Hi-fi

[Hugh]

EAR Yoshino EAR V12.

Wow!

Beam me up Scotty...!




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I hate the ugly cages they (presumably have to) have over the valves. Free the valves I say!

I think valve amps have to be supplied with cages for health and safety. Whether you keep them on after you buy the amp is up to you. I think these ones look quite good.

[Deebank]

Wow!

Beam me up Scotty...!




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I hate the ugly cages they (presumably have to) have over the valves. Free the valves I say!

I think valve amps have to be supplied with cages for health and safety. Whether you keep them on after you buy the amp is up to you. I think these ones look quite good.

I took the cage off straight away. My amplifier has a (pointless but pretty) valve that lights up and pulsates - some old Selmer guitar amps had the same thing, it pulsated in time with the built in tremolo effect - you can't see it with the cage in place. I have to add though that the cage on my amp is not as attractive as the more sympathtic design on the one pictured.

[Hugh]

Just heard that Tim De Paravincini mentioned above has passed. He won’t mean much to many here but he was a hifi legend.

RIP Tim

[Six String]

Just heard that Tim De Paravincini mentioned above has passed. He won’t mean much to many here but he was a hifi legend.

RIP Tim

Yes, he was big but quiet guy as most people in the biz tend to be. R.I.P. Tim.


Regarding tube/valve devices, it is my understanding is that they should be turned off after listening sessions. Not only does it save the tubes but they can malfunction and start a fire. I have SS preamp and amp and leave them on all the time along with my SACD player.

[C]

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[robertff]

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I hear cassettes are becoming desirable again C. so I wouldn't be too sure.

Personally I hated the things, terrible sound reproduction.


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[Six String]

Pre-recorded cassettes from the labels were for the most part crap. The cassette itself was of general poor quality and the tape was of poor quality, mass produced in a way to ensure shitty sound. However, if you bought blank cassettes, there were tape companies making good product that included not only better tape but more robust structural support around the tape reels that could create a fine listening experience providing you owned a good player/recorder and understood how to use it. I actually preferred listening to my home made cassettes in the car over the cd players I ended up with due to changing cars. At one point I tried to return to cassettes for the car but due to the complexities of the electrical systems in cars and the inability for a tape player to fit into consoles easily made me abandon the idea. My cassettes still play fine from 30 + years ago. The fact that the tapes couldn’t reproduce the ultra high frequencies cds were capable of meant that they effectively filtered out that high frequency edgy sound one heard on cds back in the 90s. While it is much easier to get a quality cd player these day that can eliminate that glare I’ve always disliked, it wasn’t so in the late 80s/early 90s. Taping cds on a quality tape solved the problem for the most part.

[C]

Pre-recorded cassettes from the labels were for the most part crap. The cassette itself was of general poor quality and the tape was of poor quality, mass produced in a way to ensure shitty sound. However, if you bought blank cassettes, there were tape companies making good product that included not only better tape but more robust structural support around the tape reels that could create a fine listening experience providing you owned a good player/recorder and understood how to use it. I actually preferred listening to my home made cassettes in the car over the cd players I ended up with due to changing cars. At one point I tried to return to cassettes for the car but due to the complexities of the electrical systems in cars and the inability for a tape player to fit into consoles easily made me abandon the idea. My cassettes still play fine from 30 + years ago. The fact that the tapes couldn’t reproduce the ultra high frequencies cds were capable of meant that they effectively filtered out that high frequency edgy sound one heard on cds back in the 90s. While it is much easier to get a quality cd player these day that can eliminate that glare I’ve always disliked, it wasn’t so in the late 80s/early 90s. Taping cds on a quality tape solved the problem for the most part.

A good post Les - thanks

[See you at the PSL this evening....?]




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[Six String]

Pre-recorded cassettes from the labels were for the most part crap. The cassette itself was of general poor quality and the tape was of poor quality, mass produced in a way to ensure shitty sound. However, if you bought blank cassettes, there were tape companies making good product that included not only better tape but more robust structural support around the tape reels that could create a fine listening experience providing you owned a good player/recorder and understood how to use it. I actually preferred listening to my home made cassettes in the car over the cd players I ended up with due to changing cars. At one point I tried to return to cassettes for the car but due to the complexities of the electrical systems in cars and the inability for a tape player to fit into consoles easily made me abandon the idea. My cassettes still play fine from 30 + years ago. The fact that the tapes couldn’t reproduce the ultra high frequencies cds were capable of meant that they effectively filtered out that high frequency edgy sound one heard on cds back in the 90s. While it is much easier to get a quality cd player these day that can eliminate that glare I’ve always disliked, it wasn’t so in the late 80s/early 90s. Taping cds on a quality tape solved the problem for the most part.

A good post Les - thanks

[See you at the PSL this evening....?]




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I don’t own the album but may try to make it happen.

[robertff]

The pre-recorded ones were just terrible, although I found the TDK D90 allowed you to reproduce a reasonable/acceptable sound, recorded with the Dolby on and played back with the Dolby off.

A friend of mine still will only play cassettes in his car - even when he bought a new one this millennium he had a cassette player installed rather than a CD player.


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[elegant chaos (reprise)]

Agreed!

Pre-recorded cassettes seemed to be of unreliable quality. Some were OK, but quite a few were dreadful. The quality was generally noticeably inferior to that obtainable from widely available blank cassettes.
Throughout most of the 80s I usually bought LPs and recorded them to blank cassettes. To begin with this was to preserve the vinyl (if I was going to damage or wear out something, I'd prefer it to be a cassette : even decent quality cassettes at the time only cost about 1/5th that of an LP). This strategy carried on (and made even more sense) after I passed my driving test and bought a car with radio/cassette player, and when I bought a portable cassette player for journeys to work.

I wasn't won over by chrome cassettes (let alone metal ones), and preferred high quality ferric ones. Started off with TDK OD cassettes, which were superceded by the AD-X variety around 1982ish(?). The branch of Comet in my home town decided to sell off all their OD stock cheaply when TDK were replacing it with the AD-X ones, and I bought boxes of them for a pittance. Kept me going for years!
Later on also used Memorex, and Sony ones (AHF?).


My deck had Dolby B & C. I discovered I got the best results recording cassettes with Dolby C, but playing them back using Dolby B (particularly in noisy environments such as cars & trains). I think it either caused everything to shift to a slightly higher audio frequency, or emphasised the higher frequencies (which were easier to discern when there was competing background noise).

Happy days.

[Six String]

I did the same (recording new albums to cassette to play). My favorite brand was the Maxell II S. I think they were three for $8-8.49 which I was happy to pay. They were built like tanks and sounded superb. These days I don’t have room in my rack since I have separate preamp and amp to house my tape deck but I do pull it out from time to time and play my tapes.

[jimboo]

Cassette , definition of glitter on a turd.
Waiting for the mini disc support to wade in.

[Positive Passion]

The principal problem with cassettes was the difficulty of access points. Cassettes were fine if you wanted to play the whole album or a compilation - so great for car journeys - but not as convenient as lps or, later, cds for accessing specific tracks.
I used to regularly make tapes for long journeys - I was a TDK man. I still have some comps I made for my wife before she moved to the UK.

[robertff]

Cassette , definition of glitter on a turd.
Waiting for the mini disc support to wade in.

Little support for something that never took off, I wager. My brother in law bought a mini disc player, could never find and discs to play on it - waste of money.


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[John_K]

Cassette , definition of glitter on a turd.
Waiting for the mini disc support to wade in.

Little support for something that never took off, I wager. My brother in law bought a mini disc player, could never find and discs to play on it - waste of money.


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I loved my MiniDisc deck back in the day, for a period of time in Dublin blank MDs were cheaper than blank CDrs (the audio variety). A colleague of my wife also had a deck and we'd send each other blind exchanges of a couple of discs every few weeks. Opened my ears to some new sounds at the time, and due to their size I managed to keep hold of all my discs.

Sadly, all my cassettes were jettisoned back in 2009 when we moved house as I needed to downsize my hoarding...