Can we finally put Reel to Reel out of its misery? Put it to rest people.

Great to hear from you Andrew. I agree. Cassettes unfortunately have serious quality control and this is related to azimuth as well. I love rtr decks because of how easy they are to calibrate. Even the best tape decks (the Nak ZX-9, CR-7, the Tandberg 3014, the Revox B215), all aligned and calibrated as per factory spec, will be only average or mediocre when playing back a set of pre-recorded cassettes obtained from different publishers. Each of these decks will accidentally have their playback azimuth alignment very closely aligned with some of your cassettes, but will have poor alignment with other cassettes, and there will be nothing you can do about it. The manufacturers of pre-recorded cassettes, especially in India, on the whole, did not follow close tolerances when manufacturing their cassettes. They even followed mass manufacture processes which make such close tolerances impossible to obtain consistently. Therefore, even the world’s best decks are going to be only average when retrieving the last bit of HF information from a bunch of pre-recorded cassettes. The only exception is a correctly working Dragon with a correctly aligned NAAC sub-system.

benklesc"Tape played the first time will not have the same azimuth as the tape played the 200th time."

This is clearly, absolutely, demonstrably false and so is a lot of the other stuff you wrote you do not know what you are talking about and by the way VHS tape wears like crazy there is a lot of friction in there!

A common myth is that azimuth is related to head alignment and that is not really the case. Only true when recording. It’s tape and no one tape has the same alignment and it will change overtime. There is no such thing as correct azimuth to clarify that point. Cassettes for this reason are my least favorite format. Reel to reel decks @ 7 1/2 and vinyl will blow even the best cassette decks out of the water for this reason imo.

A good trick to know if you are getting the best out of your tape is to listen to the mono bass or leads vocals in stereo, or you can even force to mono. Make a headphone cable with the ground removed, and listen when the bass and lead vocals fade out completely. When you null that is when you azimuth is aligned with the tape. Playing a 1kHz tone should sound like baking frying. An oscilloscope won’t tell you this.

Interesting part about VHS is that you had multiple azimuths on the same drum that read different parts of the tape. For that reason VHS tape had stricter quality control and surprisingly superior sound to all formats @ 1800 rpm. It’s too bad that format was never realized for audio but that is another rabbit hole topic all together.

So, many of the consumer reel to reel decks sold on the market like cassette decks were manufactured with heads that never wear down. For that reason ferrite heads for example cannot be relapped. They never develop a flat spot.

This statement is false. I've seen them worn first-hand.

Under normal circumstances VHS tape will never "wear out" or "fade".

They can shed though, causing them to lose output. And mess of the tape path at the same time.

A common myth is that azimuth is related to head alignment and that is not really the case.

Seriously?? Head azimuth **is** part of head alignment! Along with head height (on reel to reels). On a cassette deck azimuth is the only adjustment you get when aligning the heads. So on cassettes, azimuth and head alignment are exactly the same thing. I started my career in 1974 working on consumer electronics- I've performed many complete calibrations on reel to reel and cassette machines.

A good trick to know if you are getting the best out of your tape is to listen to the mono bass or leads vocals in stereo, or you can even force to mono. Make a headphone cable with the ground removed, and listen when the bass and lead vocals fade out completely. When you null that is when you azimuth is aligned with the tape. Playing a 1kHz tone should sound like baking frying. An oscilloscope won’t tell you this.

Hm. Better if you simply play a calibration tape with a 10KHz reference tone.

For that reason VHS tape had stricter quality control and surprisingly superior sound to all formats @ 1800 rpm. It’s too bad that format was never realized for audio but that is another rabbit hole topic all together.

There were audio machines for both Beta and VHS back in the 1980s.

Seriously?? Head azimuth **is** part of head alignment! Along with head height (on reel to reels). On a cassette deck azimuth is the only adjustment you get when aligning the heads. So on cassettes, azimuth and head alignment are exactly the same thing.

The reason I bring up cassette is that it’s a lot more annoying to make adjustments than on reel to reel, mostly you can’t trust cassettes to give you reliable results because the azimuth is always changing. Even if you adjust to a standard there will never be a correct azimuth when it comes to cassettes even on the best three heads decks. For that reason performance will always be lackluster unless you are making your own recordings. A good example are tapes recorded on Nak decks notoriously sound bad on non-Nak decks. On the other hand you would like to believe that reel to reel will give you more accurate results, but that too is not always the case.

http://www.tapeheads.net/showthread.php?t=70517

The best way I can describe it is this. The azimuth I refer to is what is printed on the tape in response to the record head. No one machine will have the same azimuth and no one tape will have the same azimuth. I bring this up to point out the performance of reel to reel will give you significantly better results than any cassette deck. Not because of the speed. Using the example of speed, 1⅞ ips can sound just as good at 15 ips except one will have more tape hiss. The difference is that reel to reel will always have greater frequency response because of the nature of its azimuth. The way the playback head is being used allows you to pull more information out of it.

Anyhow that has given me the best results so far listening back and fourth. That is how I squeeze the most information out of every tape that comes into my possession. I do not calibrate the machines I use in my lineup. Personal preference.