Mastering for Cassette?

I have made a collection of tapes for close to 400 of my favourite albums from the 80s and early 90s with excellent result on Type II and some Type IV tapes. Recorded from lossless audio Apple Music. Some bands I have made an exception to also include later albums such as Depeche Mode, OMD and Ultravox. Those latest albums has been difficult to get good result on tape, they distort even on correct Bias and low recording levels. Anyone else encountered this issue? I'm thinking if this has something to do how they are mastered? Brickwall compression that overloads the tape? As there is only a few examples of this I'm thinking of importing the albums to Logic Pro and do some kind of remastering but not sure what would help.

Found this on reddit:
"But as a rule of thumb, you treat it kinda like a vinyl, cut some lows (12dB/oct low cut at 20Hz, that will be slowly decrease everything under 40Hz) and cut some highs (everything beyond 16KHz won't be reproduced by the cassette)."

Thinking that it could be the Dolby C circuitry (I'm recording all in Dolby C) that distorts? Will do some tests without Dolby involved.

Edit: Did some testing with and without Dolby, distortion might be slightly lower without Dolby but both recordings have a small added distortion compared to the original.

 

If the original you are recording from is already messed up and distorted, putting it through Logic Pro will not help. Garbage in garbage out.

If you are working withing Dolby's parameters, it should not distort.

 

I wouldn’t say the original recording is messed up, more mastered to be as loud as possible. It sounds ok listening to the digital original but doesn’t translate well when recording onto tape. I was thinking of some kind of EQ would help, I’ll see if I make the effort to try.

 

Slightly off topic maybe: In the last year or so I am now into finding multiple versions of a given song / track. Taken from original releases, vinyl 24bit 192khz rips, re-release albums, album anniversary releases, special Remastered editions, Japanese editions and even just various compilation albums under many labels. These would be mostly .flac and .wav files from various, how shall I say, file share systems

And then I open every one in Audacity and see what they look like. And then listen. There is always a difference between all these releases of the same exact song. Sometimes a monumental difference. Some are a block of solid max-volume-no-headroom-left-noise. Others are sublime with all the peaks and highs intact with luscious headroom above them. In this way I have assembled killer versions of my fav stuff. Just saying. Theoretically anyone could do the same... it would take time and some learning to find the files though.

 

I on the other hand would say it’s already messed up, it’s like taking a low resolution jpeg of the Mona Lisa found on the internet and trying to up sample in Photoshop to get back the quality of the original. It won’t happen, you need to start with a good quality example in the first place. You can downgrade quality, but you can’t upgrade something that is already messed up / degraded. In the UK we call this “polishing a turd” no matter what you do it’s still a turd.

You are wasting your time, find something of good quality to work with in the first place.

 

Not heard that about hearing loss but that sounds like amusing explanation. I think it’s the added distortion from over mastering/brickwall that gives a sense of added treble. Modern mastering is a curse. As a hobby I make some electronic music mostly with 80s gear and that sounds great out of the box but using a mastering plug-in to make it sound louder can really destroy dynamics and add distortion. In this thread I’m mostly interested in why those (over) mastered albums are difficult to record on tape. They sounds quite ok (there is some distortion) directly from the source but recoding on tape definitely very easily distorts a lot for me even on lower recording levels.

 

@Rune Lindman I also think your cassette tape recorder and a combination of cassette tapes (a brand, type 1-2-3) make a difference in the recording. Tapes vary in sensitivity and bias, and to make the most of the tape, you have to calibrate 400 Hz on levels, and 12500 Hz on bias. For example, Maxells type II SX are easier to record on, as most decks are calibrated to them; but some 80's BASFs have lower sensitivity (some to -10dB difference!) but have a low noise floor. Driving these BASFs over 0 dB VU will distort the sound.

I completely agree with @Hyperscope, echoing every word he said. "Remastered" albums rarely sound better, just more compressed and "too bright". So to get the best results, I would try to record from vinyl or the first pressings CDs, or Japanese-mastered CDs (they are very best for my taste) on a tape deck with cal option and Dolby Off.