Did cd improve tape quality?

[Jaminbenb]

If you ever see PCM-1 in a tape lineage from the mid 80's that hasn't gone thru a bunch of DAT generations lap that up like mothers milk. Those are the gold standard of audience tapes from the 80's.

 

My recording prof in the 90's loved his PCM set up! But that was a HUGE set up to sneak into shows...probably the guys with the wheelchairs!

 

Technically the digital lineage stuff isn't horrible if you do it right...but doing it right is the problem!

[grep]

I was on and off with Dolby in the 80's and 90's. Whether i used it depended on the source tape, the deck, music itself, etc. Totally random. Though Dolby did seem to eliminate hiss. Sometimes hiss was nice... sort of like that vinyl rumble.

 

Over the last 5 years have been converting my cassetes to digital. Anything I recorded (from a record, CD, the radio) was recorded with Dolby ON . So now when I play it back into the comp, I leave Dolby OFF. Thinking being that the conversion to mp3 will chop some of the highs anyway. Seems to work out OK. (Still have the same 2 decks from back then.... ;) )