My legendary Nakamichi ZX-9 for sale.

[craigowl 0]

Parting with this example of a pinnacle in audio engineering if anyone is interested, or knows someone who might be.

Sad to let it go, but the Dragon and Revox remain.

 

 

 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/251226138978?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1586.l2649

[dr_mat 0]

Nice! If I'd had the money twenty years ago I'd have loved to use decks like this. These days of course, I don't record anything, ever.. Closest I get is chewing CPU time doing lossy compression of downloaded flac files so they don't fill up my phone too badly ..

[craigowl 0]

Thanks for your comment dr_mat! Makes a change from "what's a cassette, anyway?" (it will come!) lol.

Yes, understand the position for your generation. Even I have downloaded from itunes all the hit singles I loved 1956-64 as a schoolkid, that we heard on the radio, and with no record player. Too expensive to acquire later when working by buying the albums containing maybe one or two hits.

However, I had my first reel to reel by 1966, cassette deck by 1979 and have about a couple of hundred cassettes recorded since then. One tended to carefully select the tracks when compiling tapes and a good many hours of one's life was spent doing that. Those of you that did that will remember the ritual. The analogue sound of tape from quality decks (the ordinary working man could never afford when they were new) thro' modern amplifiers and speakers makes it all worthwhile.

I have sold three hi end cassette decks to younger guys running small companies, who produce music. One went to Guernsey and the other two to Somerset and Wiltshire IIRC. Cottage industries maybe, but one guy has had hundreds of his tracks played on tv (as backing music) here and in America. You would not believe the mega programs that have used his stuff. So, as with vinyl, plenty are not abandoning the older technology - newer is not always better in all ways - and the young are even getting into it again, as we know. Thanks BBC4. $hit I have Jeremy Clarkson's favourite album!

[dr_mat 0]

Heh, well nothing ever really dies out.. I just got the latest release from Autechre downloaded in 24-bit WAV files - sounds brilliant, but they also did a 4-LP pressing on heavyweight vinyl. It's all coming back.. Quality equipment will always produce a good result. The only thing that's changed in the intervening decades is that mediocre systems have become less awful..!

 

I also have hundreds of carefully recorded tapes .. so I do still have a modest cassette deck around (Yamaha KX380). I'd have to admit it's connected to the computer, not the hifi, however! :) I've digitised hundreds of my tapes and replaced lots with CDs too (usually used CDs, very cheaply). I wouldn't say I really download much, and I'm more of an album collector than a compilation maker. Not all bands make "albums" worth listening to in their entirety, I'm aware, but still!

I am just about old enough that my parents still had a reel-to-reel when I was very small, but my first playback equipment was cassette.

I do miss using it to be honest, though the sheer convenience of having everything I could ever want to listen to indexed and available at a few keypresses on the squeezebox is hard to ignore, and the quality through a decent DAC/Amp/Speaker combo is better than I had before I went this way, too.

As for sound quality, I've become a bit of a pragmatist on that front. I do think that everything analogue produces a very human-ear-friendly type of distortion, unlike bad digital systems, but I do also think that digital has more potential if used the right way. (One thing I definitely do NOT miss from cassette is wow and flutter. The absolutely rock solid bass definition from a good digital playback system is quite amazing.)

 

Anyway, good luck with the sale. I'm sure you don't need it, though, because serious gear is always desired. :)

[craigowl 0]

I only owned modest decks like Technics and Pioneer when I was working. I always defend them compared with Naks, etc when elitists try to knock them. I used two consumer decks from Comet or somewhere for about 20 years without any problem. The tapes I made from that era sound perfect today when played. Never had a wow and flutter problem since 1st cheapy budget deck of around 1978. The music producer of the widely used tracks I mentioned bought my Yamaha KX580SE. I am not saying they use these for masters, but will involve them somewhere in the production - all instruments played by himself!

[dr_mat 0]

You never had any print-through? I did mostly get rid of wow/flutter issues, it tended to go away with cleaned transports and decent quality cassettes.

I had a Philips deck that I did most of my recording on. Manual calibration for each tape type, but it worked pretty well, all things considered.

[craigowl 0]

Print-through sometimes apparent if you play loud track at really loud volume - nothing to spoil normal listening experience. Not as bad as some surface noise on old vinyl - part of the charm we are currently being told by old vinyl evangelists!

I bought a lot of TDK SA-60s before they became scarce/overpriced. If they are thicker, could use them for recordings on which you dont want any risk of print-through?

Edited February 9, 2013 by craigowl

[dr_mat 0]

Yes, print through was a bigger issue on the longer cassettes. I know there were people who insisted on winding tapes back and forwards all the time ..

The time I noticed it the most was when a track starts - there's a pre-echo on a tape that's been sat around for a long time. Surface noise .. print through - it all saps your s/n ratio and squishes dynamics, unfortunately. But then, so does bleeding-ear CD mastering.