[Arny Krueger]

"Mike Rivers" wrote in message
ups.com...
On Aug 7, 7:11 pm, "Arny Krueger" wrote:

The best way to adjust azimuth is to have a mono test tape, and adjust
the
azimuth until tape heads tracking the top and bottom edges of the
recorded
track reproduce waves with identical timing.

That's the best way to adjust it to a standard, but the cassettes to
be played may not have been recorded with the heads set to that
standard.

Right. Since these are cassettes, the demands for precision are high due to
the slow speed, but the hardware is inherently sloppy.

And the real problem is with instability of the tape
relative to the head, both when recorded and again when played.

That's one reason why a system like the Nak's, that adjusted the azimuth on
the fly as needed, could improve sound quality so much.

For a "better than random" setup, making one adjustment before playing
a tape is probably sufficient, but it should be done for each tape.

In an ideal world there would be some test tones recorded at the beginning
and end of the tape, and between every musical selection.