I'll start by saying I'll probably buy a decent made up cassette at some point. But rather than risk a good one in a just fixed cassette I made up one myself with a new Maxell 90 (copyright free tunes on 1 side, 3000Hz on the other). Obviously this cassette will be no better than my hifi stereo and that's just a fairly budget JVC DR-E45L. To create the cassette and then test it I carried out the following steps. 1. Created a 1hr 3000Hz tone with Audacity and copied it directly to my Mobile phone. Then I validated the tone from my mobile phone via WFGUI with an audio cable from mobile to PC. It was perfect playback. Zero wow/flutter as to be expected as it was digital output. 2. I plugged my mobile into the Aux in on my hifi - set the volume about 70% on my mobile. And started playback. 3. I neglected to clean my deck, but in recent use to my ear it seemed fine. So I manually wound the new cassette forward a few turns to get past the leader and then hit record and just left it doing its thing until it got to the end of the tape. 4. I unplugged my mobile phone and loaded up the recorder app. Rewound the tape and pressed play and then recorded the speaker output to the phone app. (I could have line-out recorded but I'd frankly forgot, plus it was only to validate what I'd recorded). 5. I played back the mobile recording through WFGUI and exported the readings over a period of time to a log. 6. I used the extract in a sheet and worked out the average at 0.19. So my thinking is I've got a reasonable baseline where whatever my personal stereo gets minus around 0.19 max to get an ok ballpark on how my personal stereo is doing stable playback wise. I know that's a bit rough but is my logic sound or have I totally mis-understood the point of a test tape?
Going back to point 1. What did you use as a method of transferring your 3,000 ton to your phone, did you use a MP3 or a wave or what? I'd be interested in trying this myself but I'd have to download the audacity and figure out how to make a test tape because I bought a test tape and it wavers too much. It goes up and down and up and down and up and down. So when I try to measure the frequency response not frequency response but the 3,000 tone as it wavers so it doesn't give me an accurate reading. The only thing you understand what I'm trying to say. I need to make a perfect recording because the one I bought fluctuates too much up and down up and down with the sound?
Sounds like you have made a good tape for measuring Wow and Flutter. What it won't do is tell you the speed accuracy of your JVC. Whether it is running at 1.75 or 2 inches per second will make no difference. I was trying to think of a way of checking. Get a pre-recorded cassette and a CD of the same track. Start them at the same time and see how much they drift apart. Even that assumes the cassette was duplicated correctly.
I would simply order one that has been recorded on a well calibrated deck. Add the tape to your next order from Fix Your Audio for instance, not even 9 euros: https://fixyouraudio.com/product/speed-calibration-tape/
