Ghoulish round up

This week the Fall took hold here as this picture taken while out Sunday kind of shows which means were are moving to that period of Halloween Night, All Saint's Day and of course every childs delight, Guy Fawkes Night with things that go boom in the night.
That for me means getting this post done sharpish as I'm off with littles friends for our events that go Boom! today.
Of course in groan up world Halloween was supposed to be the day we left the European Union but that didn't happen although a Commons majority to agree in principal to leaving with an agreement exists but yet another extension has been agreed to January 28 although we can leave earlier IF we get it done.
We also are facing a General Election on Thursday December  12th so there will be a severe outbreak of Election Fever so if it bothers you just duck under the pillow fort and hang out with your stuffies but do vote! We do need a government with a majority.
In other news the long overdue Dire Straits double 45rpm vinyl reissues and the related Super Audio cds have finally emerged after a over three year wait although mine will have travel from the U.S. Distributor to the shop over here who has my order for the first few four studio albums.
That means it'll be a few weeks or so before they show up here.

Tapes

While all the mad stuff was happening in Parliament,  I was making a few recordings one of which was to replace two pre-recorded cassettes that no long playback right using the small system's cd player and obviously the cassette deck.

 That was the cheapest tape you could buy from TDK, the then leading tape manufacturer usually in packs of three, five or ten a piece being typically used in stereo radio cassette recorders or all in one "Shoebox" shaped mono recorders that run on batteries.
A few might use them for making tapes up for the car as they were dirt cheap new but most people who had separate cassette decks used with their hifi systems wouldn't touch them thinking they'd moved on from all that.
One consequence of this is many people associate the tape with relatively poor sound.

 This is the back of the cellophane wrapper of the sixty minute version and the thing was actually if you used the adjuster (or an automatic tape calibration device) in the recorder these were a lot better than you'd think with crisp high notes and good clean bass with just a little more hiss than a more expensive type 1 "normal" tape.
Its been years since I last used one of these, I did use the D series in the early eighties before I had a brand new deck of my own but the 1991 D did an excellent job remaking that album on tape and even now they are cheap to find.
The reason people associate the tape with less than stellar sound is just what they were used with that's all.

People in the tape world argue a lot about type types-which is the best- but my experience suggested that it was about the individual tape than whither or not it was a type I "Normal tape" or a type 2 "Chrome position" or type 4 metal oxide tapes which were wasted on but the most expensive equipment.

 This is one I used a heck of a lot in the late eighties and up to the point I bought my first MiniDisc deck in 1997.
It is a type 1 which tended to be look down on by hifi types - Mr Hifi Bore  at the  pub would always talk about type 2's being where hifi cassettes started - but this was extremely good because it would take a lot of signal meaning it could capture more with less hiss than most type I's and had the ability to record the most bass of any tape without sounding distorted.
It also tended to be  very reliable which helped as I used a walkman tape player on the bus and train a lot. It helped they were sold in value packs of three or five in places like record stores or Boots the Chemists here in England.
I soon found this was at least the equal of type II tapes ditching most of TDK's type II's completely  but such was the prejudice on the part of hifi people many didn't buy them.

I won't talk too technical as that would come over as "mumbo jumbo" to you but on the wrapper it shows how good it was at capturing sound and why it was it had a better ability to keep the difference between the quietest and loudest sounds than some type II tapes.
It also meant it would play properly on any player without sounding too bright.
I managed to track down some new old stock ones to go with my three shoeboxes of TDK AD type I's living next to my recorder.

More Brexit Chaos

The whole after Britain leaves the European Union thing rumbles on with negotiations continuing this week well into the night as the two teams try to find an acceptable outcome to the conundrum that is leaving with an agreement where various groups in the UK Parliament are at odds with what they want (if anything-The liberals don't want and won't vote for leaving at all cos they know better than the electorate apparently...) .
The Irish Republic is more concerned about it's trade, the impact on leaving on its economy and the Northern Irish Belfast Accords  (aka the Peace agreement) even if it seems to mean different things to different people.
The Democratic Unionist party feels the Irish Republic is trying to push out out of the orbit of London and more of than of Dublin and Brussels which it alleges goes against the said Belfast Accords in different interpretation.

 On Thursday Morning we were very close to agreement between the UK and EU being signed off for a special Parliamentary Session on Saturday but the DUP have thrown a spanner into works with a late in the day "Not acceptable for now" statement . How kind of them.
This may change or given this is Brexit the discourse that never ceases, it may not so I'll just take two paracetamol and go bed. This is thing does my head in.

Restoring the vinyl

After the "Broked Edition" we have some restoration edition around vinyl which has been a mainstay of my music collection for a long time even if some went around the late 1980's and early 1990's as I embraced with some reluctance the compact disc.
Belinda Carlisle was an artist who I followed a lot during that era, coming from the Go-Go's to who  I liked in the early 1980's who had hits with Vacation, We Got The Beat and Our Lips are Sealed.
I had bought on record her second  album Heaven On Earth and it's follow up, the magnificent Runaway Horses even though the latter was also bought on cd and I later picked up the cd of Heaven on Earth.
By 1991 however I was starting to wind down on vinyl purchasing and so when later that year Live Your Life, Be Free was issued I bought that straight away on cd.
I had acquired the UK Virgin lp of it a good two decades later but to be honest I was very underwhelmed by it not least because it had vinyl roar not just between songs but so intrusive it obscured many of the quieter passages

 It was reissued in box set and then separately in 2018 by Demon Records who have acquired the rights to her catalogue and good number of other artists.

 They chose to issue it on red coloured vinyl which in reality all vinyl is being normally clear and coated black usually so unlike picture discs it doesn't affect sound quality.
This copy is much quieter and  has improved low notes although personally given one side is long I think a double album with perhaps a remix on the fourth side might of made more sense

In the Fall of 1993 Belinda released her fourth solo album Real or was it written without any punctuation probably as a artistic statement belindacarlislereal which as bought on cd although a very limited vinyl edition was made that usually sells for a lot of money.
As was my want in that era those cds were all taped on Maxell XLII high bias tape and that was no exception for my then Aiwa Walkman using a expensive Technics cassette deck.

 The sheer scarcity of the vinyl edition meant this album wasn't on vinyl in my collection so seeing this also was reissued in 2018 I bought a copy.

This was issued on clear vinyl which natively all vinyl is and actually sounds more open and less compressed than the cd which was louder than many but sadly others where much louder still a year later due to the so-called Loudness Wars.
I think having this edition was well worth it as it helps in enjoying it.
 
One of a small number of albums affected by the PVC sleeve issue was my original 1982 Eye Of The Tiger album by Mid-Western rock band Survivor which is a classic of the genre. The inside of the lp jacket smelt badly of the gas from those sleeves and it had started to 'fog over'.

Seeing it had a number of marks that resulted in clicks too I bought a mint original of the very first pressing over here which is a lot better and replaced the rubbish plain poor quality paper inner with a lined one.
It also had the lyric insert which my original had lost over the years.

Broked week in the Dorm

Well, this week I'm still recovering from this sore throat and cold wotsitname I acquired from the one and only grump so you may need to bare with me not being helped by the damp of lots and lots of rain.
I had to deal with a potential disaster with my extensive record collection caused by breakdow of PVC in outer sleeve that apart from smell so bad you could throw up, also can cause damage to the playing surfaces. 

 I needed to get 100 of these replacement pe acid free resealable outer sleeves that after cleaning them to put them into as the others went to recycling.
You can get them in standard or double lp versions but as a not a few of my records may be a single disc in a gatefold sleeve I decided to buy doubles across the board as it's a lot easier although as you can appreciate the entire process is time consuming which isn't good but at least it's done and I know know what to get for any discs that don't have similar sleeves like Espirit (eil.com) use.

If that wasn't enough the tape player featured in last weeks entry died, refusing to move a tape in any direction which means it may well be a belt to which so far I can't find one of the right size and shape rounded or flat although I'll continue looking.
This meant I had get a newer player and I was able to spot this that features auto reverse, dolby noise reduction for any tape made with it (don't like dolby that much btw) and a tape selector cheaply working and for good measure ordered a spare belt which was available from Germany in case the one that's fitted acts up or snaps with old age (back to rubber breaking down to the sap that made it!)
Also I have removed a few things like books seldom read and records that had been replaced ready for a charity collection today so I get some space back and they hopefully get some money from it.

Making a tape or two

Here at That Boarding School Girl apart from being annoyed but not surprised at the Bear Pit that was Wednesday's activity in the House of Commons, I am unwell with a rotten  cold and cough so haven't been out on Thursday, not feeling up to much at all. 

Anyway continuing on a bit from last weeks post, the point behind having the cassette deck wired in was not just to play any old cassettes either pre-recorded on older ones of mine but to also to make new ones.

 As you will see in this picture, I have a portable cassette player aka a "Walkman" although that strictly speaking is a Sony term that while only playing in one direction before the tape stops and you turn it over, does feature Dolby B noise reduction for tapes made with it, a five band equalizer that acts like tone controls  to alter the sound to your tastes and a tape selector for tapes made to play in "Normal" or "Chrome/Metal" positions.

Around it are three tapes I made, one an original and the two Beatles ones I did this week on the Technics cassette deck.

One thing that those not brought up in the tape era won't realize is while a tape has a set playing time that time is not only halved across two sides equally but doesn't necessarily easily fit an album because either one side is longer than the tape's side or as with the Beatles 1962-1966 it is an album that runs for sixty-three minutes which would be too short for a seventy-four or ninety minute tape with lots of minutes of blank tape to get through before the second side and slightly too long for a sixty minute tape.

I decided with that one to remove a couple of songs that were not necessary and move one song to the second side to get it to neatly fit on a that sixty minute tape.

Likewise to get the forty nine minutes per side of the matching 1967-1970 album to a ninety minute tape I deleted a track from each side which left only a minute of blank tape from each of the tape which was very neat!

Project x part XII - simplification

This series of articles dates back to 2015 with the last entry from May of 2018 where we change the amplifier to better quality one.
Unfortunately when I went to put it one a couple of weeks ago the red power indicator came on for a second followed by a deep thud. Subsequent tests show it blew a few fuse and a number of transistors in the power amp.
This was a good time as any to try and simplify matters by adding one of the popular mini hifi components that have been around for the last fifteen or so years that typically comprise of a amplifier with built in cd player and tuner unit.
Denon are a very well respected maker of hifi components whose systems like that are frequent hifi award winners in that category.

The UD-M31 is a typical example of the breed being small , remote control driven with a RDS radio built in that does looks really smart.
There is a small 3.5mm headphone socket on the front that automatically switches out the loud speakers which were optional with model and not supplied .

 Looking at the rear panel you have antenna sockets for AM and FM radio and unlike the latest units two sets of line sockets that comprise of inputs AND outputs which means you can plug in recorders such as a cassette deck or MiniDisc easily and for MiniDisc there is an optical output for recording from cd which was the main digital input connector for them used for recording.
There are the pair of spring clip loud speaker connects right, then left for this units 22 watts per channel RMS which is the same as the previous one and notably higher than the original which will work well with the Wharfdale Delta 30's

 The cassette deck wired in with all its fancy tape tuning and display adjustment has a mechanically operated draw and the ability to insert four second pauses between recordings that helps when using tape searching systems like APSS.
It has a dedicated headphone output with its own volume control for monitoring.