Where do you keep your Dolby Switch?

Dude111

Analogue is Awesome
I always keep mine off cause it sounds the nicest.... Its bright,warm and beautiful like Analogue is :)

Right now im listening to a cassette that says it uses DOLBY B .. Sounds nicest to me with it off......


How about you??
 
Back when I used cassettes, I would put it where it was when I made the recording.
Anything else didn't sound the way it should.
 
Dolby NR compresses the highs during record and expands the highs in playback. If rec-pb levels are exact, the process should sound transparent, just 10 dB less noise. Problem is, any differences from Rec deck to PB deck, levels, head alignment, have a pretty drastic negative effect how the Dolby expands the highs in PB, usually killing off high freqs.

I put my Dolby switch in whatever position is sounds best.
 
Conversely, with Dolby B off and playing a Dolby B tape, the high frequencies are in effect boosted about 10 dB... that explains the "bright" in the original post.
 
If you like the sound of your Dolby OFF while playing encoded material - there is a good chance you need to dial in your azimuth on your playback deck.

Its pretty easy to do. And you will hear all those nice crisp highs come into bell-like focus - and will likely appreciate Dolby ON.

If you are the obsessive type, you'll find yourself doing it for every tape.
 
If you like the sound of your Dolby OFF while playing encoded material - there is a good chance you need to dial in your azimuth on your playback deck....

This isn't the first time I've been warned to watch my azimuth. ;)

Seriously, I try to follow what the tape says...except my deck has Dolby options B and C, and some Dolby-ized tapes only have the Dolby symbol on them or say "Dolby HX Pro" and for those I really don't know which Dolby setting to use and must rely on what sounds better to me.

Actually, I don't think I have ever seen a prerecorded tape that said to use Dolby C, so its use would seem to be reserved for tapes I might make using that setting. If using either Dolby setting on a Dolby marked tape makes it sound flat--like very poor treble--I have been known to switch the NR to OFF. Conversely, if I have a non-Dolby tape with really terrible hiss, I have been known to turn the Dolby on.
 
I use properly aligned Dolby NR units, so if encoded I use Dolby. On open reel, I prefer no NR.

My Pioneer deck and Teac AN-60 are both in near-perfect alignment and I keep them that way. Dolby B, and the few "C" type tapes I have all sound better with the switch in the proper position. If I turn the Dolby circuit off the playback is too bright.

I used to play prerecorded cassettes with Dolby off but that changed when I got rid of my Sony and Akai decks and got my first Nakamichi, which was a revelation. Tapes that had previously sounded a bit dull with "B" engaged now sounded much better and taught me that Dolby "B" was indeed as good as it had been originally claimed. Even the tapes I had recorded myself sounded better. Unfortunately the NAK transport took a dump so I had to replace it. My current Pioneer is a three-head unit and it plays and records as well as the NAK ever did (however, the NAK was a 2-head unit) and it will play some very old cassettes (I have a few purchased new in 1971) that even the NAK had problems with (more torque due to the 3 motor transport?)

The AN60 is a hold over from my old reel-to-reel days with a Sony TC-366 but I'll occasionally take it out of storage and give it a few days of usage to keep it from dying the death of the unused.
 
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The favorite of my cassette decks is a JVC KD-A5J that doesn't have Dolby but ANRS/Super ANRS which I find to be fabulous in the Super ANRS mode where it kills tape hiss but still extends the highs. Too bad they still don't use it. On My Nakamichi and Onkyo decks I record with B and playback with Dolby OFF. I have been flamed on in the past for admitting such practice, but hey, that's the way I like it.
 
I had a Technics cassette and Dolby on sounded compressed. Later bought a Sony and Dolby on sounded very clean and dynamic.

I used to use this as a basic test to determine how good a deck was.

To compare, record tape without dolby and play back without. Should sound the same as a Dolby recording with Dolby on, but more hiss. If both sound compressed, the deck is not performing well.

Playing a Dolby recorded tape with Dolby off is a 'cheat,' and will emphasize highs. A really good and properly calibrated deck won't require this 'cheat.' Not many midfi decks performed this well. My Sony TCK5 did.

On other decks, I often did the cheat....like in my car cassette.
 
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Most of the time I prefer to have Dolby B switched on when listening to pre-recorded cassettes on my Nakamichi decks.
 
On my newly acquired 2300SD if I record with Dolby and play it back with Dolby. If everything is set up properly the difference is not noticeable. So far on this machine I do mostly vinyl recording so the Dolby is on.
 
I remember when it was introduced. Was going to change the world !!! A lot of hype !!! And a huge let down in my opinion !!! I never use it.
 
On a few tapes I might use Dolby C. Dolby B just never sounds quite right.

I notice C tends to give a little cleaner sound without compromising too much of the high tones.

Dolby B pretty much just wipes out the highs and almost makes it sound like the head is out of alignment.
 
When I first purchased my basic Toshiba cassette deck I was convinced that by removing hiss, it would have to remove too much music. Then one day I decided to try it. Despite being a basic Toshiba Tape deck it got much closer to the original LP on a decent TT with Dolby B than I anticipated. While it no doubt did effect the recording's transparency to some degree, the improvement in noise reduction and more (It sounded smoother too, without loosing detail or the dynamics of the recording) more than made up for any other losses.

Perhaps I just got lucky, and Toshiba saw fit to make sure the Dolby B circuit was properly designed and calibrated. I believe that is very important to it's function. It may be that on some decks Dolby B was just thrown in as a marketing gimmick with little effort to insure it was up to Dolby standards.

I found Dolby B to work so well, When I recorded one of my favorite LP's on my best tape (a Sony crome) the result would KILL many of CD's in overall SQ. My friends all had Pioneer TOTL 3 head tape decks that cost 3x or more what this Toshiba cost, and the Toshiba held it's own in the SQ department. The transport and build quality on those Pioneers was much better though. Way smoother and quieter than my Toshiba. In those departments they were in another league. But the overall SQ was way closer than I had expected.
 
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