Hi all, This deck is capable of stereo sound and, other than this obviously being displayed on the fluorescent meter, all my prerecorded tapes play a treat on it. Lately I've ventured into recording (never done this before!) and am using a 3.5mm male jack to 2 male RCA cable as the line in to the deck to record music. The music on the computer end is two-channel stereo but the instant it feeds into the deck it becomes a single-track sound, which admittedly does not sound too bad but it's definitely... 'Flat.' Is there an inherent issue with using two RCA wires that feed into a single 3.5mm jack (in that that will produce stereo sound?), or is this deck only capable of two-channel recording through RCAs feeding into an additional stereo amp with its own line in/out ports or two separate mic in jacks? My idea is that I could use a 3.5mm extension cable (with two male jacks at each end), plug that into a splitter and plug those male 3.5mm jacks into the mic in ports for left and right on the deck, thus making mic the input? Apologies if this is a trivial issue, I would buy a separate amp but I am trying to do all this with a slightly more space-efficient setup so it is fairly barebones. The tapes are made to be played on Walkmans and weirdly, turning on mega bass/adjusting the EQ on them makes the music sound normal/pseudo-stereo. Appreciate any input (pun intended)... Thanks!
3.5mm into two RCAs should work fine, I do this all the time! Check for continuity, you must have a short somewhere: cord itself or deck inputs. Not very probable, but maybe you grabbed Stereo-to-Mono cord?
Could you check that the output you are getting from the computer is actually stereo. Like Jorge says you might have the wrong type of cable. Another posibility is that the jack isn't fully into the computer so is only connecting to two of the three parts of the 3.5mm jack. A £10 multimeter and some cheap computer speakers (you sometimes see them in Charity Shops} will be a big help in trying to solve problems like this.
Hi Jorge, just checked on Amazon and the y splitter is indeed stereo on both ends. I think I there might be some kind of issue with the sound card of the PC as opposed to the USB one I frequently use, will go into more detail. I think either the headphone jack on my computer is a little off or the sound card, like I said above, is weird. Apologies for this as I seem to have a bad habit of making these kinds of threads, but it turns out that just using my USB sound card instead of the PC's in-built one produces stereo recordings on the deck!! I'm happy that I am able to record now as I'm hoping to have a tape ready for a flight tomorrow, but this seems like a strange situation nonetheless. I am also now realising that all my prerecorded tapes have been backed up in mono... Yeah, I think I'll need to fix that! Sorry guys, and thanks again! Hopefully someone else in this predicament will find this and it will prove somewhat useful
I'd run it into a stereo or boombox to check for separation; find a test video on YouTube to make sure your patch cord is working. I've got a handful of the splitters but they seem to have a high defect rate.
My bad, I presumed that you checked your computer jack with a headphones before going into recording session! My Boss insists that MacBooks is the best thing that happened to us, but Mac jacks and speakers break after a few months of use. USB chips is what she ends up using: welcome to the club!
Huh, well turns out this wasn't a permanent fix at all. The A side recorded fine (albeit with a some noticeable background buzzing, more than the usual kind of hiss but these are type 1 tapes that weren't kept in the best of condition for about 20 years) but the B side seems fully mono. I'm listening to it right now so I'm going to wait until I reach the B side to see if it's completely mono in playback. If it is I'll just try to rerecord it in stereo (if I can!) before my flight I'm off to Prague for a week, will be taking my cheapo EX304 with me (cheap as it may be it is quite sturdy and has very nice rotary mega bass controllers and the Dolby NR seems to be working very well on this tape, usually most tapes I've recorded with it sound a little rough).
I think the RCA Y splitter may be the biggest culprit as Mister X said, any reliable brands you can recommend? This one seems well made enough but I guess I can't be sure...
I just get them off the shelf at the hardware store, ours our mostly branded RCA, I'd buy two since they never seem to work for me.
My wife has one of these: USB External Stereo Sound Adaptor for when 3.5mm in MacBook breaks. If you are thinking about actually upgrading your laptop sound then Audioquest Dragonfly seems to be the cheapest option... as always, there is no upper price limit on DACs
I might have to try out the Dragonfly, I like to carry my mp3's with me on my laptop but the sound can really stink if I go to vintage stereo...
I use Supra cables in all my hi-fi equipment. Good cables. Don't know if they are available in the UK though.
Being a Naim-Head (as evident from my avatar) I use only Naim Audio interconnects,... Always!!! But for 3.5mm or RCA to DIN (for my Wadia 781i) I go for Audio Quest interconnects. Why AQ? They use welding, not solder for the wires-to-connectors. Less interfaces of a wire-solder-metal. Yes, a there is a few extra $$ for the bullshit/packaging off AQ, but to my humble ears they do a good job! As always, take any/my advise with a grain of salt: when auditioning $1k Naim Hi-Line phono cord vs. my own home-brew interconnects I could not hear a difference! (but I did pay about $300 for the parts)
