little@sdcsvax.UUCP (Glenn Little) (09/22/85)
A little while back, there were a few articles mentioning Fostex equipment,
and most seemed to generally intimate a negative attitude toward the stuff.
I recently bought a Fostex 4-track cassette recorder (model 250...? the
"top of the line" one) and while it is still under warranty, would like
to find out if there are some problems I should be looking for. What
specifically do people dislike about Fostex in general, and the 250 in
particular?
I have not used it a whole lot yet, but so far it I am fairly
happy with it. (It *is* currently in the shop... there seems to be
some distortion on one of the tracks when I record a Hammond organ
playing on the middle to lower half of the keyboard-- even when keeping the
levels reasonably low. But to be fair, the organ does contain a lot of
low frequency energy, and also it seems that every electronic component I buy
these days has something wrong with it. :-{ )
If anyone is interested, here is how I arrived at my decision to buy the
Fostex. I pretty much looked at only three machines: the Fostex, the new
Audio Technica, and the Tascam 244 (?) Porta-Studio. The printed specs
all looked pretty similar to me. The Audio-Technica had the best features, but
I painfully had to eliminate it because it just seemed a little too big. I
really didn't want something too unwieldy (I am wondering now if maybe I should
have given less weight to the portability issue). That left the Tascam and
the Fostex. The Tascam had parametric eq, which I liked, but the Fostex had
Dolby C noise reduction (as opposed to dbx on the Tascam). I figured they
would all probably sound about the same, except that I had been told that
the cassette versions of dbx tended to noticeably "pump" with fluctations
in program volume. I hate the pumping sound. Whether or not it is really
true that the Tascam does this, I don't know. I couldn't really test them
out. But the dolby vs. dbx issue is what finally decided it for me in the
end. Did I blow it? Let me (or all of us on the net) know what you think.
Thanks,
Glenn Little
gibson@unc.UUCP (Bill Gibson) (09/27/85)
(Glenn Little) writes: > If anyone is interested, here is how I arrived at my decision to buy the > Fostex. I pretty much looked at only three machines: the Fostex, the new > Audio Technica, and the Tascam 244 (?) Porta-Studio. > ... The Tascam had parametric eq, which I liked, but the Fostex had > Dolby C noise reduction (as opposed to dbx on the Tascam). I figured they > would all probably sound about the same, except that I had been told that > the cassette versions of dbx tended to noticeably "pump" with fluctations > in program volume. > ... the dolby vs. dbx issue is what finally decided it for me in the > end. These are essentially the machines I am considering (also the TASCAM 234 "syncaset"), and the dolby/dbx issue is one of my main considerations. However, I will probably decide in the other direction, since I am strongly in favor of dbx. Not to rehash the dolby/dbx issue (see net.audio for that), but from my experience with noise reduction at home and in 2 college electronic music studios, the dbx doesn't breathe 'enough' to annoy me. Granted, if I record a bass line, I'm going to turn down the highs with an equalizer on that track whenever it's part of the output (since the dbx breathing is mainly an effect of tape hiss getting amplified when there's no high frequency to mask it in the signal). But the stuff I've recorded (all with dbx) doesn't exhibit breathing, mainly because it's got plenty of highs in the music. Besides, *I* hate the constant hiss on a second-generation tape when I turn up the volume enough to hear the quiet parts. My only annoyance is that I probably won't get to hear the 14kHz-20kHz range (at least not in my present price range), since dbx increases the high frequency rolloff of the tape, as do all companding systems. The only thing that will get me my highs is recordable CD's. I'm still waiting. Bill Gibson gibson@unc ...[akgua,decvax,philabs]!mcnc!unc!gibson