Re: Reel-to-reel on //e?

[mjmahon@aol.com (MJMahon)]

Rubywand responded to Brian Hammack:

>  <lots of good, practical advice snipped...>
>
>     The cable going from the Apple's output to the recorder's Input
>should not be loaded with a resistor. Usually, too, you want to go in
>through a 'Line' input. It is too easy to overload a microphone input
>and get distortion.

Actually, the Apple's cassette output is attenuated internally by
a factor of 120, so it _must_ go into a microphone input to get
an adequate record level.

>     If your recordings are not very loud at the Apple's input, that
>could definitely affect results. The line ('hi-fi') Output from a
>typical reel-to-reel deck may not be able to drive the Apple input
>adequately. Try connecting via the recorder's Speaker jack (and remember
>to use a load and to turn the Volume down).

The Apple cassette input is designed to get 1 v. peak-to-peak across
an input impedance of ~12 k ohms.  Some line outputs will do this,
and all speaker outputs will.

One other point:  if you want to write and read your own cassettes,
you don't need to worry much about the recorder's head alignment.
But if you want to interchange with another recorder (like the one
you used years ago), you may need to adjust (or mis-adjust!) the
recorder's head alignment to pick up all the high frequencies on
the tapes made on a "reference" recorder (e.g.: the one you want
to interchange with).

Have fun.  I used cassettes for three years, carefully noting the
tape counter readings for the dozens of programs I recorded on
each cassette.  It worked beautifully for me, and provided a
kind of natural "audit trail" of previous versions, too!  ;-)

-michael

 Email:  mjmahon@aol.com
 Home page:  http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/