Wednesday, October 31, 2018

How does DC bias hiss sound like?


This is on sending about 500μA to a cassette head, tape running at normal speed.


When the recorded song (Is it OK if I Call You Mine, track 06 from the original soundtrack of Fame CD) is played back, the noise sounds somewhere deep below the music.


If the source CD player is paussd while recording, what is heart from the playback cassette is a deep thick hiss noise. It reminds a lot the noise heard when the stylus of an MM cartridge lands on groove before the song begins.


Not perhaps as beautiful noise, as it is missing the static noise from the vinyl.


It gives a sense of bigness to the sound perhaps like on vinyl. Of course what we hear is the filtering integration of the playback circuits.


So far playback (without boosting gap loss etc treble while recording) sounds a bit distorted with a nice distortion, warm and big.


All done in order to record is connecting the head to the anodes of 2 Pleiades V6 electron tube amplifiers (1 electron tube per channel) while battery powering the heads with a 5.4V potential. (All safety precautions should be followed when experimenting with power, ie voltage or current).


In fact the hiss as expected sounds much better is stereo even if the recoding is mono.


See also next post.



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