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Dimension X cassette music


eccofonic

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I haven't messed around with cassettes for years, so I hope y'all don't mind if I geek out...

There are two sides to the Dimension X cassette. On one side, the data part is louder by about 3 decibels. They probably did this in case one side didn't load properly. Also, on that side the music part is either equalized differently or more compressed. I felt the organ end part sounds better on that side. The other side isn't as bright. I thought about azimuth alignment for a second, but decided I didn't want to mess around with that.

I used two different cassette decks: a Nakamichi and a Revox. The Nakamichi is belt driven, whereas the Revox isn't. And the Nak is slightly faster as a whole by one second. When listening to the organ end part with headphones, I thought the Revox sounded maybe just a bit smoother. The mp3 I uploaded above was from the Nak. So here's the Revox below (it's 48khz). Being lossy, it's probably hard to tell any difference...

Anyway, both recordings processed fine using a8cas-convert... and loaded ok in Altirra. I also attached a cas file below. The part I don't know how to do is add in the music track.

I haven't loaded this game from cassette since I was a kid, and forgot that there was a black screen for about a minute after the first stage. Also, the game is loaded using 2KB blocks!

I have both 24-bit 96khz (probably overkill) & 16-bit 48khz versions of the wav files. They're both cropped, so no "dead air". Which one should I upload to atarimania? The 16 bit version is 59mb, so too large for atariage...

dim x end part revox side b 16-48.mp3

dimension x side b cas.zip

Edited by eccofonic
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I wonder, could these audio tracks be better recorded by modifying head alignment so the other track isn't bleeding in?

Or maybe a software solution where some subtraction algorithm could remove the unwanted portion algorithmically given a recording of the other track.

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I wonder, could these audio tracks be better recorded by modifying head alignment so the other track isn't bleeding in?

Or maybe a software solution where some subtraction algorithm could remove the unwanted portion algorithmically given a recording of the other track.

 

Unfortunately, the data noise is part of the music track, that's the way Synapse recorded it.

 

If anyone has a subtractive filter they want to try, I'm uploading the 16-bit 48khz tracks to atarimania's ftp (8-bit directory). The wav files are in zip files... and the one wav file was an aborted transfer...

Edited by eccofonic
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  • 2 years later...

thanks for uploading the capture of dimension x. i've been looking for this for ages. i grabbed them from atarimania ftp and i'm looking at them now.

 

the azimuth of the recording is off, but not due to your nak or revox. the original recording has horrible alignment. whatever commercial duplicating equipment they used is awful. this is going to be a supreme pain to remove the crosstalk, but i am going to take a stab at it. i will have to manually adjust the phase, invert, match the bleed level, and then mixdown.

 

any chance to capture side a? i might be able to recover some additional s/n from the music by averaging them together.

Edited by bani
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  • 2 weeks later...
On 1/21/2021 at 1:22 AM, bani said:

thanks for uploading the capture of dimension x. i've been looking for this for ages. i grabbed them from atarimania ftp and i'm looking at them now.

 

the azimuth of the recording is off, but not due to your nak or revox. the original recording has horrible alignment. whatever commercial duplicating equipment they used is awful. this is going to be a supreme pain to remove the crosstalk, but i am going to take a stab at it. i will have to manually adjust the phase, invert, match the bleed level, and then mixdown.

 

any chance to capture side a? i might be able to recover some additional s/n from the music by averaging them together.

I still have a wav file of side a. If Atarimania is still allowing uploads, I can put it there.

 

Since it's been a while, I can't recall why I chose side b over side a.

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  • 2 weeks later...

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