Certron listening test result

As promised, I transcribed a couple of albums onto a Certron 90, 2
tracks with Dolby and 2 without, and now just got done listening to
the result here at home. What's obvious is that Certron's not "junk,"
but not the best I've used, either. NOISY, but Dolby takes care of
that...pretty much. Again, this seems to be a good tape for Dolby
encoding, as it has oodles of headroom, just like all Irish/Ampex
formulations do, but Dolby "B" was only marginally successful in
depressing the noise floor to where it's not noticeable in soft
passages. "Real" Ampex is a bit better at this, and Scotch 175
(Dynarange) is better still.

Without Dolby, you'd better have some pretty compressed program
material (trash rock or radio pop) to record, or it's "hiss city" with
Certron, similar to standard BASF (Sound Loops or Radio Trash). It
managed to make my MFSL disc of Steely Dan's "Aja" sound like distant
FM radio just because of this. The CD I'd dubbed with Dolby was more
listenable, but, of course, it was fairly compressed, normal when
dubbing a CD onto any analog format other than RTR at 15 or 30 IPS.
Remember, for this test, I had to "fudge" the frequency response by
adding 5 dB of gain at 15 KHz to the input, due the Certron's trouble
with high end while biased high enough to keep distortion at 2% at 0
VU. Without that crutch, Certron would have been noisy AND dull, or
noisy AND distorted if I'd have lowered the bias current. Lowering
the drive level would've just raised the noise floor, defeating the
whole purpose of running Dolby in the first place. The cart was
trouble-free and didn't present any excessive loading to the capstan,
and was free of noticeable flutter problems. One thing about the
Sanyosak 8075...it DOES do bass well (as does Ampex and Certron),
unlike Akais, which are reportedly anemic in that region. Akai even
admits thief 8 track decks only are usable down to 60 Hz...pretty bad,
and more like I'd expect from a Radio Trash Chinese deck.

Conclusion: Certron's great for the car or a portable, because it's
"hot." For home on good equipment, it's noisy. For the money they go
for, you're better off buying "real" Ampex, Scotch, or even Memorex
for fidelity's sake. Certron's definitely a no-no for orchestral,
classical or jazz. Still, I'd prefer it to BASF/Radio Trash, which is
down near the bottom of my rankings. Radio Trash "Supertape" is THE
worst I've tested of all of them, and has binder problems as well,
moreso than even Scotch. "Supertape" blue = nudo.

Next: the "sushi" carts, and then, Capitol. Also in the works: Can
you use prerecorded carts as blanks and expect them to sound well
enough? Doesn't work for cassettes; MAYBE it does on 8 tracks. We'll
see....

dB