Cassette Tapes..Dolby B or C?


I still have a tape deck in my system, and have a few tapes that are nice for quiet background music. The tape deck has a switch to select Dolby B or Dolby C (or none). There seems to be no marking on prerecorded tapes to indicate the type of Dolby processing. On a tape I was just playing B sounds about right. Should I assume that all prerecorded tapes are B unless otherwise stated?
eldartford

Showing 4 responses by eldartford

The tapes are plainly marked "Dolby" but no indication of B or C. I guess B is the right answer.
WOW! I never thought that this thread would draw so much comment. I just had a simple question. I guess it is a little-known fact that some audiophiles still like their cassette decks.
In the generation of master tapes DBX processing beat out Dolby. The DBX processors available to amateurs at a reasonable price were less sophisticated, and comparable to Dolby. I used one for a while. In the world of master tapes it was also noticed that running a recording made by other means through an analog tape recorder made it sound better. About 30 years ago I could give you the reason, but those gray cells are gone.
Everyone gets bent out of shape about copy protection which prevents the making of digital copies. The easy way around this is a good analog recorder of some kind, or even a digital recorder which accepts analog inputs.