Delco DNR type (Page 2/3)
katie80 OCT 29, 06:20 PM

quote
Originally posted by RWDPLZ:


My Fiero still has an Eclipse 4502 Headunit, it was their top of the line cassette deck.



Plus THIS in the house (Sony TC-WR901ES Cassette Deck)



I feel like people listening to tapes is similar to people listening to vinyl. similar tactileness except tapes are significantly smaller and more durable.
katie80 OCT 29, 06:22 PM

quote
Originally posted by RWDPLZ:


Better than CD? No. I've transferred CD's to metal Type IV tapes on good cassette decks, and they were so good you couldn't tell the difference, but never heard a tape that was BETTER than CD.



better than CD sounds like a stretch, yes. type IV tapes can sound incredible though. I think the speed of a cassette probably makes it lose it's potential for better sound.
Patrick OCT 29, 07:45 PM

quote
Originally posted by katie80:

tapes are more authentic to the fiero than a CD would be.



My ears couldn't care less about the "authenticity" of CDs being played in any of my cars.


quote
Originally posted by katie80:

I think the speed of a cassette probably makes it lose it's potential for better sound.



Yes, that and the fact that the recording area on a cassette tape is rather minimal. Each track (left and right) is a very narrow strip. It's a miracle of late 20th century technology that cassette tapes had the potential to sound as good as they did.
RWDPLZ OCT 29, 07:48 PM

quote
Originally posted by katie80:

I feel like people listening to tapes is similar to people listening to vinyl. similar tactileness except tapes are significantly smaller and more durable.



They all have their own unique sound qualities. Early good CD players have a 'bright' sound similar to vinyl without the hisses and pops, due to the digital to analog converters used. The later ones are more accurate, but duller. Late 80's/early 90's was the peak of good A/V equipment.
katie80 OCT 30, 02:07 AM

quote
Originally posted by Patrick:

Yes, that and the fact that the recording area on a cassette tape is rather minimal. Each track (left and right) is a very narrow strip. It's a miracle of late 20th century technology that cassette tapes had the potential to sound as good as they did.



well I don't have any upgrades to my stereo system, so I don't need an awesome stereo.
katie80 OCT 30, 02:08 AM

quote
Originally posted by RWDPLZ:


They all have their own unique sound qualities. Early good CD players have a 'bright' sound similar to vinyl without the hisses and pops, due to the digital to analog converters used. The later ones are more accurate, but duller. Late 80's/early 90's was the peak of good A/V equipment.



yes I agree. after the technology had matured but before they started to cheap out on stuff. I had a 70s deck then an early 80s deck and now an early 90s deck and it's crazy how different they each sound.
Skybax MAR 26, 01:47 PM

quote
Originally posted by Patrick:

Audio tape cassettes... better than CD? Sorry, I don't believe that for a second. Where are you getting your specs from?

Sure, a Nakamichi Dragon may sound pretty good ... but CD audio quality beats cassette tapes hands down. And let's not even discuss the crap quality of commercially made pre-recorded cassette tapes churned out and recorded at double-speed. Absolute garbage!




quote
Originally posted by RWDPLZ:

Better than CD? No. I've transferred CD's to metal Type IV tapes on good cassette decks, and they were so good you couldn't tell the difference, but never heard a tape that was BETTER than CD.



Forgot about this post and coming back to it today...

You are both missing the big picture of what I'm saying, and its impossible to explain briefly but I'll try...

Cleaner or clearer isn't the same as having the totality of it all. As a deeply spiritual person one of my hobbies for the last 30 years is understanding the "truth" about the "reality" in which we exist, mostly studies at the quantum level. There is much more to our world than meet the eye, like Nikola Tesla said... "If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration"

Much of this falls into sacred geometry, for example where the Fibonacci Sequence is found everywhere in nature, or the 9 Code where so many things around you reduce to the digital root of 9 and you never knew it, like the radius of sun and moon, distance of sun and moon, diameter of sun and moon, minutes/seconds of day/week will always reduce to 9 regardless of leap year, processional cycle (25,920 years = 2+5+9+2+0 = 18 / 1+ 8 = 9), and the list goes on for infinity. So when it comes to music, instruments used to be tuned to 432 (4+3+2 = 9) but was later changed to 440, some believe to get humans "disconnected" for a lack of better term. If you want to learn more about that I recommend my favorite interview with Eric Dollard...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9N34dawm00

More to the point of what I'm saying, the brain uses Fourier transform similar to the holographic universe in which we exsist. Another one of my favorite interviews on this subject is from the 80's with Michal Talbot and nothing had changed/advanced since (except for the science community has gone the direction of fraud/deception/misdirection)...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rgYz_BU2Ew

This below article kinda brings those points together...

"Sound quality depends on a lot of factors, and it is impossible to definitively state that either analog or digital is fundamentally better. These days, many records are made using playback of a digital file, so vinyl preference cannot be attributed solely to the differences in the way the sound wave is reproduced. But the fact remains that analog captures a physical process whereas digital uses mathematics to reduce the process to finite bits of information. What, if anything, is lost in that reduction is difficult to pinpoint. But the limitations of math in replicating reality may factor in to the difference in listening experiences reported by so many vinyl lovers."

https://blogs.scientificame...og-or-digital-music/

[This message has been edited by Skybax (edited 03-26-2022).]

Patrick MAR 26, 10:36 PM

quote
Originally posted by Skybax:

You are both missing the big picture of what I'm saying, and its impossible to explain briefly but I'll try...



I appreciate your post, I really do. You've obviously put a lot of thought into it. So please don't think that anything further I might add is diminishing your words and/or beliefs.

Even if I totally agreed with everything you've stated about the superiority of analog recording and playback (verses digital), the fact remains that even 35 years ago when those Delco cassette decks were brand new, the quality of their music playback was marginal at best. And now decades later, using those same crappy decks to play back questionable quality tapes... well, let's be realistic... the sound will be awful.


Skybax MAR 27, 12:57 PM
That's why I said in my original post... "A good quality deck and good quality tape through good quality speakers sound great" because the noise will be minimal. Yes... crap speakers or a crap head unit will sound like crap regardless the source, and even if you have a high-end head unit and high-end speakers, if the tape itself or recording is crap it will sound like crap.

All of the equipment has to be high quality in order for analog to sound good. The coolness factor comes in when you can hear things that are not present in digital recordings. My home audio receiver is an old silver faced Realistic amp/receiver from the late 70's and it has a feature called Quadravox, which is similar to Surround Sound before Surround Sound, but that's not technically what it is. It has the same small satellite speakers as Surround Sound, but they emit sounds that the normal L & R speakers can't do, so they basically reveal sounds from live analog recordings that you can't hear with a normal L & R channel system or with digital recordings.

[This message has been edited by Skybax (edited 03-27-2022).]

Patrick JUL 16, 04:33 AM

I just finished watching what I thought was an interesting video about audio cassette tapes. Thought maybe this thread would be as good a place as any to link to it.