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David Matthew Wood[_2_] David Matthew Wood[_2_] is offline
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Default Wow and flutter on cassette tape + loss of high frequency

In article
,
Phillip wrote:

Mark, thanks for the reply. The tape was certainly recorded that
way ;-)
Sorry about that - I did mean a pause and restart by the recording
machine.


The machine was restarted at the beginning of every song? If so, then
yes, you might be able to get more highs by realigning the heads in the
machine you're using to play it back with. It takes a second or so for
things to "stabilize" after the head is engaged, hence it sounding good
for a second or so at the beginning of the recording.
Whether it sounds better or worse after the first couple of seconds,
depends on how the two decks were aligned to begin with.
Of course if the tape path in the recording machine was dirty, that can
certainly increase the chances of misalignment.

In practice, I have found it very rare to have two tape decks aligned
the same way, and the slightest bit of misalignment will have a dramatic
effect on the high frequencies, ESPECIALLY if Dolby NR is being used.
For this reason, if I am doing any tape to CD transfers, I will first
listen to the tape and realign my deck by ear to get the best results.

A trick I use to make this easier, is to combine left and right from my
tape deck so that I'm listening to the tape in mono. That way,
misalignment will show itself in the form of phase cancelation.

Try this: play the tape normally, and then while playing it, switch to
mono and then back to stereo again. If you hear a drastic change in the
overall sound quality (other than normal stereo separation, of course),
it is definitely an alignment issue.