Distortion In Front Channels Of War UA Q8?

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sjcorne

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Hey Everyone,

I apologize if this topic has been addressed already.

I've been working through transferring my small collection of Q8s this summer...I have about 10 so far with a few more coming in the mail. I don't have a multichannel recording interface or the necessary software to record @24/96, so I run the outs of the Q8 player into a Creative DTS-610 which then feeds a Phillips CD Recorder. Since the Q8 deck has a rather high volume output, I installed two stereo AV volume controls for front and back to cut the volume before it hits the recorder and causes a clipping effect (See picture below). The major downside to this recording method is that I basically have to guess how low to set the volume and can't monitor the waveforms until I copy the finished CD to my PC.

Ridiculous as this may sound it does work pretty well for most tapes. Some of my conversions come out a little quiet but they are listenable for the most part. I've made 5 or 6 DTS-CDs so far and one of the more interesting things I've noticed about the tapes (and I'm sure this is detailed throughout the forum) is the varying volume level and sound quality between different brands. The one GRT (Grass Roots 16 GH) I have sounds way better than any other conversion I've done so far.

I recently acquired a copy of War's "The World Is A Ghetto" and the volume level on this tape is exceptionally high. The waveform pictured below was recorded with the volume at half level! I'm attempting it again at an even lower setting, but the front channels (especially front left) always seem to have this distorted sound...It sounds almost like a CD-4 disc with carrier damage. At first I thought my receiver had a dirty control. Then I figured it's from the high volume, but on this second attempt with less brickwalling it still seems to be there.

Does anyone else have this problem? Do all Liberty/UA Q8s sound this crappy? Or better yet, does anyone have a conversion so I can be put out of my misery?

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Do all Liberty/UA Q8s sound this crappy?

In a word: yes. All USA Liberty-duplicated tapes, which includes UA, Stax, Blue Note etc... are pushed well beyond saturation level.
The only way for a good sounding conversion is to get the Canadian ones, gold cart, duplicated by RCA.
 
Agreed. The early Liberty tapes suffer from too little signal and are hissy because of it and it seems like the later tapes seem to suffer from phase errors and excessively hot signal.
 
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