[Nak Man]

Memepool, personally I'm partial to 'old naks' sound such as dragon/zx9 playback to newer ones like cr7 - they sound a bit more full bodied, perhaps something to do with different pb amp used. CR7 recording, however, is almost unmatched, and as good as all manual zx9 or vintage king zxl. The real kicker for dragon is its auto azimuth correction, done very properly.

For top machines, imo the real contender to naks are revox 215 and tandberg 3014/a. Admittedly later Naks have quality problems due to the use of cheaper mechanism, and older ones suffer from capacitor problems and grease hardening. While newer models can be band aided every now and then - once you get an older nak deck fully serviced, they will last longer between maintenances.

B215s are built like tank, but recently they started to become problematic as well. Sound wise I think b215 playback is about par to cr7 quality, slightly thin compared to older naks, while its recording is also top notch. What truly separate naks from the rest are its mechanism design overkill and true discrete pb head. In this area it's very clear that naks are not a matter of preference like senn or stax of phones - it simply killed mighty Studer in cassette mechanism. Even tandberg use sandwich type pb/rec head which theoretically can't be optimised as extreme as pb and rec head on separate housings, found on all 3 head naks. The comment of tapes recorded on naks are not playable on others is a bit of exaggeration imo.

I haven't tried a 3014 yet, been contemplating a nice used one but thought I've had enough of media player that I rarely used. Had sony ES, pioneer, techics, akai and aiwa excelia before ... no comment would be better.

The worst part for naks is lack of good service and parts availability. I can still get turntable pcb part from revox (at a price =) or even b215's front faceplate (!), but try to find the correct idler rubber replacement for nak.

 

[19lexicon78]

nice info to read

 

[memepool]

Quote:

Originally Posted by swiego Nakamichi seems to excel at engineering sophistication and playback capability. Tandberg by all accounts is a king of build quality. Sony basically owned the portable market. Pioneer basically owned the "digital enhancement" market, plus the CT-Fxxx series from the late 70s and early 80s. Revox has its representatives as well but I'm not clear what the "reputation" of the 215 is. Yamaha (1200U) and Teac (8030S) both had their flagship statement decks as well. And lastly I don't want to understate Marantz, who seemed to be head-to-head with Sony in the pro portable market, and head-to-head with Nakamichi in the high-tech audiophile deck market.

A few additions guys. Bang and Olufsen were up there with Nakamichi in the innovation stakes inventing the HX-Pro headroom extension system. They also pushed the envelope in terms of frequency response and the kind of automatic tape recording optimising systems which Nakamichi did later.
see the review of their flagship deck by noted UK reviewer Alvin Gold in the early 80's http://www.beoworld.co.uk/beocord9000a.htm. They adhered rigidly to IEC standards as wheel so they are more compatible.
Another name is Uher whose professional open reel Report Monitor was the broaadcast industry standard for radio for decades. They also made a cassette version which was as good as the Marantz and Sony portables but probably more common in Europe, and some very good full sized decks too.
Often these machines are not reviewed as favourably in magazines because they use the German DIN system and are optimised for BASF/ EMTEC instead of Japanese stock.
Both these makes have a similar build quality to Tandberg / Studer / Revox which is undoubtedly superior to the later Nakamichis. Many people would have come accross Tandberg when learning languages at school since they made those "language lab" systems.
I havn't owned Tandberg or Studer / Revox tapedecks but have used Studer Revox and I am always on the look out for a second hand one. They tend to keep their value.
Would agree with you Nak Man on the voicing differences between the Naks. The older ones I've heard do sound warmer. I think maybe they were influenced by the sound of the sources they were set up for recording as all tapedecks seem to have become "brighter" in the mid 80's with the onset of digital. This is something you see in Turntables as well with the 70's Linn Sondek having a much warmer sound than a contemporary one.
so I am not sure there is such an absolute as "neutral sound" 19lexicon78 as the conception of what constitutes it seems to evolve. We see some 80's equipment as very coloured whereas at the time it was being described as neutral compared to 70's equipment.
Music and production practices also come into this as well of course as equipment is voiced to some extent to replay the most widely popular music. Witness the obsession with bass in all portables from the 80's in response to the growing popularity of Hip hop and the increasingly dominant Roland analogue drum palette.
Compare and contrast to the "tonally neutral" Quad amps used by the BBC designed by a man who could never abide anything but classical and therefore sound "warm and wooly" to many modern ears.
I am fast coming to the conclusion I need a differnt Hi-Fi to listen to different types of music. Of course this could be a rationalisation of my desire to continaully accumulate more kit!

 

[Nak Man]

Quote:

Originally Posted by memepool Bang and Olufsen were up there with Nakamichi in the innovation stakes inventing the HX-Pro headroom extension system. They also pushed the envelope in terms of frequency response and the kind of automatic tape recording optimising systems which Nakamichi did later.

HX system is a blessing for limited dynamic range and B&O has the credit on this one. B215 has this feature and imo it helped a lot on dynamic range. Nak was quite arrogant and refused to use any HX pro on its decks, and said that similar results can be had with good blanks and no noise reduction using naks.

On automation, nak always prefer manual adjustment (tone tests bias and level control were already there since very very early). The auto system was a total mess on zxl and properly done on cr7 - naks' only 2 models that provide auto alignment, since it considered correct azimuth into account. What amazed me is that 2 head auto reverse sony can also accomplish this auto calibration !

 

[swiego]

The E-Mu 1212m is ridiculous. Ridiculously good, that is. Playback quality is extraordinary. I've been putting it through its paces for the last couple of days. I've also been using coax digital to the Benchmark DAC1. Unfortunately my DAC1 doesn't accept 192kHz signals, which makes me fear that I have the old version. This is a bit of a disappointment...

So, any thoughts on how to connect the unbalanced outputs of the Dragon to the balanced inputs of the 1212m?

Lots of reading to do this weekend...

 

[swiego]

There's a good looking CR-7A on audiogon for $400:

http://cls.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls....ass&1116635624

From the serial number, I think it has the gear drive.

 

[swiego]

The 1212m is not an easy card to work with. Coaxing it to multiplex two mono channels into a stereo channel takes either a lot of trial and error... or a guide.

I got a pair of 1/4" to RCA adapters at Radio Shack to connect to the tape deck, but I'm having some issues. According to the DSP patch panel, I'm getting full stereo from the Dragon. When a tape is playing, I see both the L and R meters playing, and playing differently; when I pull one of the RCA jacks, the appropriate channel goes silent. I'm mixing the two mono channels into the "wave" insert, then using Adobe Audition to record.

The problem: Audition only "sees" the R channel, and it uses this input for both L and R. Whether L is actually connected to the Dragon is irrelevant. But if I pull R, Audition goes silent. I'm not sure if this is a problem with the fact that the analogue inputs on the 1212m (the 1/4" jacks I'm converting to RCA) are balanced whereas my source is unbalanced, or if it is a config issue with Adobe Audition. Tonight I will try a different recording software (the 1212m came with a couple) to see if it makes any difference.

---

As an aside, Audition has some great monitoring tools for recording - monitoring tools that work in real-time, such as frequency analysis and digital scopes. Very cool, and very informative. Some lessons learned so far,

1. The 1212m features unbelievable noise floors... -110dB and better across all frequencies when the deck is powered but not playing.

2. Having stuff going on at my place (dishwasher, TV, lights, washing machine) actually affects the noise floor. Maybe I do need some power filtration.

3. I don't think there is a benefit to recording tape at 24/192, however there definitely is a benefit to recording at 24/96 if you're looking to capture everything. Many of my tapes, on the Dragon, maintain a nice frequency response profile out to 25kHz. The drop off from there is pretty steep. I'm hoping to compare it to some other tape players (same tape) to see if I can visually tell the difference in frequency response...

4. 24/192 is a LOT of data to capture. Think 300MB for a decent song! 24/96 is more reasonable but still quite high.

5. I'm really split on whether I should have Dolby NR enabled during capture. On the one hand, Nakamichi does a really good job of Dolby NR. No question about that. On the other hand, when capturing a "digital master" or "digital negative" I think it's better to capture anything and everything, then worry about cleanup after the fact. Not sure about this...

6. I recorded from redbook --> DAC1 --> Dragon --> Sony Metal Master, then recorded from Sony Metal Master --> Dragon --> E-Mu 1212m --> PC and compared the two. There is not much difference at all. The fidelity of this chain is pretty [bleeping] unbelievable, for an analog medium.

7. You don't need expensive cables for this sort of job, but super cheapo ones aren't good either. I only have two RCA cables at my disposal right now. One is a cheapo tinsy wire cable from the 1970s, borrowed from my dad. The other is one of those lower-end but overpriced Monster cables I had gotten like eight years ago. The latter definitely "sounds" better. Of course, this leads me to wonder what is "good enough" - I suspect it will be a pair of decent cables from bluejeancables.com

I used to write lots of programs for my TI-99/4a that were recorded onto cassette. It's been a hope of mine to digitize all of these tapes and see if I can make heads or tails of the original stream. I'm looking forward to this experiment

Any help with my 1212m stereo recording issue would be greatly appreciated.

 

[memepool]

Quote:

Originally Posted by swiego Any help with my 1212m stereo recording issue would be greatly appreciated.

It sounds like a soundcard driver issue. I have had similar problems since upgrading OS to 2000. I am using the last version of Cool Edit before Adobe bought it so i am not sure how much they have changed it but I would recommend

1. trying to record in multitrack mode as it is easier to see if you are getting individual tracks
2. playing around with the soundcard tracks in the options>device properties dialogue
3. playing around with the soundcards config settings and saving them as a favourite while you are in the process of recording which sometimes forces the thing to work.
4. Get the latest version of the drivers from the website.

Cool Edit / Audition is a very powerful programme if you can get it working smoothly. Wavelab is also a good one.

For your noise-floor issues you could try connecting the whole kit to a UPS as they are getting pretty reasonable (-100USD) these days. Cheaper than any bespoke audio mains filter by a long way and not far off if you get a semi decent one with surge/RFI/spike protection ..etc.

 

[swiego]

I'm pretty sure it's a problem with Audition 1.5, however what that problem could be, I have no idea. Audition is taking the R channel and using it for both L and R when recording. I tried Wavelab Lite (came with the 1212m I think) and that seems to work fine. Which is OK by me, I can use Wavelab to capture and Audition to process.

And this brings me to the "final" question - do I or do I not use Dolby NR on the playback device (this case, Nakamichi Dragon) when digitizing tapes? NR seems to take out quite a bit of "information" even with the Dragon. I think it would be better to capture with NR turned off. Thoughts appreciated...

 

[memepool]

Quote:

Originally Posted by swiego And this brings me to the "final" question - do I or do I not use Dolby NR on the playback device (this case, Nakamichi Dragon) when digitizing tapes? NR seems to take out quite a bit of "information" even with the Dragon. I think it would be better to capture with NR turned off. Thoughts appreciated...

Personally I would agree with you that it's better to listen / capture with the dolby turned off. i have always recorded with dolby engaged and listened with it disengaged. This may be a legacy of my first cassette deck ( Akai HX-A3) on which the dolby went out of alignment very quickly and various walkmans. On a well set up deck the Dolby on playback should be almost imperceptible.
I find on classical music hiss can be very annoying but on pretty much everything else if you have recorded it at optimum levels it shouldn't really be that noticable. I know people who would completely disagree but i think Nakamichi's approach mentioned by Nak Man of denying the need for NR / Filtering if you've got good enough recording heads makes a lot of sense.
But on lesser decks especially those of a more recent vintage the heads just arn't upto this standard so things like Dolby / HX-Pro are completely necessary.
I would also recommend products like the Aphex Aural Exciter http://www.aphex.com/ and BBE Sonic Maximizer http://www.bbesound.com/ which can really put back some of the sparkle into old tapes. You can get the rack versions of these quite cheap 2nd hand (under 100USD) and connect these in Line to capturing if you don't use a desk/mixing board. These are powerful patented technologies which are available in plugin in form for protools but not for things like wavelab / cool edit. If you are completely missing highend which you can fix with azimuth to some degree these can put it back quite convincingly.

 

[swiego]

Thanks for the links. Yet another thing to explore!

Down with the flu for the weekend, I began digitizing in earnest. I found that I get the best overall noise reduction by combining the tape deck (Dragon) Dolby NR with the noise reduction filter in Adobe Audition. The latter works much better than Audition's "Hiss Remover" filter, by the way. The hiss remover seems to result in garbled sound.

I also discovered http://www.audiomastersforum.org/amf...2fbfc02653c76e
which is a great site for Audition and CoolEdit. Learned a lot just by searching for "noise reduction" and "hiss removal."

I digitized a Maxell XLII tape recorded about fifteen years ago on a cheapo boombox. Once processing had been completed, the sound was near-CD. In my car, puttering around town with a few friends, they just assumed that it was a MP3 mix I'd put together until I mentioned that the tracks were digitized from cassette. Later I recovered some old TI-99/4a cassette tapes (you used to store program code on cassette) and was able to recover not only the recording but even able to recover the original byte stream & source code! From a 23 year old Type I tape recorded by the cheapest of cheap cassette recorders!

I briefly entertained the idea of better interconnects but I don't think I care quite enough. I do plan to get some RCA interconnects from bluejeancables.com since I need a couple of pairs anyway. They'll probably get their first use on this project.

I've confirmed that recording at 24/192 is a total waste of disk space. 24/96 is more than sufficient.

 

[swiego]

I miss my old colleague Cavendish... I feel like I'm talking in an empty auditorium here

Oh well, it's for posterity...

First, I'm very happy with the Dragon. Everything that's been said is true. If you are going to digitize tapes, and are shooting for a "best" reproduction, this is it.

On the matter of interconnects, I needed some RCA stereo interconnects so I ended up ordering a pair of Belden 1505F cables from bluejeancables.com. They are $33ish. They are very well built. Now, I tried digitizing the same track with both the monster cables as well as the 1505F cables and trying to compare the waveforms to see if there was a difference. It was hard to tell. I found some programs that subtract waveforms from each other, but the resulting steady noise was the same when subtracting waveforms recorded using different interconnects, as it was when subtracting waveforms for two consecutive recordings using the same interconnect. I'm beginning to think that the cable probably doesn't make a difference, at least not to the level of sensitivity of the EMu 1212m.

I'm still trying to figure out how I can get "recording monitoring" going with the EMu 1212m. This thing is a royal pain to work with.

I am capturing at 24/96 plus 3200dpi optical scans of the cassette tapes and any inserts that have personal stuff written on them. It's currently nasty on disk storage - about 1.5GB per side of a 90-100 minute tape for uncompressed wav. Going to WMA lossless brings that down to about 1GB/45 minutes. I'm very impressed by the speed of the WMA lossless encoder, by the way. I haven't decided what to do re: storage (I have a 300GB drive for this project, plenty of space left but it won't last long!)

I'm beginning to believe that 48/16 might be a better storage format. For the most part, there is no frequency response past 24kHz that I can get from the Dragon. I've also thought about 48/24 bit.

Interestingly, 44/16x100 minutes = 1 gigabyte which simply does not fit on a CD-R no matter how I cut it. This has thrown a wrench in my tape-to-CD storage plan, since I can't do 1:1 tape:CD for some of the fuller mix tapes! Surprising...

Anyhow, that's the update.

 

[LFF]

Great thread! I recently got a Akai GXC-570D for free from a friend of mine. I know it's not a nakamichi but what can you guys tell me about it. Is this any good?

 

[memepool]

Quote:

Originally Posted by swiego I'm still trying to figure out how I can get "recording monitoring" going with the EMu 1212m. This thing is a royal pain to work with. I am capturing at 24/96 plus 3200dpi optical scans of the cassette tapes and any inserts that have personal stuff written on them. It's currently nasty on disk storage - about 1.5GB per side of a 90-100 minute tape for uncompressed wav. Going to WMA lossless brings that down to about 1GB/45 minutes. I'm very impressed by the speed of the WMA lossless encoder, by the way. I haven't decided what to do re: storage (I have a 300GB drive for this project, plenty of space left but it won't last long!) I'm beginning to believe that 48/16 might be a better storage format. For the most part, there is no frequency response past 24kHz that I can get from the Dragon. I've also thought about 48/24 bit. Interestingly, 44/16x100 minutes = 1 gigabyte which simply does not fit on a CD-R no matter how I cut it. This has thrown a wrench in my tape-to-CD storage plan, since I can't do 1:1 tape:CD for some of the fuller mix tapes! Surprising...

I get record monitoring by looping the soundcard through my amp like a cassette deck. I suppose you are putting the amp in the signal path, but I am also putting a Soundcraft desk and effects there to boost the gain and re-eq the tapes....
Also using DAT for (48/16) backup as I don't intend to bin my cassette masters anyway. I am just remastering them so I can listen to them.

LFF I have seen some of the old Akai decks selling for a lot on Ebay ad they generally have a good reputation. The one you have looks like a top of the range 70's upright design . Generally speaking it should have decent recording heads (assuming they are not worn out) and a well made mechanism. It probably won't have the capacity for Metal tapes but these are no longer in production anyway.
Depending on your level of interest / technical ability / budget I would say it's a good deck to restore as it looks nice cosmetically. If it's properly calibrated and set up it should perform nicely.
Does it allow easy access for user recalibration? You need to find a calibration tape or make one on a top of the range machine which is properly set up, set the recording sensitivity and the bias. Does it have Dolby? If you plan to record on it you need to set it up for modern tape stocks as the formulations have changed completely since the 1970's. It predates IEC standardisation so playback will need tweaking as well.
Once all this is done it's still not going to be the last word in fidelity but it should be enjoyable to listen to.
If you are looking for a more serious machine which you actually plan on using for anything serious you could sell it on and look for a more modern (80's) deck.

 

[LFF]

Memepool,
Thanks for the info on my deck. It is greatly appreciated. It is nice to know that I own a top of the line deck (even if it is from the 70's and hey - it was free so I can not complain). I have not tried it out but I am assuming it needs servicing.

Does anyone know of a good repair shop in Orange County, California?