Even the best digital has a ways to go.
At least, that is what I heard at the Constellation room at RMAF. They mostly played digital with very high quality digital (maybe there is better, but I don't know for sure) and then played vinyl analog. The analog was great, the digital good, the rest of the playback adequate.
At least, that is what I heard at the Constellation room at RMAF. They mostly played digital with very high quality digital (maybe there is better, but I don't know for sure) and then played vinyl analog. The analog was great, the digital good, the rest of the playback adequate.
First, that is often much better with company.
I though you had listed an Emirate as your last location. Lots of violations have the death penalty, lesser ones an amputation.
Now you are in a sewer on an island that is almost completely rural and agricultural. If there you would be one of the wealthiest folks. I seem to recall the population is around 15,000. Many leave to find work. (Not sure they even have anything other than open sewers where a human would fit. Well at least a human not cut up into little pieces...)
Of course you can't play vinyl for more than a few minutes without hearing at least one noise pop or burst so you have nothing but sighted listening and all the preconceptions just latch in. As the LA article showed, confuse the clues and it's anything goes again.
Pretty much almost everything since the 90's has been recorded on ADAT or worse, a PC. I was speaking to my neighbor the other day. He owns one of those fancy Hwood studios. He was saying no matter how much he pushes the analog equipment, everyone wants their recording and mixing in the digital domain any more. It is much easier to sell samples, remix etc.
Then it gets played back on $500 K systems
Then it gets played back on $500 K systems
Maybe not the best, but would turn 100 years of research into human hearing on its head if you could statistically prove that your beloved benchmark is clearly audibly better than the oppo esp as the oppo uses the premium 9038pro not the 'affordable' 9028pro that benchmark use.
Hmm this is one to discuss over alcohol really. I am torn. On the one hand I love collecting remastered 78 recordings esp when the composer is playing/conducting. And I love the fact that Warner classics are milking their back catalogue to make great performances of the past available digitally (incidently they are the building a library choice around 50% of the time on radio 3 over here). But there is a lot of great stuff from some of the smaller labels of the type of music I like that just wasn't recorded in the past and in many cases is sublime quality. I am also pleased that the likes of Menuhin aren't recording any more. There is mad genius and there is missing out notes and not playing in time.
I guess I will settle for being greedy and wanting both 🙂
P.S. Howie: You have far too many great toys. I am jealous.
I'm no glass audio fanboi, but I must confess: Mix that warm dust smell with that of old wood, soaked with Hammond tone generator oil, and it does get my motor runnin'. 🙂
No more termites either, one hopes.
Wasn't there an LED that flashed itself? I seem to remember seeing those at Radio Shack. Damn it, I miss Radio Shack! (There, I said it.)
Tape might be small but it has a coolness factor and can sound great. Our old smaller builder is occupied by a guy that rebuilds Studer A820 and A80 to playback tapes that may have the only copy of something. Small market but keeps employed.
Some of the best recordings I have heard are digital and run through eight leg devices. Nice simple stuff done by a friend who knows what he is doing. His company makes Mic pre-amps with tubes fets and IC's. Recording engineers seem to use what they need for the sound they want.
Some of the best recordings I have heard are digital and run through eight leg devices. Nice simple stuff done by a friend who knows what he is doing. His company makes Mic pre-amps with tubes fets and IC's. Recording engineers seem to use what they need for the sound they want.
Yes. DigiKey still sells them and calls them Active Production. Here is one of them. However the combined (LED + flashing oscillator) requires 3.0 volts, whereas I want to use a single D-cell battery. The good old LM3909 made its timing capacitor perform double duty: it also bootstrapped the output, which allowed the use of 1.9V LEDs and a 1.3V battery (80% of the way to end of life).
I worried that my collection of Ridge Monte Bello, Phelps Insignia, Walter Hansel Pinots, etc. would be tempting. In addition to the faux surveillance, I also wrapped up all of the wine racks in visqueen and secured that with a lot of blue masking tape. You could plainly see they were wine racks but couldn't read the labels on the bottles. And of course I feared that some of my framed die photos might get nicked too.
These seem well priced I might give them a try, I have no interest in the cabs. I find the Oregon pinots far more burgundian in general but always interested in different tastes. BTW I think Mr. Parker is an idiot and I have for almost 40 yr. he never had even the slightest clue on great wine from Burgundy or many places in Italy.
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Wally,
Look at the load spec.! It's only 10 Kohm, I said high Z load and the distortion drops way down. Remember, use a buffer on the output and the distortion isn't a problem any more.
-Chris
Look at the load spec.! It's only 10 Kohm, I said high Z load and the distortion drops way down. Remember, use a buffer on the output and the distortion isn't a problem any more.
-Chris
Hi Howie,
I had a complete set of alignment tapes and jigs as well, including the corrected high frequency azimuth tape. I even had the calibration box for the 1000ZXL. The calibration instructions in the service manual are wrong BTW. When I sold my shop, it broke my heart to leave all that stuff to what was a band of idiots. I have no doubt that the cal tapes were garbage within a year.
I actually have very good memories about working on the Nakamichi cassette decks. I have a sick dragon and BX-300 here and no one in Canada I trust to service them. Of course, it would be good to have a collection of belts, idlers, the OK01000 gear upgrade kits and some new capstan bearings and pinch rollers. There is that cable repair kit they came out with too for the standard mech #1 (480 style). The BX and higher series were standard mech #2.
I've never seen the azimuth meter. That would be interesting. After servicing the 1000ZXL machines, I would have loved one for myself. I think that is the best machine out there by far. I can do without the auto reverse, although that sounds pretty cool. How did you get the motor to reverse and apply the proper tape tension? I figured out how to set that with the Dragon capstan motor assy. No one seemed to know how to do it when I asked, so I just had to figure it out myself.
I did keep my CD stuff and can service their CD players, even the OMS-5/7 machine. I have an OMS-7 as well. Those will track almost anything after the mod and setup.
The Nakamichi electronic products, receivers, amps etc are also something I still service.
Your experiences sound extremely interesting. Hold on to your jigs and tapes, it would be a huge loss to see it broken up or go to someone who didn't understand the product. It's all very useful stuff Howie.
Digital? Sounds limited. We also did the DAT and DA-88/38 Tascam stuff. It worked but didn't seem to have any depth, not like you get off an analogue tape. My open reel tapes and jigs went too. I'm selling my BR-20 to a friend. 1/2 track, 15 ips, no TC. Setting up an open reel machine was very satisfying as well. I worked mostly on Tascam equipment, so the 80-8 and MS-16, the 30, 40 and 50 series recorders as well. Once you got them shimmed up exactly they became very smooth in operation. Not nearly as nice as a Studer, but good enough for jingles and rock 'n roll! Those were good times. Better when you became a preferred tech that was asked back. Even got a credit on a Triumph album once. I forget which one now.
I would have absolutely LOVED to have seen a Nakamichi open reel. It would have sent some brands running for the hills. 🙂
Best, Chris
I had a complete set of alignment tapes and jigs as well, including the corrected high frequency azimuth tape. I even had the calibration box for the 1000ZXL. The calibration instructions in the service manual are wrong BTW. When I sold my shop, it broke my heart to leave all that stuff to what was a band of idiots. I have no doubt that the cal tapes were garbage within a year.
I actually have very good memories about working on the Nakamichi cassette decks. I have a sick dragon and BX-300 here and no one in Canada I trust to service them. Of course, it would be good to have a collection of belts, idlers, the OK01000 gear upgrade kits and some new capstan bearings and pinch rollers. There is that cable repair kit they came out with too for the standard mech #1 (480 style). The BX and higher series were standard mech #2.
I've never seen the azimuth meter. That would be interesting. After servicing the 1000ZXL machines, I would have loved one for myself. I think that is the best machine out there by far. I can do without the auto reverse, although that sounds pretty cool. How did you get the motor to reverse and apply the proper tape tension? I figured out how to set that with the Dragon capstan motor assy. No one seemed to know how to do it when I asked, so I just had to figure it out myself.
I did keep my CD stuff and can service their CD players, even the OMS-5/7 machine. I have an OMS-7 as well. Those will track almost anything after the mod and setup.
The Nakamichi electronic products, receivers, amps etc are also something I still service.
Your experiences sound extremely interesting. Hold on to your jigs and tapes, it would be a huge loss to see it broken up or go to someone who didn't understand the product. It's all very useful stuff Howie.
Digital? Sounds limited. We also did the DAT and DA-88/38 Tascam stuff. It worked but didn't seem to have any depth, not like you get off an analogue tape. My open reel tapes and jigs went too. I'm selling my BR-20 to a friend. 1/2 track, 15 ips, no TC. Setting up an open reel machine was very satisfying as well. I worked mostly on Tascam equipment, so the 80-8 and MS-16, the 30, 40 and 50 series recorders as well. Once you got them shimmed up exactly they became very smooth in operation. Not nearly as nice as a Studer, but good enough for jingles and rock 'n roll! Those were good times. Better when you became a preferred tech that was asked back. Even got a credit on a Triumph album once. I forget which one now.
I would have absolutely LOVED to have seen a Nakamichi open reel. It would have sent some brands running for the hills. 🙂
Best, Chris
Mr. Anatech, look at the data sheet: http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/cd4066b.pdf
The load in the Nak schematic is precisely 100kohm. In the data sheet fig. 5 there is virtually no difference in the transfer characteristic between 10kohm load and 100kohm load, and that’s precisely why it’s spec’d at 10kohm, if there would be a significant further benefit in increasing the load they would not miss it. A little reading on a cmos transfer gate open loop voltage I/O characteristic, and how the subthreshold regions impact the crossover distortions would clarify why this topology can’t get much better, unless monster devices (with the 3:1 pmos/nmos area ratio) are used.
Those cmos analog switches have horrible distortions whatever way you slice it or dice it. Onsemi is doing some very low on resistance analog switches that would probably work for low distortion audio, but using those would be a waste of money, and the Nak engineers knew it. There’s no point in using a better switch when the tape plus transport distortions are 1% or so. And some call this today “hi end hi-fi”, compared to a “mid-fi” digital stream of the same original source, what a joke.
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