Memory

different speed depending on where the tape was on the reel...

What about the one which somehow took its drive from a record
player? I'm sure I didn't imagine it, but can't find any details
right now.

Chris

I really craved one of those. They were always advertised in the back pages
of the various hobby magazines. It was never clear what you needed to do to
hook it up to the amplifier so I never bought one.

On Mon, 28 Apr 2014 17:34:34 +0100, Johny B Good
wrote:

and it's rather sobering to think that it all started with a 300MB
full height ESDI HDD in an NEC Powermate II (8MHz clocked 80286 CPU)
running NW 3.11) connected to a 'CheaperNet' lan.

That sounds a lot for the time. My first disk in the 286 era was only
40MB. The CPU did have 12 MHz turbo mode though as well as 8 :-)

On 28/04/2014 13:14, John Williamson wrote:
On 28/04/2014 09:59, Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Mon, 28 Apr 2014 01:40:04 +0100, Johny B Good wrote:

I regard not only CD as pre-historic but DVD and Blu-Ray[1] too. It's
not that that makes me feel old, just the effects of old age creeping
up on me.

Presumably old age is having its normal affect on hearing and sight
so you don't notice how crap downloads and/or streaming are compared
to CD or Blu-Ray (or even DVD come to that). B-)

What worries *me* is that many teenagers are of the opinion that
downloads are better quality than CDs.

Even at my age, I can tell the difference, even on earbuds and small
screens.


There must be something wrong with me then because I can't really tell
the difference

--
Dawood

On Mon, 28 Apr 2014 18:16:00 +0100, Chris J Dixon
wrote:

My little tape recorder had a non-standard speed of 4ips and also had
the tape wound in a funny way so it played backwards on a normal
machine. For tapes I used to strip down 1/2" computer tape. My uncle
worked at IBM and he used to get it for me.

There was one from Shoppertunities? which had no capstan so ran at a
different speed depending on where the tape was on the reel...

What about the one which somehow took its drive from a record
player? I'm sure I didn't imagine it, but can't find any details
right now.

That was the "Gramdeck". A school friend of mine had one. With the
turntable going at 78rpm the tape speed was 7.5ips, the other speeds
being pro rata and therefore non-standard. There was a battery powered
box of electronics with Belling-Lee aerial connectors for audio. The
erase head was a permanent magnet, so you had to thread the tape
differently for recording and playback. The fact that this palaver was
considered a worthwhile saving says something about how expensive
proper tape recorders must have been at the time.

Rod.

"gremlin_95" wrote in message
...
On 28/04/2014 13:14, John Williamson wrote:
On 28/04/2014 09:59, Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Mon, 28 Apr 2014 01:40:04 +0100, Johny B Good wrote:

I regard not only CD as pre-historic but DVD and Blu-Ray[1] too. It's
not that that makes me feel old, just the effects of old age creeping
up on me.

Presumably old age is having its normal affect on hearing and sight
so you don't notice how crap downloads and/or streaming are compared
to CD or Blu-Ray (or even DVD come to that). B-)

What worries *me* is that many teenagers are of the opinion that
downloads are better quality than CDs.

Even at my age, I can tell the difference, even on earbuds and small
screens.


There must be something wrong with me then because I can't really tell the
difference

Ditto - originally I thought MP3's were inferior [to CD] because they were
not lossless compression (like zip), however for most purposes you really
can't hear the difference.

PS typical digital audio streams are 44 - 48k samples per second.


--
Dawood

In message , Chris J Dixon
writes
Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

In article ,
Bill Wright wrote:

My little tape recorder had a non-standard speed of 4ips and also had
the tape wound in a funny way so it played backwards on a normal
machine. For tapes I used to strip down 1/2" computer tape. My uncle
worked at IBM and he used to get it for me.

There was one from Shoppertunities? which had no capstan so ran at a
different speed depending on where the tape was on the reel...

What about the one which somehow took its drive from a record
player? I'm sure I didn't imagine it, but can't find any details
right now.

Chris

Gramdeck. I once had one. The tape speed was 7ips (at 78rpm). It used a
permanent magnet erase. The quality was actually pretty good.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PJHaSZbH5k
et al.
--
Ian

In article ,
"Dave Plowman (News)" writes:

There was one from Shoppertunities? which had no capstan so ran at a
different speed depending on where the tape was on the reel...

I bought my first cassette recorder from Shoppertunities!
ISTR the make was Monotone ;-)

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Bill Wright wrote:
Stephen wrote:

My estimate would be 30 minutes at 3 3/4 inches per second, mono, 10
kHz frequency response, signal to noise ratio 40dB.

My little tape recorder had a non-standard speed of 4ips and also had
the tape wound in a funny way so it played backwards on a normal
machine. For tapes I used to strip down 1/2" computer tape. My uncle
worked at IBM and he used to get it for me.

Bill

There was one from Shoppertunities? which had no capstan so ran at a
different speed depending on where the tape was on the reel...

Happy days.


Oh I remember that. Mine was far superior to that though.

Bill

On 28/04/2014 19:37, R. Mark Clayton wrote:
"gremlin_95" wrote in message
...
On 28/04/2014 13:14, John Williamson wrote:
On 28/04/2014 09:59, Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Mon, 28 Apr 2014 01:40:04 +0100, Johny B Good wrote:

I regard not only CD as pre-historic but DVD and Blu-Ray[1] too. It's
not that that makes me feel old, just the effects of old age creeping
up on me.

Presumably old age is having its normal affect on hearing and sight
so you don't notice how crap downloads and/or streaming are compared
to CD or Blu-Ray (or even DVD come to that). B-)

What worries *me* is that many teenagers are of the opinion that
downloads are better quality than CDs.

Even at my age, I can tell the difference, even on earbuds and small
screens.


There must be something wrong with me then because I can't really tell the
difference

Ditto - originally I thought MP3's were inferior [to CD] because they were
not lossless compression (like zip), however for most purposes you really
can't hear the difference.

Do the same experiment that I did with some colleagues.

Record a band they know well. (I used a band from Stoke called Halcyon
Dayz, most of whose members worked at the same place we did.)

Mix the close mic'd multitrack recording to your taste.

Play back the stereo mix at 16 bit, 44.1kHz sample rate.

Repeat using a 320kHz bitrate mo3 file using the same playback system.

Repeat using "FM radio" quality settings of 128kHz bitrate.

Almost anyone will note a deterioration in sound quality the further
down the chain you go.

Repeat using a decent choir and a crossed cardioid mic setup. Play to
the choirmaster.

Find exactly the same results.

I use a lot of mp3 files to play background music while I'm driving, as
I can't justify the storage cost for CD quality .wav files with many
horsepower of diesel engine drowning out the distortion and noise floor.
--
Tciao for Now!

John.

In article , Chris J Dixon
scribeth thus
Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

In article ,
Bill Wright wrote:

My little tape recorder had a non-standard speed of 4ips and also had
the tape wound in a funny way so it played backwards on a normal
machine. For tapes I used to strip down 1/2" computer tape. My uncle
worked at IBM and he used to get it for me.

There was one from Shoppertunities? which had no capstan so ran at a
different speed depending on where the tape was on the reel...

What about the one which somehow took its drive from a record
player? I'm sure I didn't imagine it, but can't find any details
right now.


Yes, remember that thing. Made by a firm somewhere in the midlands
Gramdeck I think it was called, absolute abortion it was too!...
Chris

--
Tony Sayer