The Turtles
November 27, 1999
Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium
Santa Cruz, California, U.S.A.

Going through some neglected masters I found this one (previously uncirculated).

From audience master - Sony NT-2 digital micro recorder - decent audience sound quality though there is some crowd noise. This was an oldies show promoted by a bland oldies radio station, which is why this was only billed as the Turtles with a short set and no mention of Flo and Eddie or the Frank Zappa era. I remember that the other acts at this show included Lou Chrisie and the lead singer of The Diamonds (original member, Dave Somerville). I don't think that I recorded the other sets.

01 [1:49] announcer intro > intro vamp with Howie talk >
02 [2:31] You Baby
03 [2:49] talk
04 [2:33] It Ain't Me Babe
05 [6:14] Howie talk with 60's bands bit over opening to You Showed Me >
06 [2:45] You Showed Me
07 [2:21] Elenore
08 [4:12] talk and band intros
09 [3:18] She'd Rather Be With Me
10 [4:35] Happy Together
total: 33:07

Lineage: 2 Nakamichi cm300 capsules (mounted in shoulders of a shirt) > "home made" mic. pre-amp > Sony NT-2 master.

Transfer (2008): Sony NT-2 > Sony NT Station NTU-S1 I/O dock (analog line outputs) > Macintosh with Audiomedia III soundcard > Pro Tools (minor "nip and tuck" edits, normalization and tracking) > AIFF > xACT (flac level 8 files with sector boundaries verified).

Enjoy and SHARE!

Finally... notes about the recording format (for those who care to read): This Sony format used tapes less than one tenth the size of a Dat tape. It worked fairly well but the tiny tapes were a bit problematic and the audio signal was rolled off at 15k like a traditional audio cassette signal. It was not really originally designed for music but the perceptive sound quality was excellent - similar but less compressed than the minidisc format which would follow it. Sony briefly made an I/O unit that the deck snapped into that had much better output preamps than what was built into the deck itself and added digital optical outputs too. The biggest problem was that the tapes (available in 60, 90 or 120 minutes lengths) were usually over ten dollars each, and the expensive recorder was hardly exported from Japan and never caught on enough for Sony's service department to learn how to keep them running problem free.

From a 1997 post from the Datheads listserver: The Sony "Micro-DAT" or "Scoopman" is more correctly known by the Sony designation NT-1 and NT-2. The NT-1 is an old mechanical model which hasn't been available for a while. The NT-2 uses all electronic controls to offer auto-reverse (the NT system records the tape in both directions) with a memory buffer to prevent any interruption of recording while the tape flips. This system uses no capstan/pinch roller system. The "NT" stands for Non-Tracking, as the tape is driven at a constant speed past the scanner heads at a fixed record speed. On playback, the head scanner is sped up 2x and the cpu removes the duplicated and unwanted data to spit out audio.

Specifications from a Japanese reseller:
· RECORDING SYSTEM Rotary-Head Helical-Scanning Digital Recording System
· NUMBER OF HEADS Four (4)
· TAPE SPEED 6.35mm/sec (approx)
· NUMBER OF CHANNELS 2-Channel Stereo
· SAMPLING FREQUENCY 32kHz
· PLAYBACK FREQUENCY RANGE 10 - 14,500Hz
· PLAYBACK DYNAMIC RANGE Better than 80dB
· TOTAL HARMONIC DISTORTION less than 0.08%
· WOW & FLUTTER Below measurable limit· INPUTS Mic (Stereo mini jack/Plug-in power) Line (Stereo mini jack)
· OUTPUTS Headphones (Stereo mini jack) Line (Stereo mini jack)
· POWER SOURCE "AA" Dry Cell Battery x 1 (optional) AC Power Adaptor (supplied).

Enjoy and SHARE!