On mono equipment, there’s no real way round the problem. The quick solution on stereo equipment is to disengage the Mono switch and let the recording play in stereo. But some badly phased stereo recordings will corrupt when set to play in mono, and one of the possible symptoms is a drop in treble – a characteristically dull sound. A professional stereo recording is normally fine when played in forced mono, because professionals understand how to control the phasing of the audio signals. The function was really designed for use when there’s only one speaker, and some elements of the stereo image would otherwise be lost. Some reproduction systems have a button you can press to force a recording to play in mono. If re-recording is not possible, there’s little you can do.Ī stereo recording is set to play in (forced) mono. Typically, the only way to rectify a dull recording that was made with dirty heads is to clean the heads and re-record it. This is something that can’t always be rectified retrospectively. The record head was dirty when the recording was made. It loses its essential top end, and typically sounds woolly or muffled. But if a cassette was recorded without Dolby, and you play it with the Dolby switched in, the opposite happens. If you have a tape recorded with Dolby, and you play it without Dolby, not only will you hear noise – you’ll often also find the tone is too bright. The Dolby noise reduction system was designed as a two-step process, in which both the recording and the playback require technical modification. You’re using Dolby on a tape that was not recorded with noise reduction. The transformation is sometimes remarkable, with full treble restored. Housing the old reels in a new cassette casing can free up the drag and better align the basic travel. ![]() ![]() I’ve had success re-casing old, drag-afflicted tapes. And old tapes that are starting to seize up a little may experience drag, which can interfere with the alignment of the tape. The build quality of the actual cassette can also cause alignment problems. If you record on one deck, and play back on the other, the definition of the playback will be compromised. One of the most common instances of this occurs when you have two tape decks with slightly different head alignments. Just a small discrepancy in alignment is enough to mute some of the treble and make the cassette sound dull. The alignment of the tape across the heads is critical to the reproduction of treble detail. ![]() Regular cleaning of the heads in your equipment will help keep the definition as bright as possible, and significantly reduce the likelihood of longer-term problems. Dirt or grease on the play head is one of the most common reasons for substandard performance in audio cassettes. ![]() Here are ten of the the most common reasons… So, you have your chrome tape in the deck, and it’s sounding way more woolly than you expected. But when you’re using a high or metal bias cassette, the expectation is that it’ll reproduce pretty good detail at the top end of the frequency spectrum. And one of the consequences of skimping in such a manner would be a loss of treble response. Some tapes were manufactured to a very low budget, with an unsophisticated ferric-oxide formulation. In some cases, an audio cassette is expected to sound dull, muddy or woolly.
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