The Marco-boy main system, as of August 2020

[Gazjam]

if you want to swat that fly, Slap that stingin’ old school itch, Nakamichi or go home?
Just saying Amigo,

Yesterday’s Tech, Nak was the best?
Have an old skool Dolby S here, and a good one, in the scheme of things it ain’t all that?

YouTube music videos consistently better.


QUOTE=Marco;1239168]Yes it's nice, but about twice the size it needs to be!

I like gear that's well-built, sounds good, but also compact and easy to house.

Marco.[/QUOTE]

[Marco]

I like the look of the Tandburg, Marco. It looks the biz. Is it really up there with a Nakamichi in terms to SQ?

Yup, defo - even unserviced! It's arguably the best tape deck I've owned. Using quality NOS chrome tape, and with painstaking attention to detail, in terms of adjustment with recording levels, squeezing the last nth degree out of the tape before saturation point, I'd say the results are 85% as good as the source CD, played on my Sony - and I know I can eke out more!

The Tandberg has a very open and musical presentation, good bass too, and an 'effortlessly involving' way of reproducing all forms of music, such as that you're not tempted to 'analyse' it for faults, simply bask in its seductive and enveloping sound. Defo one of my best buys this year, and also a lovely thing to look at

Marco.

[Marco]

if you want to swat that fly, Slap that stingin’ old school itch, Nakamichi or go home?
Just saying Amigo,

Yesterday’s Tech, Nak was the best?
Have an old skool Dolby S here, and a good one, in the scheme of things it ain’t all that?

YouTube music videos consistently better.

Yo dude,

That was a bit of a garbled brain fart, lol!

Anyway, yes the Tandberg, to my ears, is sonically superior to any Nakamichi I've owned - at the moment not massively so, but it's still significant and easily heard.

Yeah, I noticed you've got a tape deck (Sony, is it?) Have you tried it with quality (unopened) NOS tapes [BASF, Maxell, etc], recording without Dolby NR, and with the EQ set for Chrome? Then also playback without Dolby, and EQ set for chrome.

The formulation used on the best NOS blank tapes is much superior to anything, say, post 1992, and makes a BIG difference to the results obtained. Also, getting as much LEVEL onto the tape as possible, to reduce noise and maximise dynamic range, is hugely important - and in that respect some makes of tape can handle more before saturation.

If you put enough effort in, as outlined above, to making good recordings from digital or vinyl sources from your own system (forget all about pre-recorded shite), the playback results can be very good indeed!

Marco.

[Marco]

Got a nice wee upgrade with the Tandberg today... As you can see from the pic below, there are two available outputs for playback: one DIN connection and one set of phonos, located next to the phono inputs for recording:



So I thought I'd try the DIN socket output, to see if it sounded any better than the phonos, and therefore ordered the cables below to facilitate that:





https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HQ-2-Phon...72.m2749.l2649

...and the answer is yes it does! Bit more detail, crispness and better separation of voices and instruments, so that they 'hang' more in free space between the speakers. Not a massive upgrade, but very worthwhile nonetheless, considering the inexpensive nature of the cables. I do like the sound of a lot of Van Damme stuff

Anyway, a good result!

Marco.

[The Black Adder]

Uh? Tascam? or Tandberg?

[Marco]

Lol - my mistook... Now changed!

Marco.

[Barry]

I find that hard to believe. The DIN sockets and the phono sockets will be wired in parallel. Have you compared Van Damme XKE DIN to RCA cables with Van Damme XKE RCA to RCA cables?

[Shovel_Knight]

The DIN sockets and the phono sockets will be wired in parallel.

Not necessarily so, many tape decks provide different output levels via DIN vs RCA which means the output configuration is different.

[Marco]

Not necessarily so, many tape decks provide different output levels via DIN vs RCA which means the output configuration is different.

Pavel has it!

From the manual: "The AMPLIFIER/RADIO socket [which is what's marked above the DIN socket] is more sensitive than the PHONO sockets, and can therefore be used for amplifiers or radios with low-level signals."

And you can clearly hear the difference, as described!

Marco.

[Macca]

You could just use the RCA sockets and turn the volume up a little bit though.