TDK D 180 1982 Audio Cassette Test
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- Опубліковано 26 лис 2011
- Testing my old TDK D 180 in a Nakamichi CR-4. I bought it for curiosity but because of the low-hifi sound i never used it for real life. It has been stored long time without use.
Tests:
1 Try to calibrate bias and level with internal nakamichi test tone. In normal cases both lines (bias and level) go to 0, it means calibrated optimally).
2. Recording some music.
The level down to -20db (max -10 db). No bass and very low high frequencies recorded. Trying dolby B & C dont help.
3 Look the tape : very thin almost transparent. Few particles for magnetize.
Thanks for watching - Наука та технологія
I'm going through an anti-iTunes buzz at the moment. Why? I don't even download. I still buy vinyl LPs and tolerate CDs. I dug out my Pioneer tape deck last week, a box of high quality TDK, Sony and Maxell Type IIs and I've just plugged the deck into my Hi-Fi. The quality of a 20 year old Sony UX-Pro still piddles on your mp3 crap. The public are suckers, Hi-Fi from the 80s is better than Lo-Fi of today!
i'm 100% agree with you !
+macolest i just recorded a brand new BASF Chrome Extra II minutes ago and the quality is beyonnd great is super superbI listen usualy on my Walkman because i am a teen but when i can i hear it in my Sony ES Deck
+Vader Starlight That's nice ! I Love BASF cassettes, i listen my tapes recorded with this nakamichi in my Sony walkman dd9
my walkman is not he best its a fx-173 but my deck is really good :)
Very true!
Wow! That 180 minute blank audio cassette, as you've demonstrated, can sound pretty badass and awesome if you have the right type of cassette deck and audio gear! I'm definitely going to use this for an extremely rare 3 hour show that I will record soon to store it on and never play it after its' original recording time! Thanks for the sound test!
I use Maxell C120 commercial cassettes all the time to record radio shows. They work very well, the audio quality is adequate, as it is a normal bias tape. No mechanical problems at all. I suppose C180 is really pushing the mechanical reliability limits of the cassette format. Thanks for posting.
The head assembly of that CR4's mechanism is very interesting to look at. It shows a gear assembly where the azimuth screw should be which might indicate that this is a head assembly from a higher-up model that has external azimuth adjustment - like the CR7.
This tape was made for long, uninterrupted voice recordings before auto-reverse dictation machines were introduced. The tape has low sensitivity and is not meant for music recording. TDK stopped manufacturing it when auto-reverse machines became available and made possible longer recordings without a break.
Without a long break, you mean. A few seconds can be critical sometimes.
They could instead design the voice recorders record on C-60 tapes at 1/4 the speed.
@@thanthanasiszamp4707 Not sure about 1/4, but I had one Aiwa recorder that did 1/2 speeds, and it had an additional dial for + or - 10 %. One of those classic Walkman-like thingies with mono heads and built-in speakers.
I never saw 180 minute cassettes sold in the USA. TDK D 90 and 60 minute tapes were very good performers for a budget tape in the early 80's. They were better than Maxell LN and Sony LNX tapes during that time.
They were sold here but for obvious reasons (they were TERRIBLE!) there were no repeat purchases. One dealer told me he sold a bunch when he first got them but people hated them and some wanted their money back. He theorized that TDK offered them as a gimmick - making there line appear to be the most versatile. If so, it backfired as Maxell came to dominate in the years that followed. As the video shows at the end, the oxide had to be so thin to fit in the shell that you could see through it.
Me neither { 180 minute } and i'm from Greece ........and that's why the tape is so thing and of course almost fully transparent at 2:36
I saw them on sale at a few HiFi dealers here in Lancashire England in the 70's and they were so bad in performance TDK withdrew them as fast as they were introduced because of complaints about tape snapping, tape tangling and frequent pitch dropping/rising plus frequent wow'n'flutter.
Wow, a 180-minute tape, what an interesting find. I did not know audio cassettes were made at this long of a length. And seeing how transparent the tape loaded inside is, I wonder how thin it is in mils (I'm guessing less than .3 mils, or 8 um). From what I've read, standard cassette tape thickness is around .6 mils, or 16 um).
The TDK 180 uses very very thin tape. You can actually see through it. And, as expected, the MOL is terribly low. Even 120s are barely tolerable. The TDK 180 could be used for voice, but the thin Mylar brings up other issues.
how fragile is it?
+Richard Hill I never knew 180 min. tapes existed until today.
@@megabojan1993 me too... I think it´s limited edition.
120 more tolerable if using good quality well maintained equipment :-)
You can get a reasonable sound out it if you use Audacity to clean it up. I also used a mixer to boost the levels.
The frecuency range maybe is 100hz-5khz (not measured).
I sounds like a mp3 11khz 48kbps...
This tape was designed for voice recording, not for muisc, so you can use in you marantz for this purpose.
180 minutes !!!!!! Wow ! It s a VHS duration in a k7 player..... amazing ! I never seen this tape before ! Congratulations !!!!
TDK D lines are all Type I. No other tape brand was made an 180 minutes cassette tape!!
Wow. Fascinating! I had NO idea C-180s ever even existed! Amazing how the tape is so fine/thin, it's transparent, almost invisible, lol. I reckon their playback life is extremely limited before tearing and stretching does them in (what with the strain of fast winding.
Quite a drop/loss in signal output, but all things considered, it's understandable (Type I "Normal" bias, I presume?). I STILL would have loved to had the chance to work with these tapes in my cassette days. hell, I'd love a few to mess around and experiment with NOW. 90 minutes per side!! That's more than a whole CD!
Well, I think if I use C180s in my life, I'd use them with extreme caution, and use them with great care. When I'm finished recording, I'd take the tabs out. But for the C180 cassettes, I would only play them for a second time when transferring the tape to digital.
I've never seen a 180-minute cassette tape before. Sadly, TDK doesn't made 180-minute tapes anymore. TDK did put out a D180 (D-C180) cassette back in the 70's, but they stopped making them. TDK has the 60, 90 and 120 minute lengths. This one along with 30 and 45-minute tapes are rare.
You can hear the stretching sound on a 120 due to the thinner tape against a 90/100/110 shame they didn't make the tape like a dat or dcc strength
Yes, the very very thin 180 tape cause that low signal can be recorded
This Line up loves the TDK lineup! So much great reproducer,great quality i would like to buy one of this casette recorder and put it right at side of my computer! I don't really know where you find this kind old past technological treasures, but i recommend you to make an extra reasearch to find more at some old secondhand stores near your hometown.
Never actually seen any evidence supporting the existance of a 240 audio cassette.
Though it may be that TDK was showing prototype of 240 at the expo in 1972...
Perhaps the whole 240 issue was simply some industrial joke, that leaked out into the public domain? Someone out there knows whether or not they ever existed for sure...
ref:tapeheads
Yes, I regularly do a tour with a friend to search all kind of old technology treasures in a second hand stores and old stores that are falling down and trashing items.
Thanks for comment.
Thanks for all comments and suggestions
it still works.
Sehr interessantes Video
thank you
I have to say 95% of cassette machine makers ... including boom box ... did NOT recommend using 120 let alone 180 minute tapes (I don't recall seeing 180 minute tapes any place I bought cassettes back then) I could only find 120s at Radio Shack ... anyway it has already been said the tape is EXTREMELY thin and the machines I had the tape couldn't even be wind without the tape binding up at some point during the winding
EQ is switched on 120 micro-seconds and tape selector on EX(type I)
the song used for test is : Triana - Abre la puerta.
Thanks.
I remember these on sale in the UK at many good hifi dealers, TDK didn't keep them on sale for long.
Agreed on the on the quality of the TDK-D
As expected, tape works. If a Startup would produce new tapes with new binder technology (Nano) and polymers they would sell plenty. Mylar is out of the question these days. With common sense you would use only C120 (Old stock) and easily get them on Amazon.
Apart from the huge level difference, how does it sound? How's the frequency range? Would it be useable for e.g. voice recording? It'd be nice to be able to record 3 hours in one go on my Marantz PMD-101
I bought this tape when? - may be around 1975/1976? Yep, had some fun with it, but as you suggest, the tape will easily saturate due to the thin layer of ferric compounds. All very clever stuff though. I think TDK were the only ones to try this C180 out?
I suspect that the bias setting you have for this tape is way to high.
I just bought a sealed one and I'm gonna be so torn over whether i should open it or not. Back in the early 80's i found a TDK Cassette brochure that had a picture of the D180 and ive always wanted one since. I've NEVER seen one in real life so i guess buying this one was to a fulfil a childhood wish.
Maybe you can buy one c-240 and show us only for testing purposes, we've never seen.
Thanks
Ples sir i recwaer ths dack how moch moni and othder caesets
It's like liking through a tinted window!
If I could travel back in time that is. Besides only seeing for a short period of time in that particular shop back in the mid 70's, I never saw them anywhere. Sorry, I'm afraid all I can give you as "proof", is me knowing they where on that shelf. Sorry.
The reason the tape transparent is because if they put a decent amount of coating on it the tape will be to thick and won't fit in the case.Hardly any magnetic coating hardly any output.
Нифига себе , она совсем прозрачная .
Snnnappp!
I recall seeing blank TDK and Maxell counterfeit knockoffs many years ago in Panama. They were called KDK and Maxwell and used very similar packaging to fool the buyer.
I even came about actual fraud cases where not even the brand name was changed. You only knew paying atention to detail, like printing quality (specially on the tape itself), before unsealing it. Once you opened it was more evident by looking at the actual tape, whose color and finish was different from original, but of course then it was too late.
Nice explanation !
I remember those. IIRC TDK even went after KDK. They were all over the place for a while.
I remember there was a 1986 TDK D knockoff named LEVIS D90. (it did not use the Levis jeans logo). I thought it looked cool, but had no labels. It sounded very bland.
The longest tape i have is a Axia 150 never seen a 180 before. Wow!
The experience of trying to record anything on this tape make me think of the Chinese BKB & House of Technology tapes. They are semi-transparent, but not to this extent. This one better for speech?
TDK tapes were always the best! They almost never jammed up!
Just bought a box of qty 61 - TDK MA90's at a garage sale for $15. Even talked the old lady down from $25. So now I need a NAK Dragon for a couple hundred if possible !
I had one of these decades ago. I remember it played OK, but rewind killed it one day
Rewind killed the cassette star :-)
(no offence)
Hola, esta cinta es muy recomendable usarla solamente en pletinas de calidad, con doble cabrestante si es posible, de lo contrario puedes dañar la cinta e incluso el aparato si "se come" la cinta. Y bajo ningún concepto en un radiocassette de coche a menos que sea de una calidad excepcional..
El mecanismo es muy frágil y la cinta superfina, incluso en mi nakamichi cr-4 se me encanchó una vez por poner modo pausa.
Gracias por comentar.
Una cosa bella che ti fa la compagnia di CD e cassette acustiche ?
@Fran Arts: Ferric (Type I).
the C-240? they actually existed. I saw them on sale for just a few months at my local shop back then. nobody was interested in 120, 180 and even more the 240's due to poor sound quality. second problem they had: if fast forwarded and then quickly reversed or vise versa, they tend to get stuck.
Ich habe so eine alte Casette. Ja sie hält sich noch gut bei mir ja.
I bought a few 180 cassettes in the 80's, but the tape was so thin it would break or stretch easily.
180 minute cassette is rare, I also heard that there was 240 minute cassettes
nice looking tape it don't even look like 180 more like 120. however its more for a decoration not meant to record on these days. i am sure in the early 80s they would have sounded better and had better EQ as time went on they lost all the goodness of a high quality tape. but still never believed they were real until now.
What is the price of this cassette player. Is it orignal Japan's devise
.... volantes de inercia de los cabestrantes son de distinto diámetro y con ello consiguen una tensión mayor en la cinta, un ligero estiramiento que hace que la cinta esté tensa y haga un contacto más firme con el cabezal. Como la cinta de 180 minutos es finísima, supongo que estás aplicándole una tensión mayor que en otras pletinas.
Se nota poco que eres español. No sabía que hubiesen habido cassettes de más de 120, pero por lo demás, también te felicito por acordarte de Triana.
Eso sí, el audio del vídeo sí te lo podías haber currado más. Sí, aún teniendo en cuenta que es de hace 5 años.
Muchas Gracias!
Si, una lástima que en se momento no tuviera mejor cámara (era una compacta de fotos), queda pendiente re-hacer el vídeo, aunque es cierto que me da miedo usar esa cinta, la tengo mas bien de museo.jeje
No los recomienda fabricante alguno excepto para grabaciones y reproducciones continuas.
Si das ffw rew muy seguido, se enreda la cinta. Es muy delgada-
Posterior a éste vídeo la cinta se me enredó, sólo por tener pulsado el pause unos segundos...
that deck is good, it should sound better than that, something's wrong with the tape
because the tape is 180 minutes lengt and is too thin, it sound terribe. but deck sound brilliant on regular tapes
Triana!!
What happened? Did the tape become translucent? Is that why the recording quality is low on the tape monitor? I've never seen a 180 minute tape in my whole life. Maximum 120. Nice to see one! :)
That's the way the really long cassettes are made. Extremely thin substrate (subject to stretching and breakage) coated with extremely thin magnetic coating, thus low output and poor frequency response. But the tape has to be made like that to get three hours worth of tape into the cassette shell.
@@bamaslamma1003 yeah, that is what i thought at that time.
Este comentario viene después del que hay debajo
Also you EQ setting should ideally be on 120 micro-seconds not 70. Make sure your tape type selector is on EX. Also you bias setting seem to high for a normal tape. Should probably be -2 or so.
Wich kind of "type" is this tape, type I, II or IV (or III besides)
Type 1 (ferric).
बहुत इंटरेस्टिंग व्हिडीओ. डेक कौनसे कंपनीका है
180? Not recommended, extremely thin.
@David Mander Couldn't agree more with you David :-)
I did this with my Panasonic NV-HD660 VHS
recording in it from Marantz CD-63 MKII Ken Ishiwata
and also from Technics SL-BD22 the results were amazing :-)
Magari esiste TDK SA C-180 High Position ma veramente non esiste il commercio. Ho già possesso TDK 180.
180-min tape is better for voice recordings (interview, audiobooks etc.), not for music.
Sure enough, but we cannot get any clue about how music would have sounded on this kind of tapes. Uploader has done the poorest conceivable job in the audio side of it.
You are right!
You're right. I'd think it's best to just use two C90 audio cassettes.
Abre La Puerta, by Triana. Good Choice
I had a 180, low levels and decicate...
Hola.
Esta cinta, creo que de hecho no es muy muy recomendable para las nakamichi de tres cabezales o la 480. ¿Por qué? Porque estas nakamichis utilizan un sistema y un ingenio para eliminar la necesidad de que el pequeño fieltro que empuja la cinta contra el cabezal actúe presionando la cinta. Las nakamichi levanan este fieltro y la cinta pasa libremente por el cabezal con menor lloro o trémolo (no recuerdo). Pero para conseguir esto lo que hacen es que los dos volantes de inercia...
нормально лента осыпалась :-)
Она просто тонкая... Её, наверное, не всякая дека потянет... Ешо при перемотке порвет...
For me up to 120' at max cassettes
recommented usual long tape length by my opinion 90' min .
Performance of TDK D 180 is comparable to cheapest chinese tapes of 90's and pre-recorded cassettes of zeroes.
You're right! Just stick to using two C90 cassettes and then you'll get a 3 hour radio show proper.
i wonder why they never enlarged the cassette shell itself to house more tape inside...personally i wouldn't mind a slightly larger size at all...making a thinner tape is a bad bad move...
Who's gonna buy another tape deck just to accommodate the longer cassette?
The deck doesn`t calidrate this cassette, something wrong.
The ultra thin 180 tape make it "uncalibrable"
NEXT TEST TDK D 240
Do you have this cassette right now
Yes but not for use anymore, only for collection.
I will have one soon but I'm impressed by the thinnest of the tape I won't unpack mine because of the rarity of the cassette. You're lucky you know!
perhaps these tapes might get manufactured back because the indie scene?
Okay but I have one exactly like the guy on that video and for myself I will leave mine in the original plastic for collecting
Not the 180 minute versions, to be sure.
Что, не калибруется?
TAKE SONY VIDEO 8 SYSTEM AND USE IT ONLY FOR AUDIO. ON A 3 HOUR TAPE YOU CAN PUT 6 STEREO TRACKS. SO 3 TIMES 6 IS 18 HOURS OF MUSIC. IN ONE STEREO TRACK. ORE SORT BY SORT. AND THAT IN 6 STEREO TRACKS FROM 3 HOURS.
like watching paint dry
You are calibrating WRONG. The recorder should be in the tape mode not source mode while calibrating. Thats why the deck isn't calibrating right. ...and of course the recordings are bad. This is a great recorder. period.
+Ramachandran Ram In calibration mode it doesn't matter in which position is the monitor switch
I ll have to check the manual again. Thanks.
+Ramachandran Ram According to user manual (page 7 ) "·Before doing the calibration, turn off the Dolby NR switch. · The position of the Monitor switch has no effect on calibration.The output is switched off. ...." But thanks for the appreciation.
You are correct!
I know this video is super old already, but for other people that are new to home tape recording or never had equipment this complicated, you're supposed to play the test frequency and match both channels' levels at the arrows in the center, when they line up then the recording should sound much better!
180 perces magnókazetta ritkaság. Szalagja nagyon vékony, nem sok lejátszást bír el. Nyáron kocsiban vagy melegebb konyhában hajlamosabb a szalagnyúlásra vagy szakadásra. 60 vagy a 90 perces a legmegbízottabb.
That's not a TDK D tape!!!!!!!!
FOR SURE!!!!!!!
I have several equal to that case and more recent and tape is not transparent, the levels of that tape are very loud, bias needs a bit because is a Ferro tape.
+pedro morais But do you have a 180min tape like this one? i also have 120, 90 and 60, level is loud and bias need few adjustment
+macolest No i never saw a 180 min tape, only had one 120 min Basf and it jammed to the trash bin...
This was a real item in the late 70s. I tried one to my disappointment. It was still kicking around until a few years ago though I don't know where it went now.
На неё, наверное, больше 1-2раз не запишется... 😥
i still have a brand new tdk D90 min CASSETTE never been opened and all my old ones which i listen to every now and again anyway cassettes and cd's lose thier quality over time due to wear and tear mp3 files don't
So much noise in background
mi ez a traktor zörgés?
szörnyű
no quality
C180,non buona,massimo la C120
What were you testing for exactly? Anyone can stick in a cassette and hit record!
With ZERO commentary, and a crappy sounding video, it's difficult to understand what your ultimate goal/outcome was meant to be.
The Recording On This Vintage 1982 Cassette Is Perfect Sounding 👍What Else Do You Expect From A Magnetic Recording Medium?