Hi. I've recently obtained a Nakamichi DR-2 and am looking forward to
using it to transcribe old cassettes. But I'm not entirely knowledgable
on this sort of thing, so I'm hoping some of you can give me some tips.
Specifically:

The DR-1 has an external azimuth adjust knob, the DR-2 does not. Anyone
know if the knob can be purchased as a part and retrofitted on to the DR-2?
(No, the DR-2 is not the one with the auto azimuth setting.)

The tape door is kind of heavy, is it part of the anti-resonance design?
Will leaving it off for access to the internal azimuth knob harm the
performance of the deck?

What components do I have to change to make this into a "B" option deck
with IEC equalization?

How often do you have to mess with the azimuth during playback? (I will
probably find the answer to this when I try it...) Is it generally enough
to adjust between songs while listening to the hiss, or will I have to
keep adjusting every minute, rewind and play again, and edit it back
together when I'm done?

I got the deck without any docs or spares, anyone have a service manual
lying around to sell, or a recommendation of where to get manuals and
parts?

The cassettes I want to play are mostly master recordings of music,
10+ years old, recorded on various machines. I intend to play them into
an SGI Iris Indigo, tweak them on the computer, and burn to CD.

Any advice from people who have been there and done that is greatly
appreciated!

-- Adam

I use the DR1, as well as CR3 and BX300s. There appears to be quite a bit
of extra mechanism to implement the azimuth adjust knob, so even though I
do not have a DR2, I doubt it is practical to just "add the knob." The
door is not, to my knowledge, part of any resonance design. If you are
keen on adjusting the azimuth, simply leave the door off, and adjust the
azimuth with a small screwdriver. If you look at the head mount design,
there are a group of toothed plastic wheels to adjust the head heights,
tilts and azimuths for the record and play heads. The play azimuth is
simply the largest toothed wheel on the right. It even has click stops, so
you can easily return to the original setting. It's hardly more difficult
than the knob (which also has a little light indicating nominal position).

In my general opinion, any cassette is usually so inaccurate that it's not
worth my time to set azimuth more than once, but I suppose if you are
fussy and believe you can hear a difference, adjust it as often as you
need. The same with changing the EQ. Most cassettes are made with the
bias, Dolby level and so on, so out of whack that the minor change in IEC
EQ on Naks is a non-issue to me. If it sounds off, simply EQ in the
digital domain until it sounds good.

I don't know how good the A to D conversion on your SGI is. I try to use
the best A/D available to me on principle.


In article ,
Adam Goldman wrote:
Hi. I've recently obtained a Nakamichi DR-2 and am looking forward to
using it to transcribe old cassettes. But I'm not entirely knowledgable
on this sort of thing, so I'm hoping some of you can give me some tips.
Specifically:

The DR-1 has an external azimuth adjust knob, the DR-2 does not. Anyone
know if the knob can be purchased as a part and retrofitted on to the DR-2?
(No, the DR-2 is not the one with the auto azimuth setting.)

The tape door is kind of heavy, is it part of the anti-resonance design?
Will leaving it off for access to the internal azimuth knob harm the
performance of the deck?

What components do I have to change to make this into a "B" option deck
with IEC equalization?

How often do you have to mess with the azimuth during playback? (I will
probably find the answer to this when I try it...) Is it generally enough
to adjust between songs while listening to the hiss, or will I have to
keep adjusting every minute, rewind and play again, and edit it back
together when I'm done?

I got the deck without any docs or spares, anyone have a service manual
lying around to sell, or a recommendation of where to get manuals and
parts?

The cassettes I want to play are mostly master recordings of music,
10+ years old, recorded on various machines. I intend to play them into
an SGI Iris Indigo, tweak them on the computer, and burn to CD.

Any advice from people who have been there and done that is greatly
appreciated!

-- Adam

On 4/21/05 5:13 PM, in article , "G.
Louie" wrote:

I use the DR1, as well as CR3 and BX300s. There appears to be quite a bit
of extra mechanism to implement the azimuth adjust knob, so even though I
do not have a DR2, I doubt it is practical to just "add the knob." The
door is not, to my knowledge, part of any resonance design. If you are
keen on adjusting the azimuth, simply leave the door off, and adjust the
azimuth with a small screwdriver. If you look at the head mount design,
there are a group of toothed plastic wheels to adjust the head heights,
tilts and azimuths for the record and play heads. The play azimuth is
simply the largest toothed wheel on the right. It even has click stops, so
you can easily return to the original setting. It's hardly more difficult
than the knob (which also has a little light indicating nominal position).

In my general opinion, any cassette is usually so inaccurate that it's not
worth my time to set azimuth more than once, but I suppose if you are
fussy and believe you can hear a difference, adjust it as often as you
need.

I'd add that when adjusting the azi, listen to the playback IN MONO (not one
channel or the other BOTH summed to mono) as it drastically enhances your
ability to hear misallignment.


The same with changing the EQ. Most cassettes are made with the
bias, Dolby level and so on, so out of whack that the minor change in IEC
EQ on Naks is a non-issue to me. If it sounds off, simply EQ in the
digital domain until it sounds good.

This indeed is excellent pragmatic advice. The big offender being RECORD
LEVEL-as-Dolby-reference, which it NEVER is unless you or a trusted tech
have indeed MADE SURE that it was. I set up every deck I ever got to PB spec
and then tweaked REC level for tape formula. Other People's recordings are
all OVER the map. With a lot of practice (and the ability to both eq ahead
of Dolby and adjust how hot the PB is hitting the Dolby decoder) you can
actually get fair at hearing a dolby-decode fall into place. It was a lot of
fun to spend time setting a deck then looking at response, with and without
Dolby, and watching the freq-response at 0VU, and -20, and -40 all fall
right into line out to/past 15k. "Dolby Kills High's' indeed...

If only dbxII had actually become ubiquitous.

If only dbx II had actually become ubiquitous.

It would have solved the level problems, but not the noise problems. dbx II
works well only with recorders having a reasonable dynamic range (which includes
consumer OR tape decks running at 7.5 ips). Cassette decks just aren't good
enough. With program material having a wide dynamic range or a high crest factor
(eg, solo piano), you can hear the tape noise breathing in the background.

On 4/21/05 6:40 PM, in article , "William
Sommerwerck" wrote:

If only dbx II had actually become ubiquitous.

It would have solved the level problems, but not the noise problems. dbx II
works well only with recorders having a reasonable dynamic range (which
includes
consumer OR tape decks running at 7.5 ips). Cassette decks just aren't good
enough. With program material having a wide dynamic range or a high crest
factor
(eg, solo piano), you can hear the tape noise breathing in the background.

I know. Anything without enough hi-end to mask it showed that, but then most
commercial pop/jazz/whatever was pretty pink-noise-spectrumy and worked
grandly. Mine is a choice between that and the Dolby never-allignment
problem. Had several outboard dbx units (I and II) and in many formats,
including dinky-format multitracks, NAB carts, phone lines (!) and
cassette, it was always preferable in the real world.

On 21 Apr 2005 04:11:55 GMT, OSPAM (Adam Goldman)
wrote:

The tape door is kind of heavy, is it part of the anti-resonance design?

IIRC, the "anti-resonance design" was a way of saying that the
flywheels were different sizes.


Will leaving it off for access to the internal azimuth knob harm the
performance of the deck?

Nope.Not to worry.
Goog fortune,

Chris Hornbeck

It would have solved the level problems, but not the noise problems. dbx II
works well only with recorders having a reasonable dynamic range (which
includes consumer OR tape decks running at 7.5 ips). Cassette decks
just aren't good enough. With program material having a wide dynamic
range or a high crest factor (eg, solo piano), you can hear the tape noise
breathing in the background.

I know. Anything without enough hi-end to mask it showed that, but then most
commercial pop/jazz/whatever was pretty pink-noise-spectrumy and worked
grandly. Mine is a choice between that and the Dolby never-allignment
problem. Had several outboard dbx units (I and II) and in many formats,
including dinky-format multitracks, NAB carts, phone lines (!) and
cassette, it was always preferable in the real world.

I once recorded a live performance of "Alborada del gracisoso" on a 700II, using
metal tape and dbx II. The noise -- and its breathing -- was audible only during
the quietest passages. With program material having a narrow dynamic range, dbx
II can make a cassette deck seem to be noise-free.

Thanks to those whose detailed responses answered all of my questions!
(Well, except for where to get a service manual, but that can wait.)

Fortunately(?) there is no DBX involved.

I'm going to adjust the azimuth at the beginning, middle and end of a tape,
note whether there was any variance, and use that to decide how often I want
to mess with it.

The issue of A/Ds was raised. I'm happy with the ones in the Indigo, but I'd
be curious to know if anyone with more discriminating ears has comments
about them. There are "paper" specs and graphs at:
ftp.sgi.com /sgi/Audio/audiospec.ps.Z
http://www.eskimo.com/~adam/audiospec.pdf
(the latter is a temporary link to a PDF conversion from the former)
The relevant page is the first one after the title page.

-- Adam

If you are in eskimo-land, Definitive Audio in Seattle or Bellevue has
sold us manuals and parts in the past.


In article ,
Adam Goldman wrote:
Thanks to those whose detailed responses answered all of my questions!
(Well, except for where to get a service manual, but that can wait.)

Fortunately(?) there is no DBX involved.

I'm going to adjust the azimuth at the beginning, middle and end of a tape,
note whether there was any variance, and use that to decide how often I want
to mess with it.

The issue of A/Ds was raised. I'm happy with the ones in the Indigo, but I'd
be curious to know if anyone with more discriminating ears has comments
about them. There are "paper" specs and graphs at:
ftp.sgi.com /sgi/Audio/audiospec.ps.Z
http://www.eskimo.com/~adam/audiospec.pdf
(the latter is a temporary link to a PDF conversion from the former)
The relevant page is the first one after the title page.

-- Adam

In article , G. Louie wrote:
If you are in eskimo-land, Definitive Audio in Seattle or Bellevue has
sold us manuals and parts in the past.

Thanks. I'm actually in Los Angeles, not Seattle as you inferred from the
URL. I got a nice email back from Definitive's service manager with
contact info for "NAK USA" here in LA, though. It's too bad Definitive
doesn't do mail order. NAK USA parts department doesn't answer the phone,
and customer service didn't know what a DR-2 is.

I've decided that the SGI's converters are likely good enough that the
cassette format is going to be a far more dominant source of distortion
and noise than them. Time to start running some tape through the thing...

-- Adam

On 28 Apr 2005 04:33:32 GMT, OSPAM (Adam Goldman)
wrote:

with
contact info for "NAK USA" here in LA, though. It's too bad Definitive
doesn't do mail order. NAK USA parts department doesn't answer the phone,
and customer service didn't know what a DR-2 is.

If you do ever hear from NakUSA, many would be interested in any
contact info.

Much thanks, bated breath, etc.,

Chris Hornbeck
"Don't panic."

In article , Chris Hornbeck wrote:
If you do ever hear from NakUSA, many would be interested in any
contact info.

Well, their number is (310)392-1155, but dealing with them seems to be a
waste of time.

-- Adam