Wir bleiben absichtlich bei der englischen Sprache.
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Cassette Decks - book no. 3 - by Angus McKenzie

Content :
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1. How to use this book                              7
2. Editorial Introduction                              11
3. Consumer Introduction                           13
4. Technical Introduction                             25
5. Cassette Machine Reviews                      44
6. Conclusions                                          147
7. Best Buys and Recommendations          155
8. Cassette Machine Comparison Charts    164
9. Cassette Tapes                                     168
10. Cassette Tape Comparison Chart            188
11. Glossary                                               191

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Author: Angus McKenzie - Editor: Paul Messenger - Advertise- ment Director: Allen Perrin - Art Director: Paul Carpenter - Production Manager: Dick Pountain - Printed by Riverside Press Ltd. - Published by Sportscene Publishers Ltd., 14 Rathbone Place, London W1P IDE Tel: 01 637 7991/2/3 - Distributed by Moore-Harness Ltd., 31 Corsica Street, London N5.

Hi-Fi Choice Series, Sportscene Publishers Ltd. This edition © 1978 Sportscene Publishers Ltd and Angus McKenzie - Cover Photography by David Cripps  - Illustrations by Mike McCarthy - Product photography by David James - Any enquiries or correspondence regarding the content of this book should be made to Hi-Fi Choice Editorial, - 14 Rathbone Place, London W1P IDE.

Enquiries cannot normally be dealt with by telephone. The author Angus McKenzie is chairman and one of the founder members of the Association of Professional Audio and Radio Consultants. This book has been, written completely within the ethics of the Association, bearing in mind considerations concerning consultancy and reviewing. Details of the Association are being announced in the hi-fi press.

The Editorial Introduction sets the scene for the project as a whole, giving some of the reasons for the decisions that had to be taken and some qualifications concerning the interpretation of the results.

The Consumer Introduction is written for the complete novice to cassette recording; inevitably it covers similar ground to material contained within other parts of the book, but the intention has been to provide as much basic information as possible with the minimum of technicalities.

The information contained within the Consumer Introduction, combined with the help of the Glossary at the back of the book, should enable the Technical Introduction to be tackled by even the uninitiated. This section describes in detail the methods adopted in testing the machines, both subjectively and in the lab, while explaining many of the reasons why these tests were carried out and putting some flesh on the bones of the CI.

Then comes the main text of the Cassette Deck Revies, which illustrates and describes each machine in turn, discusses the results of the different tests in some detail, and summarises the performance of the machine in relation to its price.

Many of the measurements and the frequency response graphs are shown on the right hand pages for easy comparison. It should be noted that about 30% of the reviews are reprinted from the previous volume in the series, and are not therefore strictly comparable with the new tests, as some refinement and improvement in the test procedures has naturally taken place; it is particularly important to note that the frequency response graphs here use an 'expanded' vertical scale compared to the latest reviews, so that deviations from 'flat' are relatively exaggerated 2:1, so please take particular care here - all reprinted reviews are identified at the top right of the relevant pages.

In some ways the most important section of the book is the Conclusions, which summarises the findings of the tests across the board. Each area of performance is examined and contrasts drawn between the best and worst-behaved machines.

Similarly attention is drawn to machines that offer particular facilities in common, and comments made on the relative effectiveness of different design approaches. This is the section that pulls all the findings together, and puts the book as a whole into context, both with the past and to some extent the future.

The 'Best Buy' section is an attempt to make value judgements on performance and facilities offered at in relation to price. The machines are grouped into three, necessarily arbitrary, price bands, because the absolute relationship between price and performance is by no means linear.

• Anmerkung : Es fällt dem Deutschen Hifi-Fan sofort auf, daß dort nur die qualitative Untere und Mittlere Region der Geräte aufgeführt ist. Die ganzen 3-Motoren und 3-Kopf Kassettenrecorder der oberen Preisregionen fehlen. Die waren in UK unverkäuflich, weil sie für den englischen Normalo zu teuer waren.

Final section in the 'Cassette Deck' part of the book are the Overall Comparison Charts which allow the different performance parameters of all the machines to be compared easily, albeit somewhat simplistically.

Next comes the Cassette Tape section which is intended to enable anyone to choose the best possible tape for machine and requirements, taking price into account.

This is constructed in a similar way to the first section of the book but on a smaller scale, with its own introduction, the separation of the different tape types into groupings based on their technical performance and compatibility requirements a brief summary of the strengths and weaknesses of each different type, a 'conclusion' which summarises the current state of the market, and a detailed overall comparison chart to assist buyers in choosing the best tape for their needs.

The book has been constructed with some repetitions so that different sections are fairly complete within themselves, so it is possible to consult one particular section in isolation. But there is a limit to simplification, and readers are earnestly advised to consult as many sections as possible to build up a proper picture of the current state of the cassette medium. It is important to remember that this book is concerned not with choosing a cassette deck for you, but to help you make up your mind what cassette deck suits your requirements best, and then how to get the best results out of it.

This is the third volume of "Hi-Fi Choice" to deal with Cassette Decks, and each of these has been written by Angus McKenzie, although this is the first to be done under the current publisher and editor.

No-one can seriously challenge Mr. McKenzie's pre-eminence in this field, so the book is very much a sequel to the previous volumes in terms of the procedures adopted and general style, although there are naturally a number of refinements.

The book has been almost completely rewritten, the only direct reprints from the previous volume being the repeats of the machines that were tested then and are still available now as far as we can establish, and the Glossary.

In fact it was something of a surprise to realise how few models from less than two years ago were still available, and indeed discover that some models (like ships in the night) had been and gone within this brief timespan, to remain forever untested by ourselves!

Happily this does not seem to be entirely change for change's sake; the machines today are better than their predecessors, and also in general cheaper, and it was indeed remarkable how well some of the cheaper machines performed in absolute terms, even though they lack some of the sophistication and features of the more expensive models.

This rapid model obsolescence has also been accompanied by a considerable increase in the total number of models available, so a decision was made at the start of the project to restrict the number of machines that we would test rather than omit the cassette tape section which is so important in getting the best performance out of a machine.

So the overall package is much the same size as before (after eighteen months and with no price rise!), with some 36 machines chosen after listening tests on some 50 submitted by manufacturers, plus an additional 14 reviews from the previous book and a totally new cassette tape section.

Every attempt has been made to retain a proper historical perspective on the previous projects, but some caution is advised when trying to make comparisons between machines tested in the previous volume and the latest tests, because circumstances and frames of reference are bound to shift slightly over the intervening time span. We have also attempted to look forward a little as well, paying particular attention to the now imminent arrival of iron tape formulations, for
example, although sadly we were unable to investigate the new Toshiba ADRES noise reduction system (which is claimed to offer dbx performance without the disadvantages), as samples could not be obtained in time for deadlines.

There is perhaps some incongruity in myself acting as editor for this particular topic, as my public attitude to the cassette medium has been somewhat negative.

But this does not in any way affect my ability (disability?) to do the editing, and I can honestly say that I had rather more respect for the medium at the end of the listening tests than I had begun with (although remaining still very much a disc man at heart).

Being somewhat unfamiliar with the medium, I have deliberately avoided interfering with the project, although I was pleased to be invited to join some of the listening tests.

Similarly, I have not made significant alterations to Angus' style; while I know that some have criticised him for being too personal and perhaps rather 'resonant' in some areas, I feel that some measure of personality is an essential part of the book, and that it is better to allow such a work to assume a degree of personality than to become impersonally authoritarian.

The perspicacious reader should have no difficulty in equating these personal traits with his own, to enable the book to be the source of advice that is intended.
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From my viewpoint I can wholeheartedly endorse the findings of the project in general, and areas of disagreement were quite trivial, personal, and of little significance - a slight difference of interpretation of the term 'dynamic range' and my own scorn for such ergonomic features as 'detent action' rotaries and rack mounting handles on domestic equipment being typical examples!

Within the unavoidable limitations ot single-sample testing, I find it difficult to imagine how the project could have been improved. Editorial thanks are due to Angus McKenzie himself, but also the members of his team: Roger Morley, Peter Willison, Barbara Meakins and of course Fiona McKenzie.
Paul Messenger

This section is intended to explain in simple everyday language the basics of the cassette medium. It is neither easy to describe an interlinked system such as this in a sequential manner, because each part is dependant on the others, nor can one be rigorous without introducing jargon and technicalities, so there will be some overlap with and some gaps compared to the Technical Introduction and Conclusions.

With the help of this section and the Glossary, even the completely uninitiated should be able to tackle the Technical Introduction, which is really essential to acquire a good idea of the ins and outs of cassette recording.

By now everyone must be familiar with the actual cassettes themselves. All based on the original Philips patent and license (1963), there are a number of standard features that are best described by reference to a diagram (fig 1). Not visible in the diagram are small removable plastic lugs on the back edge, which are sensed by a small probe inside the machine. If these are removed, as they are as a matter of course in pre-recorded Musicassettes, the 'record' function is immobilised, and there is no danger of accidental erasure.

If a lug has been removed, and it is later decided to re-record the cassette, a piece of adhesive tape across the gap is sufficient to restore recording capability. Another lug/probe system is sometimes used to carry out the bias and equalisation switching required to use different tape types automatically, particularly on European decks.

But tape technology changes and different requirements have made such switching permutations rather complex, so this is now normally accomplished manually on the machine's operating panel.

Turning now to the cassette deck, the word 'deck' describes a machine designed primarily to be used in a hi-fi system, connected to an amplifier or receiver, and such machines do not include power amplifiers for driving loudspeakers. (The portable decks often include a modest amp and speaker for location monitoring and most decks supply adequate drive for a headphone socket.)

The deck can be conveniently divided into four sections:

1. the tape transport mechanics;
2. the record, replay and Dolby electronics;
3. the 'interfacing' electronics for connecting the machine to other components; and
4. the various features and facilities provided.

Each of these areas will be examined in turn, albeit cursorily in
this section; a more detailed examination is to be found in the Technical Introduction.

All the decks are assumed to be stereophonic, which means that each recording requires two separate channels of information. In the cassette system these are placed side by side and occupy less than half the width of the tape; when the cassette is turned over so that it runs back in the other direction, the remaining width of tape comes into contact with the heads and two more channels are recorded, so that each cassette can make a single stereo recording in each direction.

Mono machines use a single mono head instead of the double stereo one, and can thus read a stereo tape and produce a mono signal from the two channels, while conversely the stereo head can read a mono tape giving identical output from each channel and hence a mono signal. This elegant mono/stereo compatibility of the medium has contributed in no small way towards making the system widely acceptable.

It was about the middle 19-sixties (Anmerkung : exakt im Frühjahr 1963 in Belgien) when the first tape recorders based on the Philips Compact Cassette began to appear, and at the time few people could have anticipated the impact this system was going to have in the field of home entertainment.

Tape recorders of the reel-to-reel variety had enjoyed good sales on the domestic market during the 19-fifties, but the machines never achieved truly widespread acceptance because many of the operations, particularly tape threading, tended to be regarded as too complex by the uninitiated.

The cost of unrecorded tapes was about the same as a disc of equivalent playing time (particularly when the advent of stereo doubled tape consumption), and the cost of the machines was much higher than for a record player of similar quality.

The idea of a cassette system was not new, indeed Grundig who were a household name for domestic reel-to-reel recorders in the 19-fifties and 19-sixties had attempted to launch a system similar to the now almost universal Compact Cassette some years previously.

But the Philips became the international standard, for reasons to do with timing, marketing and the like (Anmerkung : und ein paar unfairen Tricks in japan). One key factor (der Trick) was that Philips (zu der Zeit ein vertrauter Grundig Partner) took the bold step of offering other tape manufacturers the rights to produce hardware and software to the Compact Cassette standard without payment of any fees or royalties.

So other tape and machine manufacturers had the opportunity to enter a new market without feeling that they were doing Philips any favours or trading at a disadvantage.

Widespread availability of the software and large scale manufacture of cheap low-voltage machines for battery operation opened up a completely new market very quickly, paralleling the earlier growth of the transistor radio, and becoming very much the alternative to this ubiquitous device - so much so that one of the biggest market growth areas is currently the combined radio/cassette recorder.

Other important factors which were all part and parcel of the portability of the cassette system were its possibility for use as an alternative to the radio in a car, almost ousting the competing american 8-track 'continuous loop' Lear-system in the process, and its obvious superiority to the disc in all other portable situations.

Under the title Musicassette, the prerecorded cassette was paralleling the major disc releases, inspired by Philips involvement in the recorded music business, and people were already pronouncing the death of the disc and its replacement by this little scratch-proof plastic box.

Throughout this early development, the hi-fi world raised its collective eyebrows. This new standard had made two great sacrifices in the cause of compactness, namely reduced tape width and tape running speed, which marred the high frequency performance, increased the hiss levels unacceptably and severely restricted the dynamic range.

But the standard was becoming so widespread that it was impossible to ignore: obvious advantages included the dramatically reduced tape costs compared to reel-to-reel, and people wanted to make good quality tapes at home for replay in their cars.

All that was needed was a catalyst, which appeared in the form of an engineer named Ray Dolby. Dolby, by a clever piece of electronic jiggery-pokery succeeded in almost completely solving the problems of tape hiss at a stroke, and one of the main constraints on its hi-fi application was removed.

The typical hi-fi consumer proved to be as easily wooed by the seductive ease of the system as had his less pretentious compatriots some years previously, and despite various other technical weaknesses the cassette deck became a frequent addition to the hi-fi shopping list.

Early machines with pretensions to high quality were the original "Advent" in the US and "Nakamichi" in Japan, but the transport mechanisms of these examples were crude and insufficiently stable. The "Wollensak" transport was then introduced by 3M and showed that many of these problems could be overcome, and the mechanism was and is still being used by Advent, the British company NEAL, and Wollensak themselves with varying degrees of success.
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While many of the early machines had transport difficulties, another limiting factor was the tape itself, whose magnetic and mechanical performance was then far worse than one normally finds today. Indeed the improvements that have been made over the last eight years (wir chreiben 1978) are nothing short of dramatic, and the stimulus provided by the 'impossible' task of achieving hi-fi performance from the tape itself has paid off handsomely.

It is probably true to say that the improvements in tapes alone have given more benefit than even the introduction of Dolby circuitry itself.

In absolute terms the mechanical performance of the decks has not improved enormously from the standards set by Wollensak, but mechanisms of similar and better quality with less mechanical noise have become available at a far lower cost, while improved ergonomics, head technology and electronic circuitry have all played their part in bringing about significant overall improvements.

The best, and not necessarily the most expensive, of today's machines, when used with the right tapes, can give a level of performance that would satisfy the great majority of hi-fi users. Some purists will still shun the medium, and there are undoubtedly areas that remain for improvement, but recent history suggests these will be-accomplished in time.

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