I don’t really remember if I left it on or off. I think probably on because, when I was a kid, I liked more bass from the car stereo, the only device I knew that had Dolby options. I always turned on “bass boos” on any portable device, too. As an adult, however I tend to like more treble, likely because of some hearing loss. I find that being overly bassy makes things sound muffled or further away.
I think that, if I knew what I knew today when I was younger, I would have had it on by default, and been strict about using the right version for each cassette. I would start of always turning it off for tapes not designed for it, but would likely have eventually just left it turned on, since it would be on most of the time.
Today, if I listen, I’m probably going to turn Dolby on. And I will use the EQ to turn up the treble to the point where I like it. I will want to start it with how the artist intended it, but I have no problem changing that to fit my own ears.
The only speakers I don’t turn up the treble on these days are the ones on my phone, as the tiny speakers take care of that for me. The only time I turn up the bass is specifically on music, if I have trouble hearing the bass line.
Apparently I was doing it wrong on all the hundreds of tapes I made in my college days. I used CrO2 cassettes, and what I would do is record on the “Normal” tape setting with Dolby on, but on playback I would set it to CrO2 with Dolby turned off. (To my ears, that seemed to maximize the highs without a lot of hiss.)
I always listened to Dolby-encoded tapes with the appropriate Dolby setting turned on. If the highs sounded attenuated, then I’d adjust the tone controls—that’s what they’re for.
If you listen with Dolby off, you’re hearing a wildly distorted version of the original recording.
You say that like you are scoffing, but, yes, you were doing it wrong. Unless your goal was to have bad sound.
“I used to stick knitting needles into my speakers, use rusty bailing wire for speaker cables, and leave a magnet on top of the cassette player, but it sounded good to me.”
“Wildly distorted” may be a bit of an exaggeration. Cheaper cassette players (like a basic boombox) didn’t have the option. I wouldn’t have called their sound “distorted,” but they sure as heck weren’t audiophile quality.
Yeah, in most situations, like my car. Nope, never touched that switch. Road and vehicle noise is going to smother any hiss, and I’ve already messed with the tone settings on the stereo. At home? Sure, if the tape had the Dolby symbol, I made sure the switch was on.
I hated auto reverse with a passion.
Unless it was a Nakamichi with NAAC it was next to impossible to get perfect alignment in both directions.
The rotating head in some decks were fun to watch though.
Could a tape detect automatically determine if a cassette was no Dolby, Dolby B, or Dolby C? If not, seems like it could have easily been done by incorporating notches (or whatever) into the cassette housing and have them set some microswitches in the tape deck.
IIRC, there were notches to indicate what kind of tape it was (see the chromium dioxide discussion above). I think they called that the “bias,” as in high bias, but I might be mistaken.
Some players could auto-detect Dolby, but I think that was done electronically.
That might be true were it not for the fact that the inherent nature of cassette tape substantially attenuates the high frequencies, because the tape speed is so slow. This is particularly true for ordinary ferric oxide tapes; somewhat less so for the better chromium dioxide ones. So the sound is already distorted to begin with. Depending on the music type and how it was equalized, it might actually sound more natural with Dolby off. I generally had it turned off, even for Dolbyized tapes.
In answer to the OP, my first (and only) home cassette deck was a Sony, though I have no idea of the model number. It was mostly there for convenience, and for recording cassettes for the car. For serious listening I used a reel-to-reel deck (also a Sony). Most of my source material was from vinyl records, transcribed when the records were brand new.
I remember when got my first CDs. I was determined to keep them pristine, so I taped them onto cassettes for use in the car. I remember TDK, Maxell, and Sony were the tapes to use. Memorex was widely advertised, but they surely did suck.
The CDs I wanted to preserve? Many of them have deteriorated just from age. The silvery coating is flaking off. Yes, some ended up in a wallet in the car over the last thirty years, but the deterioration has also happened to some that have rarely seen the outside of their cases.
CDs were supposed to last a 100 years.
I sadly look at the holes in the reflective layer on some of my recordable CDs from the late 1990s and early 2000s. Some look pristine but are totally unreadable. : (
Same with some originals from CRC.
As I understand it, Dolby B was intended to sound best ON, but passably good without the circuitry in place (cheap cassette tape players), so that commercial tapes could be encoded with B and played by anyone with acceptable quality. I think the expectation was that if you didn’t have a system with B incorporated, your speakers and everything else were liable to be so craptastic that you wouldn’t even notice.