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Originally posted by: Darth Mallwalker
Speed adjustment should be done in the analog domain.
Although I suppose some digital adjustment might be required if the tapes were recorded on a battery-powered deck..
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Agreed. And regarding speed adjustment, I’m just suggesting to get it in the ballpark. It’s the rare exception that I’ve had a cassette come in that was recorded spot on at 17/8IPS. I’ve seen tapes come in that were as much as 30% fast or slow. And although the software I use for digital varispeeding seems to be very transparent, I can’t imagine it is any more so than a simple adjustment to the playback speed of the analogue.
As to the issue of head azimuth, we treat a cassette master just as we would a reel-to-reel session. We modified one of our MR-1’s way back to make all mechanical and electrical alignments an easy front panel affair. (A stock Nakamichi is notoriously unfriendly when it comes to any kind of user tinkering!)