I just bought a mono headstack.

[drumsound]

WWRTBD?

Roy Thomas Baker?

INDEED!

[calaverasgrandes]

yeah, if you can get it to live all in mono, sound like a song and have definition of instruments (or total gluing together if that your goal) than it will sound exactly 14% better when you stereoize it.
heck I like to keep things basically mono and use delays or effected duped tracks to make things stereo-er

[Jazz Jed]

Taking that Nagra mono track into a digital medium and outputting it as two mono tracks so it can be played on a pod or put on a cd doesn't seem to cause too many problems. Doing the same on cassette is causing all manner of phase and artifact issues when the two signals, tape head alignment and tape medium vary slightly as the cassette tape gets pulled along.

I'm just about to run an experiment with a two channel 31 band equalizer in between the mono splitter on the Nagra's line out and the cassette recorder line inputs to vary the frequencies in say a 0db to -3db sawtooth on one channel and a mirror -3db to 0db sawtooth on the other to see if I can stop it phasing around without destroying the mono feel of the thing.

Jed

Well the experiment with the graphic equalizer cured the phasing problems on the left and right cassette tracks when you're outputing a mono feed as a two track split. It also worked going back through the desk and just using the three band eq that's on that so you don't need a graphic if you don't have one.

So it seems that if you want to go analog mono all the way and your only final product option is the humble cassette then you're going to have to split the mono signal and record it left and right on the cassette recorder because that's the only option that cassette recorders have these days (unless you go for something like a mono Marantz PDM222). But unless there are differences in eq or program material on the left and right tracks then it will phase and cause noticible audio problems both on record and playback.

So, say you're going back through the desk from your mono source, first up you'll need to split the mono signal into two and feed it into the desk as two chanels, panned hard left and hard right. Then adjust the eq in a mirror fashion. Say +2db on the left high and -2db on the right high, -2db on the left mid and +2bd on the right mid and +2db on the left bass and -2db on the right bass and it will shift things around enough so that it won't phase on record or playback on the cassette.

Not quite pure mono but the eq changes didn't seem to be that noticible, even on headphones.

Jed

[calaverasgrandes]

I would say that you just need to align your cassette deck instead of putting more transfer function on it. i mixed down ot cassette for YEARS before I had proper gear. Yeah I mixed it in mono too! Never had an issue like that.
If you dont have a tone tape you can do it the ghetto way, just put a good quality store bought tpae in there, turn off the DBX/dolby, and use a jewlers scre driver to adjust the azimuth of the playback head until it sounds "on". If your ears are any good you will know what I mean when you hit it.
If you have a 3 header this can be more difficult, and you may end up chasing your tail a bit to get the record head straight with the play head.
I used to adjust by quarter turns-record, play back, repeat until it was lined up.
Ghetto, not proper alignment at all, but cassette is not so bad that it should have that much wobble.

[Jazz Jed]

I would say that you just need to align your cassette deck instead of putting more transfer function on it. i mixed down ot cassette for YEARS before I had proper gear. Yeah I mixed it in mono too! Never had an issue like that.
If you dont have a tone tape you can do it the ghetto way, just put a good quality store bought tpae in there, turn off the DBX/dolby, and use a jewlers scre driver to adjust the azimuth of the playback head until it sounds "on". If your ears are any good you will know what I mean when you hit it.
If you have a 3 header this can be more difficult, and you may end up chasing your tail a bit to get the record head straight with the play head.
I used to adjust by quarter turns-record, play back, repeat until it was lined up.
Ghetto, not proper alignment at all, but cassette is not so bad that it should have that much wobble.

Yeah, I hear you on this brother. Definitely azimuth related but I think what I'm hearing here are fleeting incidents of azimuth drift that have always been there with cassette tape decks but have never revealed themselves on this three head deck until I started this mono thing and listened very critically off the playback head through headphones as it's being recorded.

It's not noticible through the monitors.

I've gone through the azimuth checking on this deck and it's fine.

I figure they are being caused by imperfections in the tape and pad pressures as it is being pulled through the heads. As it was, it records stereo sources as it should with no evidence of this phenomena. It's only in mono and it's very fleeting when it occurs. And you only really hear it through headphones.

Tonight I find that for mono, good level settings and new tape stock reduces it to very infrequent occurances of microseconds in length and minor changes to the eq's, left and right, eliminates it. It's not there at all with a stereo source.

I can live with it under those circumstances.

Jed

[calaverasgrandes]

See thats what I dont get, how on earth could squidging the transfer function with a graphic eq make any difference to physical tape wobble? All that would do is stereoize your mono so it doesnt cancel out the same way that two mono tracks would.

[Jazz Jed]

See thats what I dont get, how on earth could squidging the transfer function with a graphic eq make any difference to physical tape wobble? All that would do is stereoize your mono so it doesnt cancel out the same way that two mono tracks would.

I figure it's not really making any difference to wobble, the wobble is physically already there, initially represented by the deck's own wow and flutter specs and then, on occasion, more wobble can be added depending on the quality of the tape. So it's already a physical event.

In a stereo source, whatever phasing artifacts may be introduced by this don't seem to be noticible because I figure that the left and right source material is different enough for it to be masked. In a split mono source using headphones, it reveals itself as a sudden fleeting phase wobble as the program material suddenly varies enough on the two tracks for it to show up. The phase shoots from side to side then stops as whatever physical event on the tape that caused it in the first place passes by the heads. I've noticed that the older and more recording passes the tape has been through, the worse it gets.

So, as you say, I figure that slight eq changes on the left and right means that the split mono signals become permanently different enough from each other so that when the physical events do occur, the phase shift they introduced is masked in the same way as it is on a stereo source. A compromise to eliminate the possibility of the wobble event causing an audible reaction.

Mind you my conclusions could be total crap of course.

Jed