actually didn't even know people recorded vinyl to cassette : )
All that – the clicks, the pops, the microphonics – convince me that it was best to get
out of the LP medium. Enter the cassette tape. I don’t think I was unusual in that regard – many people recorded their LPs to cassette merely for the purpose of playback in their cars.
But cassette wasn’t a “plug and play” medium either. For starters, you have to understand that it began life as a low-fi medium intended for voice recordings. The tape itself was half the width of what was then the industry standard for tape, the reel-to-reel (RTR) medium. Adding insult to injury, the cassette tape speed of 1-7/8 ips (inches per second) was
half the speed of the
slowest speed setting on a typical RTR deck of 3-1/4 ips. (Most RTR decks had speed options for 7-1/2 ips, and higher-end models offered 15 ips. By contrast, the industry standard for mastering tapes was 30 ips on tapes 1-2" wide [forget which].)
So, the cassette medium ran fully counter to the common wisdom of that day, that the best S/N and dynamic range required tape to be as wide as possible and run as fast as possible! Improvements in tape formulations and the advent of the Dolby Noise Reduction system sufficiently enhanced the medium make it viable for hi-fi use.
Also, was the variable bias control used to get rid of the clicks and pops?
No, whatever you were getting from the LP was what you were getting, including any clicks and pops it generated.
Bias was one of the things that kept cassette recording from being a “plug and play” process, at least if you cared about sound quality. You can look up a lengthy Wiki article on the topic, but bias was basically an AC signal added during recording that enhanced the tape’s distortion and frequency response. Various tape formulations, commonly known as Type I, II, or IV (or Normal, Chromium Dioxide, or Metal respectively) had different bias requirements. Hi-fi cassette decks had switches for bias setting for the different tape options. For many years chrome tapes were the hi-fi standard; the (even better) metal tapes came along in later years, but were never as popular, one reason being their added cost.
Adding insult to injury, no two tapes were alike: A normal or chrome tape from TDK or Maxell (to name two of the major players) would have slightly different bias requirements for optimal performance. The respective bias settings on the cassette decks were general by necessity.
An adjustable bias control was an awesome feature if you had a three-head cassette deck. A typical deck had two heads – one head for erasing, and a second that did either playback or recording. A three-head deck added a record head that was separate from the playback head. The heads were aligned (left to right) as erase, record, play. With the playback head last in line, you could actually listen to a tape as it was being recorded. Let me tell you, that was too cool for words!
So with the adjustable bias control you could do a sample recording, adjust the bias knob, and immediately hear the results in real time. What you were going for was the setting that made the recording sound like the LP (the tape deck had a “Monitor” button that would switch back and forth between the source and recorded tape).
In addition, there was the “peak check” issue that John mentioned (I’d forgotten about that!). It wasn’t uncommon to find one song a bit “hotter” than the rest, and the meter would be getting up into the red zone. So you’d have to bail on that recording and start over.
Like I said, nothing “plug and play” about this! But the reward for the effort and expenditures in equipment was a recording that sounded identical (at least to my ears) to the original LP. And with no microphonics or new ticks and pops added over time. You could put your LPs on the shelf and preserve them.
Another benefit, realized many years later, was that I was able to take virtually pristine LPs that never came out on CD and digitize them, and with a little software clean-up get near CD quality (save a few ticks and pops that couldn’t be effectively treated).
There were also tape-head alignment issues with the cassette medium. To wit, tapes recorded on one machine always sounded best when played back on that machine. If you ever had to get a new cassette deck (due to failure of the old one or whatever), it was critical to adjust the tape head of the new one so that your existing tapes sounded best. This was typically easily done with a small screw driver once the door to the tape well was removed (typically they just popped out). You’d typically want the adjustment that got the best high frequency response.
All that to say, I totally agree with Mel that digital is absolutely the way to go. I really don’t get the current attraction to LPs – it’s a totally inferior medium by comparison. Been there, ain’t going back!
Regards,
Wayne
, musician, engineer and producer (ditto, neither famous nor I hope infamous).
