[ProAudio] HX Pro was :FeralA - Recordings released encoded with Dolby A

[Bill Whitlock]

This was my off-list reply to Lou
Bill


-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Whitlock <engineer_bill at verizon.net>
To: loujudson <loujudson at mac.com>
Sent: Tue, Feb 11, 2020 8:24 pm
Subject: Re: [ProAudio] HX Pro was :FeralA - Recordings released encoded with Dolby A

Hi Lou,
A quick look on the internet showshttps://www.discogs.com/Pink-Floyd-The-Dark-Side-Of-The-Moon/release/4548983
which was released on Capitol XDR cassette in 1988.  Tina Turner (one of my personal favorites) and many other artists were popular during the XDR era. I started at Capitol in 1981 and left in 1988. The signal-chain electronics we designed in my lab (which included HX-Pro) replaced the original electronics of the Gauss duplicators used world-wide by Capitol/EMI. Therefore, all cassettes released from the mid-eighties until Capitol stopped making them (a date I don't know) will use the XDR process.
In the mid-eighties, we started development of a "digital loop-bin" to eliminate the analog running master altogether. The major bottleneck was DACs that were fast enough, so we developed our own using two 10-bit video DACs and combining them with a bit-mapped correction look-up table to create a 14-bit monotonic converter that could run at 64x. The system also used a huge array of 256k DRAMs for storage (disc-drive arrays of the day just couldn't deal with the required throughput). We had the system fully developed and made dozens of amazing sounding cassettes (again using the XDR analog signal chain in the slave recorders) ... every cassette was a first-gen analog recording from a digital master - I still have a few in my memorabilia collection.  But PCs production was rapidly ramping up, creating a world-wide shortage of DRAMs (driving up their price, of course) toward the end of the project. Capitol executives, in their infinite wisdom, cancelled the entire project (claiming it would be too expensive to produce) while I was away on vacation in early 1988.  I stormed into my boss's office the day I returned a quit that day ... I had worked long hours for over a year and just had enough.  But, in retrospect, maybe their decision was wise, given that the CD was just over the horizon and effectively killed the cassette format.  I started working with Deane Jensen evenings and weekends ... and the rest is history. I became owner of Jensen Transformers 1989 to 2014.
Bill WhitlockWhitlock ConsultingVentura, CAAES Life FellowIEEE Life SeniorOffice (805) 755-5018


-----Original Message-----
From: Louis Judson <loujudson at mac.com>
To: Bill Whitlock <engineer_bill at verizon.net>; proaudio <proaudio at bach.pgm.com>
Cc: klay <klay at klay.com>
Sent: Tue, Feb 11, 2020 2:52 pm
Subject: Re: [ProAudio] HX Pro was :FeralA - Recordings released encoded with Dolby A

Bill, can you oint to a good example of this? I never had many pre-recorded cassettes, but made a lot of casstte recoridngs, and the HXPro deck were the best i used back in the day.
Lord knows where to find them these days, but given a title I could go looking. I respect your opinion very much!

Thanks,
<L>
Lou Judson * Intuitive Audio415-271-8070 mobile
I'm just a simple sound engineer, nothing more, nothing less.-- paraphrase of the Dalai Lama.
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