Search results

As I said, the bulk of the distortion is generated in the recording process. Playback is feeble fields around a non-saturated core into linear amplifiers. Which has nothing to do with distortion, and all with geometrical and electrical alignment.

Not quite. At a time Nakamichi, Yamaha, and a bunch of others used the same mechanisms manufactured by a third party, currently believed to be Sankyo Seiki (although some people maintain it was Alps). That's all. Except for their initial OEM period in the 70s Nakamichi never contributed to any...

It is well known that in magnetic tape recording the distortion (and compression and saturation) are caused by the combination of recording head and tape, and to a lesser extent by the recording amplifier if of incompetent design (which happened a lot). Proving by measurement that the replay...

Absolutely! But then also this https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0421082/

A periodic sub-code hidden as pseudo-random noise in the lower bits (although IIRC MQA can hijack bits at a pretty high level, e.g. in order to survive a 16-bit channel). Concerning this robustness: it has been shown that an MQA file can be altered substantially without the authentication failing.

That in the same FFT your system's noise floor will also be far below -100dB. Apples and apples. But no, you won't hear it, as it is inaudible (at least directly so). But these spectral components do not belong there.

That's not the correct way of reading an FFT. The level of the ultrasonic images has to be integrated over the bandwidth they occupy, some 24kHz in this case. The result of that sum is what matters, and it will be substantial when compared to the payload signal, and easily within your system's...

You are wrong, Amir. For starters, Archimago's source file was 44.1kHz, MQA-encoded. He wrote that clearly here https://audiophilestyle.com/ca/reviews/mqa-a-review-of-controversies-concerns-and-cautions-r701/. That recording, regarded at 44.1kHz, rolls off at 21kHz and that's it. You claim to...

Apparently you missed that what he told you still means that what you did is illegal: you are not allowed to lift grounds, unless the equipment is double insulated.

I assure you that this is illegal in many territories.

No. That one has what is called the 'Classic' transport: 48*, 58*, 68*, 660, 670, 1000ZXL, 700*, RX-505, RX-303, Dragon. Models younger than these have 'Sankyo' transports (a colloquial name, not implying that this was actually manufactured by Sankyo). Models older than these have ... older...

Sankyo-based Nakamichis almost always can be resurrected. Visit tapeheads.net if you run into problems.

You can try this https://eslabs.com/parts.htm. Study before you do the exchange, because the plastic idler arm is weak and may break. Support it from below while working on the assembly. Oh, and while the old idler is still in it, let the machine FF for a couple of hours. That is good for the...

A recent find. New, unused. 1975.

That was correct ... in the 70s and 80s. Today? Not. Plenty of DC, servoed DC, and brushless DC out there.

This has been tested ages ago and is part of accepted psychoacoustics. In a speaker setup based on an equilateral triangle the sound is fully located in one speaker at about 30dB of channel separation. More is indeed not necessary, and from 20-25 dB on it is adequate for most music, most people...

No need to focus on that 0.8%. Distortion of analogue magnetic tape is mainly a function of the tape and of the recordere. Barely any distortion is introduced by playback. Since you used prerecorded tapes, you were not really testing the Dragon at all. Take a look at this page, where the same...

Yes, but that is an auxiliary output. It really is meant for driving analogue subwoofers, and nothing else. A TDAI's analogue line output is generated by the DAC portion of a cheapish multi-channel codec, a chip whose main reason for being in there is that it performs the microphone interfacing...

Given that the playback noise of a good tape machine is only a few dB lower than the bias noise of the best tape, the very best case for the adapter is 64 dB(A)-ish, and that's with 70 us eq. And no idea how much headroom (hehe) such an adapter has. Probably really not much at all.

As Serge said, the quality of the test records is a huge issue. And modern test records are almost invariably junk. This site has the test reports of UK mag Hifi News & Record Review, by Paul Miller. It includes many cartridges. You'll have to register, but this is painless...