All,
I have really enjoyed everyone's posts about their cassette tape experiences. In the pre-CD years, I too used to record most of my albumn purchases on to cassette, and a few times I even used HiFi VHS. HiFi VHS recordings sounded terrific, but they were not very convenient to use.
None of the posts that I saw raised the matter of Dolby cassette noise reduction and its tracking issues. Dolby B was most widely used (including for retail tapes). It worked well across most players, and even operated pretty well on non-Dolby equipped players. Dolby B tapes still had quite a bit of tape hiss. Dolby C had much better noise reduction, but tracked poorly across different Dolby C players. When not tracking well, it exhibited what was called a "pumping sound". It pumped really badly on Dolby B machines, and even a bit on other Dolby C machines.
I always used Dolby C for my own tape recordings, but if I played one of my tapes on someone else's machine (like their car), -- there was that pumping.
About when the cassette tape went into its sunset period, Dolby introduced its Dolby S codec. I never heard it, but it was advertized as having more noise reduction than Dolby B or C, and being well behaved on all other types of machines. But alas, Phillips digital cassette, Sony mini-disc, and soon recordable CD players came on the market, and I do not think that Dolby S decks were ever very common.
Tom
Ente
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