Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site sdcsvax.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxt!houxm!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix!hplabs!sdcrdcf!sdcsvax!little From: little@sdcsvax.UUCP (Glenn Little) Newsgroups: net.music.synth Subject: Fostex Equipment Message-ID: <1113@sdcsvax.UUCP> Date: Sat, 21-Sep-85 21:59:22 EDT Article-I.D.: sdcsvax.1113 Posted: Sat Sep 21 21:59:22 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 26-Sep-85 07:57:21 EDT Organization: EECS Dept. U.C. San Diego Lines: 36 Keywords: Fostex, 4-track cassettes A little while back, there were a few articles mentioning Fostex equipment, and most seemed to generally intimate a negative attitude toward the stuff. I recently bought a Fostex 4-track cassette recorder (model 250...? the "top of the line" one) and while it is still under warranty, would like to find out if there are some problems I should be looking for. What specifically do people dislike about Fostex in general, and the 250 in particular? I have not used it a whole lot yet, but so far it I am fairly happy with it. (It *is* currently in the shop... there seems to be some distortion on one of the tracks when I record a Hammond organ playing on the middle to lower half of the keyboard-- even when keeping the levels reasonably low. But to be fair, the organ does contain a lot of low frequency energy, and also it seems that every electronic component I buy these days has something wrong with it. :-{ ) If anyone is interested, here is how I arrived at my decision to buy the Fostex. I pretty much looked at only three machines: the Fostex, the new Audio Technica, and the Tascam 244 (?) Porta-Studio. The printed specs all looked pretty similar to me. The Audio-Technica had the best features, but I painfully had to eliminate it because it just seemed a little too big. I really didn't want something too unwieldy (I am wondering now if maybe I should have given less weight to the portability issue). That left the Tascam and the Fostex. The Tascam had parametric eq, which I liked, but the Fostex had Dolby C noise reduction (as opposed to dbx on the Tascam). I figured they would all probably sound about the same, except that I had been told that the cassette versions of dbx tended to noticeably "pump" with fluctations in program volume. I hate the pumping sound. Whether or not it is really true that the Tascam does this, I don't know. I couldn't really test them out. But the dolby vs. dbx issue is what finally decided it for me in the end. Did I blow it? Let me (or all of us on the net) know what you think. Thanks, Glenn Little