WHat did Audiophiles hear during Tape deck era?

Once Dolby B and other exotic tech came out in the mid 80s tape hiss virtually became a thing of the past. Digalog, Dolby B, HX PRO, HiQ, etc. Look for them. 👀 Blow your mind. 🤯 not to mention the plastic cassette cases evolved AND the TAPE formulation itself. Hel-loo! Cassettes are the only Medium that escaped the Loudness Wars. There is no substitute for Dynamic Range. 🤗

@tweak1   Let us not forget to mourn WTMI, please.

tweak1 - I grew up in the 305 and I found FM radio starting in the early to mid-70s to be pretty good with WSHE and Zeta 4.  For awhile, even WBUS (The Magic Bus) broadcasting from the Beach was pretty strong too.  

I was not into High End back then but had good mid-fi gear.  Good RR's and early cassette players had Tape Hiss and later came Dolby Noise Reduction.  That reduced the hiss but slightly affected the high frequencies.  Some older people may have a better take on it, I was in my late teen back then.  BTW, I hated Dolby and wouldn't use it. 

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 

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