hi Forum, I was playing around with my old Aiwa HS-P202 Walkman, so I decided to record something new with Dolby B on a chrome cassette, so I could listen to it on my Walkman. I couldn’t decide what to record, so I recorded the latest top 50 from Spotify. Especially “God’s plan” by Drake. To my surprise the recording sounded horrible. Almost all of the top 50 pop music these days have an extremely deep an loud bass. As soon the bass sets in, vocals and other sounds are distorted. On a metal tape the distortion is not so pronounced as on chrome and normal. What is your experience? Same problem? How did you fix it? Thanks Cheers Per
Did you notice the distortion on the music before you started to record them? If not then you are recording onto the cassettes to hot, meaning you are saturating the cassettes. Reading what you wrote I would say that is the problem, metal cassettes can take a lot more level before it starts to saturate.
I am with @TooCooL4 Try lowering Rec level so that even at Peak it never reaches Zero. See what happens. I had the same problem with definitely not pop re-recording this old cassette from vinyl:
Unfortunately modern music is very oversaturated, artificially pronounced bass and frequency pumped in the places needed to make it sound great on some Beats headphones or whatever tut is out there. Recording is a mixed deal from digital sources, flac can sound fantastic but a lossy mp3 can sound horrid. Either way you will need to record at a much lower level than you would from vinyl or tape.
Thanks for your feedback. Could the source be distorted? I haven’t really checked, because my setup is a bit complex. It sounds fine over my Receiver and headphones, but I haven’t heard I directly in the Tapedeck, hmm - have to check that out. Spotify is running on a Amazon Fire TV Stick (2. Gen.) The digital sound is then extracted from the HDMI to a Toslink. Which goes into my Receiver. The toslink goes from Receiver digital out to an old Sony Dat recorder, the DTC-670 which acts like a DA converter. Then from the Dat analog into my Sony TC-WR 735S Tapedeck. The input is so loud that I have to set my recording volume to 2 out of 10. I’m not in the red area of the VU meter, maximum at Zero dB. Maybe the problem is the high or hot input from the Dat DA converter? Well anyway, I’ll try out the Analog output from the Receiver into the Dat, we’re I can reduce the input level from there into the Tapedeck. I agree with @T-ster, the bass is extreme in modern pop music. I found a pair of high pass cinch adapters which lower the level under 70 Hz. They are cheap, and could do the trick. Thanks again for all your help. Cheers Per
Its not the music, its some where in the recording process. You should be able to get a clean recording.
I think 2 different issues made your recording not ideal 1- Online streaming is not a good source for recording. 2- Recording process itself. what component you use to record your music? how did you connect your streaming player to your cassette recorder? See this link about good recording and you will find it extremely helpful http://www.walkman-archive.com/articles/guide-good-recordings_01.html
Thanks for all comments, I reduced the recording volume and that fixed it. The playback volume is of course low, but without distortion. The Amazon Fire TV stick is plugged directly into my Receiver (Denon AVR) My Receiver unfortunately blocks The built in DA converter to output anything over cinch when the signal is HDMI. (Thanks Denon) That’s why I extract the digital audio from the HDMI and inserts directly via toslink into my Dat recorder which acts like a DA converter. The audio output of the Dat recorder is very hot or high. So my record volume on my Tapedeck is very low, as I wrote earlier. Cheers Per
Curious problem. I bet it's something in your recording process, and I bet it's your DAT. Is it a pro device? These pro devices output a signal level that is way higher than home devices use, so it can be that. Doesn't your receiver have a simple analog RCA output that you can connect to your deck? You can also try to use the headphone output from the receiver, to see if the problem dissapear. That will confirm that is something between the receiver and the deck.
Hi Admin, As I wrote earlier: “My Receiver unfortunately blocks The built in DA converter to output anything over cinch when the signal is HDMI. (Thanks Denon)” With cinch I mean RCA. My CD player sends a digital signal through the Receiver which turns it into analog and outputs it through the RCA line out. As soon as I choose and HDMI source the Receivers DA outputs to speakers only, the line out is silent. I guess copyright issues - whatever. Instead of the old Dat I could buy a decent small DAC with line out. Even my IPhone at full volume is low compared to the Dat. I have to set the record level to 6 on a scale of 10 to get the same volume. With dat its 2 of 10. Cheers Per
I use Hi-Rez Tidal thru $30 Chromecast into Wadia 781i DAC into Naim NAP52 into Nak LX-3 with no problems whatsoever!! Not the same hi-end result as with Sondek/Aro into Nak but as long as there is no interruptions with Tidal, cassettes sound pretty decent
almost all modern recordings get done to suit mp3 and the popular players, inclusive lousy amps, speakers etc. "feed" a standard bluetooth-speaker (only f.ex. JBL charge) or general surround-system (f.ex. Bose) with flat (means: no tone-control, no loudness !) output of a vintage pre-amp with a turntable - and you'll be disappointed. unfortunately you have to playback new recordings with new equipment, best result for older recordings are with older equipment. luckily i dislike modern pop in general, so i can conveniantly lean back and enjoy my vintage gear
Aha. I just read your message after posting mine... It's indeed a curious setup. I guess with an external DAC you'll do better, but I won't forget what autoreverser says. He's right. A good old integrated amplifier and you won't have any problem, but you'll need another gadget to extract audio from HDMI, etc...
Seems to me that the da converter isn't running on the same line in/out level as your receiver, somewehere in your setup is amplifying the signal. This reminds me of my old setup which was HDMI to HDMI audio extractor, optical lineout from extractor to a D/A converter and from the DAC to my receiver. My old setup would also have signals running too hot. Got rid of the HDMI and optical sections and instead bought a USB Jdlabs Odac combo thing + RCA outpout jacks. Could you try to just use your tv's inbuilt analog outputs and plug it to your receiver directly?
So, connected a 192/24 DAC to my tape recorder, which has volume control on the RCA output. Found this so-called music: "The Wombats" - "Lemon to a Knife Fight" and tried to Record it. (Don't ask me why) Its nearly impossible without heavy distortion. you must turn down the volume to zip - which isn't cool. I bought a pair of High Pass RCA Crossovers (about 10 €) 70 Hz high Pass with 12 dB slope. Now i can record modern pop music without any Distortion. The bass is still there but nicely reduced. Link to a similar Crossover here. Have a nice Weekend! Cheers Per
Now this is getting interesting... I tried to reproduce your results, streaming from Tidal at HiFi and recording onto Sony Type I cassette (HiFi 90min). Rec level is very easy to set since this album has no dynamic range, so I set "max" at Zero. Tape sounds fine, same as the original. No distortions, no over-saturation.
It's been years since I've messed around with tapes and I was going backwards, from the tape to MP3. I was using Sony's Acid Pro from my tape deck to the computer. With Acid Pro I could monitor the levels and make sure I wasn't compressing the signal. I'm assuming your familiar with the "Loudness Wars" and tape compression, if not here's a good Wikipedia article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war It sounds like you fixed it but maybe a computerized wave diagram would help you dial in the signal to it's ideal level.
You may need to use some resistors to reduse the volume before the tape deck The signal might be overloading the preamp reducing the record level wont help in this case sence the preamp is already overloaded
@Mister X , your link is an eye opener. So I tried again today. No real problem. I was like huh??? Why didn’t it work last time? I checked everything again. Same same but different. Then it read the wiki link especially the section about replay volume normalization. I turned that on after my first try - and I forgot about it. This has a big effect on my system. According to the wiki article “Most cloud-based music services perform loudness normalization by default and may reduce the market pressure to overcompress material.” I guess Tidal does it too. That’s probably why @Jorge has a great result, just like me now. Well anyway, thanks! Cheers Per
Most modern "pop" and "rap" is crap..........Not only because they have no talent, but also because most of it is loaded with overly boomy/farty bass instead of tight bass like it should be. And then there's the artificial-sounding Autotuned voices that make grown men sound like 10 year old boys.
