Yamaha MT400 Owner's Manual - Page 5

4 Buying Cassette Tapes for the MT400 It is important that you buy the correct type of cassette tape for use with your MT400. You should buy high-quality Type II (High Bias, 70 µs EQ) chrome cassettes of 90 minutes or less, such as TDK SA or MAXELL CDXL II. At normal speed, a 60-minute cassette provides about 15 minutes of recording time. That is because the tape runs at twice the speed of a normal cassette recorder and you can use only one side of the tape. The following table shows the available recording times with three standard tape sizes: Cassette Tape C90 C60 C46 MT400 Recording Time (with the standard speed) Approx. 22.5 minutes Approx. 15 minutes Approx. 11.5 minutes Note: We recommend that you use a brand new cassette tape for important recording. If you record on a used tape repeatedly, the recorded sound may skip or sound quality may deteriorate. MT400 Recording Format A normal cassette recorder uses only two tracks (i.e., left and right stereo channels) for each side (A and B). The transport direction of the A side is opposite that of the B side. The MT400 uses only one side of the cassette, and records and plays up to four tracks simultaneously or one at a time. Therefore, tapes with all four tracks recorded on the MT400 cannot be played on normal cassette players. If you try to play back a tape recorded with normal cassette recorders on the MT400, you will hear Tracks 3 and 4 play backwards. Normal cassette recorder tracks Side B (left channel) Side B (right channel) Side A (right channel) Side A (left channel) transport direction transport direction MT400 tracks Track 1 Track 2 Track 3 Track 4 transport direction The tape speed of normal cassette recorders is 4.8 cm/second. On the other hand, the MT400 uses 9.5 cm/second as its standard speed to achieve high-quality sound. -Owner's Manual