, with no computer glitches, bugs or crashes, that we've learned to accept with computers. Everything went very smoothly

The fun thing about cassette tapes is, if somebody steals them, so what....,,>>..<< ..????? Just make a few more, with different cd's....

[Ziggy!!]

Originally Posted by petsematary

Just curious...if one buys an analog tape machine and only uses 2 channels - what's the difference between a cassette deck and an opel reel machine? In fidelity I mean. They're both analog tapes, right? So what's the difference if any and what's causing it?

As a general answer - The wider the track width the better the quality (not tape width, the actually space each track takes up). For example a 16 track 2" should have higher fidelity compared to a 24 track 2". So you can imagine how small the track widths are on a cassette when you are trying to squash material on to it.

From experience, i have never heard a cassette deck of any caliber come close to competing with a semi decent reel to reel... Nor a nice daw...

If you only have a cassette deck at hand and want to get a bit of "analog grit", try using it with just stereo sources... maybe a stereo drum mult where you push the meters to get some compression then bounce it back into your Daw and blend it with the original...

If you have the gear there, its time to get funky and experiment with shit...

[petsematary]

Thanks!

I'm definitely gonna try some funky cassette recording. I'm not gonna work with any more than one track at a time and metal tapes only so it'll probably work fine.

I never got the cassette-bashing thing either, I think it's just the digital gadget manufacturer's way of scaring people and getting them to go digital. Cassettes sound great, the problem is the deterioration that comes with age and wear. However, I've had tapes in my car for years that still sound good. And in a car you don't really need that high fidelity. A car's just not the place to listen to music in that way, ya know.

I remember a test in a big, serious hi-fi-magazine a few years ago when they compared a high end MD-deck to a dito cassette deck. I don't think there was a winner there actually. Sure enough, MD's got ATRAC compression but it was still an interesting read considering the statements made by Sony and others where they basically said MD's the shit and cassettes suck.

[djwayne]

The major drawback for mini-discs for me was, they didn't make a md player for the car, at least I couldn't find one. Other than that, I liked mini-discs alot, even with the compression, they still sounded really good, and the outer casing made sense.


I won't use metal tape, as it wears out the tape heads faster. I've been using Maxell tape for years with very good luck.

Years ago, I archived many of my original songs on individual cassette tapes, and they still sound good today, so I also have another use for bringing the cassette recorder out of retirement.

[petsematary]

Really? I didn't know metal tapes had that effect on heads. Interesting.

To me anyway, the digital "revolution" is mostly about convenience and simplicity of handling, at least when it comes to consumer goods, rather than actual quality and fidelity. I think, that if you'd let a normal person listen to, say, an mp3 and a cassette recorded properly off a cd, he/she wouldn't be able to tell the difference between them. The whole thing about digital is about other things, not just quality. Both techniques seem to have their respective advantages. I'm young so I started out recording digitally and I've only now started to discover analog. They're both good.

Anyway, the reason I started this thread is that I'm thinking of buying an open reel or a cassette deck to use in my home studio. I've already got one open reel machine (Akai 2 channel thing) but that one's mainly for playing mixtapes on parties and showing off to friends, looking all Marsellus in Pulp Fiction-ish :0) and I won't relocate it to the basement.

By the way all you gearslutz - open reel's a real chick magnet.

[djwayne]

Yes, even regular tape will wear out a tape head eventially. The tape acts almost like a sanding belt across the heads.

So I save my tape recorders for "special events", and don't use them for everyday stuff.

Here a forum with a lot of discussions on analog and digital recording....

http://www.tascamforums.com/

[djwayne]

Just for an experiment, I tried recording a 24/96 DVD-A , David Crosby's "Live from The Front Row", to see how it would sound on cassette........


Sounds fantastic !!


I'll be transfering all my dvd-a's to cassette, for listening to in the car.

[Ziggy!!]

Originally Posted by djwayne

The major drawback for mini-discs for me was, they didn't make a md player for the car, at least I couldn't find one.

Really?! You could get several brands of minidisc car stereo systems here in australia... even a 6 stacker... Now they are being replaced with MP3 compatable CD plyers though.


Maybe try Australia Ebay - www.ebay.com.au

[petsematary]

Perhaps a bit off topic, but I find cassettes a bit more relaxing too. I just don't have the energy to wind through more than one track. That way, I listen in a more relaxed way and hear the entire album. Sometimes rediscover tracks I thought I hated. There's a charmy side to not being too "in control".

[djwayne]

Originally Posted by petsematary

Perhaps a bit off topic, but I find cassettes a bit more relaxing too. I just don't have the energy to wind through more than one track. That way, I listen in a more relaxed way and hear the entire album. Sometimes rediscover tracks I thought I hated. There's a charmy side to not being too "in control".

Exactly. What I'm doing is putting each individual cd on a different cassette, and just let it roll....works out great for driving, and listening to music you normally wouldn't, if you created a whole playlist of individual songs.

As was stated earlier, the car is probably not the best listening enviorment due to distractions/road noise ect...but the tapes I made sure sound nice in my car.

[djwayne]

Okay, here's a short sample for ya, so you know what I'm talking about, and you can hear the quality of sound I'm getting off of a cassette tape......This sample is of David Crosby's DVD-A, recorded into the Tascam 202MKII onto cassette, then played back and recorded into Audition 1.5 and converted to an mp3 file for uploading here. There'a little quiet acoustic guitar playing, crowd noise and then the full band, so you can compare dynamics.

Enjoy !!

[petsematary]

That is nice sounding, no doubt! Thanks for the sample. If you've got the time, maybe you could import the same track sample as an mp3 file in the most common quality setting (160?). So we can do some A/B:ing :0)

[djwayne]

Here ya go.

This sample is recorded direct from dvd player to Adobe's Audition 1.5 then converted to MP# 160 kbps file.

[zemlin]

I'm at work (DAW-free zone), so I can't check - but it sounds to me like the phase is reversed on one channel of the DVD sample. It just sounds wacko to me.

[djwayne]

Here's the cassette recording again, only this time converted to MP3 160 kbps....

so you can do an a/b/c/ test


I find the differences very minor, and more than adequate for the car.

[djwayne]

It sounds okay here.

[zemlin]

I'll check it out when I get home and can listen on real stuff.

[djwayne]

The David Crosby sample was from a live recording. Here's another sample, this one is of Jen Chapin in a studio setting..........

This one is off the cassette into Adobe's Audition the converted to MP3 160 kbps.

[djwayne]

Here's the sample extracted off the cd into Audition, then converted to MP3, 160kbps.

These two samples will probably make for a better A/B test, to compare cassette tape to cd.

Not perfect, but not bad......

[Jonk]

It does sound like some wierd phasing going on. That could be the MP3 conversion though.

Wierd. I've noticed lower bitrate MP3's have kind of a phasey sound. I'd rather listen to a whole parade of tape hiss than that wierd terrible MP3 high end.

[olafmol]

Originally Posted by johnnyblotter

Ah yes, there has been a brainwashing about cassettes.

Put it this way, I get better results tracking to cassette on a nice cassette deck,then recording that to the computer, then I do through my rme multiface to computer. It just sits much better. I highly recommend it. At least try it.

i noticed *exactly* the same thing with some DJ-mixes i made and recorded directly to cassette before transferring them to CD-r..... especially at louder volumes the mix sounds much nicer to my ears.....

anyway, would it be very difficult to build something like this new neve product yourself, by using some old reel2reel or cassettedeck and using the components inside? i'm a lazy bastard and i really would like to have some kind of device to put in front of my soundcard inputs to recreate the "cassette/tape-magic" without having to record/playback everything first....

"PorticoTM 5042 Duo Tape Channel

Two-channel “True Tape” Emulation. An actual tape drive circuit is used to drive a tiny magnetic circuit and fed to a replay loop and actual replay preamp. “Record” and “Replay” levels are counter-ganged to keep overall gain approximately constant that only varies, as a tape would, with saturation level. The frequency response is tailored to that of an actual tape recorder. The result is a remarkable simulation of true tape sound, providing the nostalgic rounding and compression that offsets the harshness of poor digital recorders. Use with care! The dynamic range of a tape recorder was a lot less than that of the high resolution Portico circuit in which it is nesting!
Each of the two 5042 channels is equipped with the following:
- Input Level control.
- Tape Saturation Level control.
- 10 segment Meter reading input or saturation level.
- “7.5/15 IPS” switch
- Independent Bypass per channel"

of course i'm not expecting Neve audio quality, but it's more about the concept..

Olaf

[djwayne]

Originally Posted by Jonk

It does sound like some wierd phasing going on. That could be the MP3 conversion though.

Wierd. I've noticed lower bitrate MP3's have kind of a phasey sound. I'd rather listen to a whole parade of tape hiss than that wierd terrible MP3 high end.

I don't know what you're hearing, but both samples sound crystal clear here. And yes, I'm listening to the downloads from each link.

[zemlin]

I can hear plenty of MP3 artifacts on all three of the David Crosby samples.

[djwayne]

mp3 artifacts, eh ?? Next time I'll upload wav files.

[djwayne]

Okay here's the a/b test you've been waiting for.

I'm not gonna tell you which file is which, you tell me. They are both wav files, but short samples, one is recorded onto cassette, the other directly off the cd. YOU tell me which one is which.

Have fun !!

[zemlin]

Originally Posted by djwayne

mp3 artifacts, eh ?? Next time I'll upload wav files.

Not sure what it might me. I use Audition to create MP3 files, and am not the sort to get offended by 160 KPS files. I usually encode at 128 KPS for my own use - but those files don't sound too good.

[petsematary]

With the risk of embarrassing myself in public (wouldn't be the first time though), I think Mystery File no. 1 sounds more open and airy and better than Mystery File no. 2 which sounds more compressed and narrow in terms of dynamics. However, no. 2 also has a...well...nice quality to it despite the stuff mentioned above.

The cymbals also sound more airy and reverb-ish on no. 1. I've no idea which one is which but no. 1 sounds the best in my ears.

Although my laptop speakers here at work (yes, I work at 11 pm) are crappy. But the difference is there nonetheless.

This tune was way more commercial and compressed already compared to the Crosby stuff. I can't wait to find out which file is which! My guess though, is that no. 2 is cassette.