Jim Audiomisc
pfm Member
Not a TD20A then? Famed for its lack of mechanical noises 'cos it was all done with motors not solenoids..
There's the convenience and cost aspect yes and cassette was ideal for the car but the only machine where I've been unaware of wow and flutter, HF compression and distortion, bass woodles etc is the Nak CR7E. It was in a class of its own IMHO. Cassette is simply not a hi fi medium IMO. I was glad to see the back of it when it faded into obscurity!
Alas, I'd not have been able to afford anything better than the 4000 series back in the 1970s. And the real snags were the cost of R2R tape *and* finding somewhere to store more than a few dozen 7 inch reels! I did previously have an old mono 'Defiant' (Co-Op brand name) mono recorder. That was a bit more 'economic' ad it was limited to the smaller reels and slower speed. Not great - but allowed me to record the Joni Mitchell "Sounds of the 70s" concert, which I have often been very grateful for ever since because it hasn't ever appeared on a commercial LP or CD. Only on a BBC Transcriptions LP which is rare and probably ultra-expensive. Just a shame I had to wipe many other recordings due to lack of money for more tape.
And so far as I'm concerned, many of the cassette recordings I made still sound good to me. Sadly, I can't say the same for the commercial ones I bought. With only a few exceptions these sounded truly awful from the first playing onwards!
FWIW I *did* lust after the Revox A77 that was bought as a data recorder for the "Concorde Eclipse" project and had it in mind to drift that homewards once the data was digitised. But my supervisor got in first. That was another era. Now I can do my own digital transfers. Back then I had to go to the old Appleton Labs to access an ADC and convert the recordings into computer-processable data! An ADC that took up slots on an old 19" rack unit!