Arcam Delta 100 + BASF Chrome Maxima II - Cassettes Sound Terrible...Really?

[Music] right now it's Tony from Kiss Tech come back so this is gonna be sort of a typical video that you're going to get from me going forward and why is that well this cassette is one that I did in one of my earliest videos in fact it's here if you want to watch it bing and I thought it was worth a revisit because from the years that I've been using the Chrome Maxima 2 from this generation in fact pretty much all Chrome Maximas I've come to appreciate them for being one of the finest cassettes ever made it's easily top five for my money and that's why this is going to be typical of the kind of videos you can get from me because as you notice there's no tearing up on this one this one is used because well right when I used to have a web store here's my stash of chrome Maximas that I had in fact this I'd sold quite a few at this point that this picture was made but as you can see I had one or two and I was selling these at one point for 3.99 each which I thought was a fairly decent price I mean when I was buying cassettes my rule of thumb would be you know one pound for a cooking ferric two pounder through a ferret but a bit special three pound for basic type twos you know like essays and stuff like that especially late ones then you could go up to maybe seven or eight pound if the rolled of vintage classic ones you know that maybe Sony uh ux Pros Etc and then 10 pounds for metal and even then I thought you know seven eight pound for a cassette was expensive really I mean let's be honest a lot of us got into this hobby a while ago years ago because cassettes were fairly plentiful they could be got cheap especially if you were into this hobby maybe 15 years ago where cassettes were being virtually thrown away you know you could get good cassettes you could get good decks you know 30 40 quid would get you a decent debt that worked or maybe one that you need to tweet with it a few hundred pound for a top of the line deck that maybe needed a bit of work but but now this is how much people are asking for one of these and yeah I had a lot because I haven't been buying cassettes for a long time and I had a good look on eBay the other day just to have a seat because I went into storage and I found another load of cassettes you know look at this like you know I've gotten stashed everywhere I forget where I put them I thought well okay I need to get rid of some of these I'll I'll start putting them on eBay and I couldn't believe the prices I mean this 1990 Sony ux I had hundreds of them and I used to sell them for 2.99 each about four years ago in fact even three years ago back in 2020 now I just sold the last ones I had for 14.99 each and I'm sorry that's that's too expensive I know we love cassettes I know there's great Nostalgia to it but let's be honest here boys you can buy the original source for much much less than it costs for it let's be honest an entry level type too I mean metal cassettes forget about it you know it it just really is Bonkers and so my passion for the hobby is dwindling I still love cassettes and I still have great deal Nostalgia but this is a very Niche Channel and it will never grow any Niche any any bigger because simply this cassette comeback isn't happening so if I want to start you know looking at new cassettes that I've never looked at before I'm gonna have to start shelling out big money for them and unfortunately this channel does not generate enough money per video for me to go and spend 15 20 quid on a cassette to get 10 000 views and get eight quid back for it so going forward I'm going to be going through the cassettes that I've gotten either updating them with newer decks than when I had earlier in in the videos lifetime or I'm going to be maybe finding some ones that I haven't done any videos on that will be used and then do it on that because there was one guy years ago in in the groups I was in that he said to everyone sell them on eBay that's all it's worth and they say I hate this guy I think he's a robot turns out he was right because I see no point really at this moment in time in buying cassettes at eBay prices they're it's Bonkers um so I'm going to be going through what I've got so in this video I'm going to be using this chrome Maxima 2 which I say is one of the top five cassettes in my book and I'm also going to be using my hex deck now if you watch this video here Bing you can see me unbox it and see that when I got it it turned up broken the door wouldn't stay shut and then after I budge that repair about a few days later I suddenly lost one channel and eventually I did go through the deck and said oh forget about it in the sat on a on a shelf for a year which is a shame because you know it's a unique deck it's very late it's from our cam who I respect for very good Hi-Fi stuff and it was probably the last Great British cassette deck but it sat there and I couldn't be asked her you know I had a dragon at a zetics now and I had a CR7 or evox b215 why would I bother trying to get this one working but as it turns out I recently sold the dragon yes the dragon has gone and why did I sell the Dragon well simply being I wasn't using it that much when I have this Channel and I needed to legitimize it you know I bought the dragon I bought you know all the neck decks and the Reeboks that I wanted and I enjoyed them all but as the saying goes the road of excess leads to the Palace of wisdom for we never know what is enough until we know what is more than enough and I know what's more than enough because as I've been using tapes less because simply I'm doing less videos I don't have the web store anymore and the prices are going stupid um it wasn't worth having the dragons sitting there just being used a couple of times a month when I certainly have other great decks as well and certainly that Dragon got sold quite considerably more than I paid for it I mean if I was to buy a dragon nowadays I wouldn't pay what people are asking for Dragons I simply do not think it's worth that I mean not to the gentleman who bought it I mean you know you're probably listening to this and thinking what what but you know the dragon sold fully maintained still had all the stuff done by b w and there's years of service left in it but it simply wasn't worth me having that amount of money invested and something I was hardly using so I'm glad this gun too it went to he's going to be doing some digitizing of some very you know special cassettes I believe there he's an ex DJ and these are loads of cassettes that were recorded live at dues and uh at nights that he wants to turn digital so I wanted a great deck for it and that's the perfect deck for it but yes the dragon has gone but never mind because when I listen to this and we're going to listen to this on the r Cam and I want people you know I'm going to put like a bit of Click Bassy sort of um title and title screen to this video because I want people to have a listen to here when they say oh okay sets are all rubbish to sound rubbish of how great cassette in a great deck can sound great that's enough waffling by me let's go to some music [Music] so there it is my hex deck but that's finally working and turns out it was well worth the effort so before I begin recording if you haven't watched that video which I Linked In the earlier part just to to go on a bit about Chrome cassettes if you're new to this now Chrome has become the the stereotypical word for a type 2 cassette you know just like Hoover has become the stereotypical word for a vacuum cleaner the first type two cassettes were chrome chrome pigment and they were developed by Dupont and BASF also created the Chrome pigment now the Chrome pigment was an expensive pigment to make and as such when it came to selling it it was a high highly priced object or more importantly would cost even more for you to be able to make the facilities to make your own Chrome pigment and that's why at the start people like Sony did make pure Chrome cassettes however after a while they decided they were going to make a new formulation for type 2 which turned out to be Cobalt dot ferric so that's basically type 1 cassettes but doped with Cobalt to give them better coercivity so as such Japanese decks going forward the internal calibration the bias were calibrated for type 2 to to Cobalt dot ferric type 2 and not to Chrome pigment type 2. so that's why for example when I used to buy BASF Chrome in the 80s I only bought them once tried them in my Japanese low end deck and guess what they sounded muddy they sounded quiet and they didn't sound good so I didn't buy them again but I didn't know in them days the reason was is because Japanese decks were not calibrated to handle a pure Chrome type 2. most European decks when I say European I mean this is our cam English light but like your big your Jewels Etc your tandbergs they could handle Chrome pigment cassettes much better than for example japanese-made decks because the only other people that really made pure Chrome tape were SKC from Korea but even then they Cobalt dope the Chrome so that it could handle a bit more level because you shouldn't record a chrome cassette at more than zero DB and the reason being is that they are naturally low hiss much less hiss than a feral Cobalt type 2. but refer a Cobalt type 2 in order to negate the hiss you would record them hotter you'd call them at plus four plus six Etc and then you turn your amplifier down so it's only just as loud but you couldn't hear the background hiss was in a chrome you record them at zero because you didn't need to recover them any higher because they would just inherently low hiss and plus they're distorted if you took them much higher but you didn't need to but anyway I digress so you've got to be careful what decks you can use the pure Chrome type to it you usually are better off with the deck which has some sort of calibration facilities you put it into a Japanese made deck which has no calibration facilities and it's not going to sound good put it in a deck which has Auto calibration it'll try sometimes fail sometimes won't and again decks with manual calibration give it a do not all of them can but the best decks can I mean for example omanakamichis they love pure Chrome not a problem and they saw can be in English it looks pure Chrome too so let me just put this in and calibrate it up so the calibration on this is very simple it's not as complicated as the nakamiche is basically it already knows it's a type two I really wish there was some way that it would show the tape so I know that it's actually recognized a tape type but it has so let me just fast forward the tape on a bit right I press this Calton button and it says it's on now I record and we've got two levels calibration and bias best thing to do is to bring the calibration up so this is the level basically Okay so we've got the level nice and firm we're a bit over biased so let's take some of the bias off but by adding some so look that sounds wrong but turn this way okay we've got the bias about spot on let's turn the calibration back take a bit more the bias and there we've pretty much got the tape calibrated on and it's it's not massively I mean the point in this way in this way so it's not massively like about to twist it all the way around to get it there this Tech was designed obviously to take a pure crop so let's stop it there so this uh tune I'm going to use now because like I say I can't use a real tune which is a shame because I'd like to have ran jungle bill by yellow or something through this which is a wonderfully stereo well made oh wonderful track I love yellow but I can use that so I'm going to use something which is blues yeah it's got lots of piano with it lots of Guitar is quite quiet so rather than just use my usual pumping you know sort of dance electronic music let's use something subtle and quiet so we can have a proper listen to how good a cassette can really send I'm not using any Dolby because you don't need to and I don't want to but this combination deck and this combination of cassette I I if it gets better my ears can't tell simple as that and perception is more important than reality so let's get this recording and you can have a listen for yourself sorry I must say this is called Hurt So Good Blues by [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] come on [Music] thank you [Music] no track fade on this deck you know all you have to do with the old-fashioned manual method but I think you'll agree that too is a hell of a combo it really is I mean it's beautiful and delicate yeah I mean yeah you know it's not identical but it never is but that's the beauty of it you see you can't compare to the source once it's been recorded once it's been recorded it either sounds good or it doesn't and this sounds fantastic so I mean I I hated the phrase you know oh it's a dragging killer it's not it it doesn't work like that the dragon has a reputation it's got not purely based on its components and its specs you know many modern supercars you know they they they can outperform a McLaren F1 the faster the lighter they've got better systems in them but it's the whole package that makes the McLaren F1 I believe the greatest road going car ever and it doesn't matter if other cars are faster or lighter or better look it doesn't matter it's a package so I'm not going to say this is a dragon killer because nothing is a dragon's a dragon and that's it stop trying to kill it if you hate it that much buy one then you'll enjoy it but anyway the point is this is a deck that a lot of people say oh that deck oh that it's it's just a denim Mech I mean yeah look at this picture I took when I was actually fixing this and the the front came off it is it's purely a Mech from a Denon uh drm800a I think it is with the heads but that negates all the wonderful circuitry behind it you know it's got six separate boards for the Dolby circuits in this it's got a separate power supply which has got the biggest Transformer I've ever seen it's got separate boards for the interface separate balls for all the audio Hardware it's more than just the mac and the heads because the Arc of Engineers went mad at the back end making their dream deck and as you just heard there this I think it's one of the best sounding decks ever and like I say I can speak as somebody this had a reverse b215 the dragon still has a CR7 still has a ZX9 no I've never had a tamberg and I will never have a tamberg but I don't care because this cassette deck everything that I've thrown at it even the cheapest type one it's done a fantastic job that sounds brilliant when you put in a cassette like this yeah you you've got about as good as cassettes get in my book and anyone who says that that sounds crap is either lying or there is don't work so that's it for that video hope you enjoyed it um if I come across some more interesting stuff in my stashes while I'm looking we'll have a listen to some more cassettes but other than that happy taking happy taping yes happy taping that's what I wanted to say happy expensive taping as it turns out to be lately you know what you keep an eye on those pennies boys and girls but other than that take care and I'll see in the next one bye-bye the truth [Music]

Channel: The Cassette Comeback Archive

Views: 15,124

Keywords: Cassette, cassettes, cassette reviews, blank cassette, blank cassettes, tape, tapes, blank tapes, tdk, maxell, that's, ferric, type 1, normal bias, cassette comeback, review, Nakamichi, Nakamichi Dragon, SKC, Type 2, High Bias, High bias cassette, type 2 cassette, chrome bias, chrome cassette, Type 4, Metal Cassette, BASF, Maxell UR, New Cassettes, denon, vinyl, new vinyl, records, recording vinyl, vinyl records, Arcam, Arcam Delta, Arcam Cassette, BASF Cassette, BASF Chrome Maxima

Id: tQpPltvT4ZQ

Length: 22min 30sec (1350 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 29 2023