Marc Hugo
08-10-2008, 11:53 AM
Hi All!!
As promised.
Assessment: GoldStar CD I Pro Cassette
Similar to relatively little known cassettes such as Taiyo Yuden’s That’s CD1F in the smart Suono format, GoldStar marked an earnest attempt to take on the serious type ones from the TDK, BASF, Sony, and Maxell. I estimate this tape to date from about 1988.
Physical Description
The cassette is handsomely packaged in a mainly silver, black and pink livery. It has a full size Norelco box with pocket-friendly rounded corners. The box is a classy construction in smoked grey plastic, as is the cassette shell itself. The shell has gold lettering as seen in the attached picture indicating the model from GoldStar’s modest range. The look and feel of the subsequent “LG” brand is present. Running in wind and rewind mode, the mechanism is smooth and quiet.
The tape ribbon itself is a dark grey and the surface is quite shiny in reflected light.
Testing the Water
Yamaha KX-393
I first tried this tape in a new perfectly operating Yamaha KX-393. After running auto-calibration, I recorded direct from CD outputs to the decks inputs without monitoring; using only the decks display to indicate levels which were set to peak at 0dB. Programme material was Beethoven’s sonata No10, Jeno Jando.
Like That’s super-ferric referred to earlier (but not to the same extent as TDK’s AR-X, Maxell XLI-S or Sony HF-ES) this tape sounded noisy. A layer of hiss imbued the difficult programme of piano music, but somehow the recording itself had the sparkle and tonal deliberateness of some pedigree. But, a pedigreed what?
As stated, it had the tell-tale sonic hallmarks of That’s oddball CD1F Suono. So, I decided to treat it accordingly.
Pioneer CT-W604RS
Calibrated (S-Auto BLE XD), Level set to 4.2, reading +3.5 on the meters; NR off.
Programme material was:
1. Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark – Best of; (LP).
2. Lene Marlin – Sitting Down Here (CD).
The sound was fresh and vital, treble had an unmistakable bite and was well extended; bass was nimble and clean. The force of the recording was hard to miss (considerably higher than the source over headphones), quiet passages were rendered without noticeable hiss and Lene Marlin’s sweet vocals showed no sign of break-up or roughness despite the high RL. OMD’s electric piano work in the opening track “Electricity” was flaunted to great effect as the powerful sounding GoldStar projected the rhythmic quality of the song with vigour.
The same music was recorded using exactly the same recording levels, but with Dolby S.
An improvement in the already strong dynamic range (to be expected) was noticeable as incipient bias noise between tracks or in quiet passages all but disappeared. Thanks to Pioneer’s fine Dolby installation, the sound improved again, with subtle low-amplitude tonal detail gaining greater prominence without any cost to the whole.
Rotel RD-960BX
Using the same programme material, I used non-Dolby and Dolby C positions.
In the absence of automatic or fully metered manual calibration, I set bias to the +10% of 120uS position. Initially having established the same levels of hiss as the Yamaha experiment, and using the Pioneer as a guideline, I pushed the tape on the Rotel still harder.
Record level was set to 4.6, channels balanced, and meters reading 4.5 beat average, and 5.25 peak.
Without Dolby the recording was powerful and completely without any break-up. Clearly, like the top type ones, this model can withstand abusive record levels without any audible distress. In fact, the more generous you are with the recording level, the more balanced the sound becomes (greater low frequency response) the zesty treble being better balanced with a rich, rolling bass. (The Rotel 960BX has a reputation for an unusually un-cassette-like bass which goes back to Alpine’s development of their UD Hyperbolic head some years ago).
The lighter-footed Pioneer with its powerful Dolby S made short work of the tapes high noise floor as well as its prodigious overload characteristics.
In neither case was there any indication of squashing of the highest frequencies, typically soft at -30>-20dB. This I did by headphones simultaneously against the source material.
Equipment:
Pioneer Recording: Sources: TEAC PX-550 TT, Shure Me75EJII, Kenwood DP-3080 Classic, Van den Hul 102/II; TEAC RV30 Amplifier and Tannoy Profile 631 Monitors.
Rotel Recording: Sources: TEAC CDP-1100R, Pioneer PL15, Grado Gold, van den Hul The First, Yamaha RV-390, ProJect Phono Box, Luxman Ocean I, Series 3 Monitors.
Estimated Tape Performance
Dynamic Range: 57.5dB
Bias Noise: -52.5dB
MOL 315Hz: + 5.0dB
SAT 10kHz: + 0.5dB
Conclusion:
GoldStar CD I Pro can sound very sharp, open and atmospheric, but is hampered by high incipient noise levels. This is cured if input levels are sufficient.
All in all, this is an entertaining if idiosyncratic tape. It’s worth the trouble in getting around its foibles because, with a courageous hand on the recording levels and a half-decent deck, you can extract a powerful, detailed sounding recording of real quality.
Programme Suggestions:
High energy music, electronic, baroque, jazz, etc: use high input levels and depending on taste (or unwarranted concerns regarding HF distortion), some additional bias.
Marc Hugo
As promised.
Assessment: GoldStar CD I Pro Cassette
Similar to relatively little known cassettes such as Taiyo Yuden’s That’s CD1F in the smart Suono format, GoldStar marked an earnest attempt to take on the serious type ones from the TDK, BASF, Sony, and Maxell. I estimate this tape to date from about 1988.
Physical Description
The cassette is handsomely packaged in a mainly silver, black and pink livery. It has a full size Norelco box with pocket-friendly rounded corners. The box is a classy construction in smoked grey plastic, as is the cassette shell itself. The shell has gold lettering as seen in the attached picture indicating the model from GoldStar’s modest range. The look and feel of the subsequent “LG” brand is present. Running in wind and rewind mode, the mechanism is smooth and quiet.
The tape ribbon itself is a dark grey and the surface is quite shiny in reflected light.
Testing the Water
Yamaha KX-393
I first tried this tape in a new perfectly operating Yamaha KX-393. After running auto-calibration, I recorded direct from CD outputs to the decks inputs without monitoring; using only the decks display to indicate levels which were set to peak at 0dB. Programme material was Beethoven’s sonata No10, Jeno Jando.
Like That’s super-ferric referred to earlier (but not to the same extent as TDK’s AR-X, Maxell XLI-S or Sony HF-ES) this tape sounded noisy. A layer of hiss imbued the difficult programme of piano music, but somehow the recording itself had the sparkle and tonal deliberateness of some pedigree. But, a pedigreed what?
As stated, it had the tell-tale sonic hallmarks of That’s oddball CD1F Suono. So, I decided to treat it accordingly.
Pioneer CT-W604RS
Calibrated (S-Auto BLE XD), Level set to 4.2, reading +3.5 on the meters; NR off.
Programme material was:
1. Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark – Best of; (LP).
2. Lene Marlin – Sitting Down Here (CD).
The sound was fresh and vital, treble had an unmistakable bite and was well extended; bass was nimble and clean. The force of the recording was hard to miss (considerably higher than the source over headphones), quiet passages were rendered without noticeable hiss and Lene Marlin’s sweet vocals showed no sign of break-up or roughness despite the high RL. OMD’s electric piano work in the opening track “Electricity” was flaunted to great effect as the powerful sounding GoldStar projected the rhythmic quality of the song with vigour.
The same music was recorded using exactly the same recording levels, but with Dolby S.
An improvement in the already strong dynamic range (to be expected) was noticeable as incipient bias noise between tracks or in quiet passages all but disappeared. Thanks to Pioneer’s fine Dolby installation, the sound improved again, with subtle low-amplitude tonal detail gaining greater prominence without any cost to the whole.
Rotel RD-960BX
Using the same programme material, I used non-Dolby and Dolby C positions.
In the absence of automatic or fully metered manual calibration, I set bias to the +10% of 120uS position. Initially having established the same levels of hiss as the Yamaha experiment, and using the Pioneer as a guideline, I pushed the tape on the Rotel still harder.
Record level was set to 4.6, channels balanced, and meters reading 4.5 beat average, and 5.25 peak.
Without Dolby the recording was powerful and completely without any break-up. Clearly, like the top type ones, this model can withstand abusive record levels without any audible distress. In fact, the more generous you are with the recording level, the more balanced the sound becomes (greater low frequency response) the zesty treble being better balanced with a rich, rolling bass. (The Rotel 960BX has a reputation for an unusually un-cassette-like bass which goes back to Alpine’s development of their UD Hyperbolic head some years ago).
The lighter-footed Pioneer with its powerful Dolby S made short work of the tapes high noise floor as well as its prodigious overload characteristics.
In neither case was there any indication of squashing of the highest frequencies, typically soft at -30>-20dB. This I did by headphones simultaneously against the source material.
Equipment:
Pioneer Recording: Sources: TEAC PX-550 TT, Shure Me75EJII, Kenwood DP-3080 Classic, Van den Hul 102/II; TEAC RV30 Amplifier and Tannoy Profile 631 Monitors.
Rotel Recording: Sources: TEAC CDP-1100R, Pioneer PL15, Grado Gold, van den Hul The First, Yamaha RV-390, ProJect Phono Box, Luxman Ocean I, Series 3 Monitors.
Estimated Tape Performance
Dynamic Range: 57.5dB
Bias Noise: -52.5dB
MOL 315Hz: + 5.0dB
SAT 10kHz: + 0.5dB
Conclusion:
GoldStar CD I Pro can sound very sharp, open and atmospheric, but is hampered by high incipient noise levels. This is cured if input levels are sufficient.
All in all, this is an entertaining if idiosyncratic tape. It’s worth the trouble in getting around its foibles because, with a courageous hand on the recording levels and a half-decent deck, you can extract a powerful, detailed sounding recording of real quality.
Programme Suggestions:
High energy music, electronic, baroque, jazz, etc: use high input levels and depending on taste (or unwarranted concerns regarding HF distortion), some additional bias.
Marc Hugo