wow now its CASSETTES ARE BACK
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wwaj4HvhyU
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVEraHaefBc
now I have heard it...
- Thread starter DjDennis
- Start date
I still have my cassette decks, three of 'em I think (Pioneer, Yamaha, and Sony). And I still have tons of mix tapes I made in the 80's and early 90's. Do I ever play them? Nope![emoji1] That guy in the video is WRONG about one thing (at a minimum)... tapes have a limited life. You buy an old cassette tape that hasn't been stored in an air conditioned environment, it's gonna sound like crap. They also get stuck in tape players and mangled. If you don't keep your CD's in their jewel cases; yes, they can get scratched, but I've seen some pretty scratched up CD's that still play just fine. I worked for BASF at the height of the cassette tape's popularity, so I have boxes of the best BASF tapes. Maybe I'll put them on eBay and make a little money.[emoji1]
Edit: Oops... looks like the Sony is gone... replaced with another Pioneer deck. I vaguely remember doing that about 20 years ago. So I have 2 Pioneer cassette decks and one Yamaha. I gave a ton of audio components away to Goodwill a few years ago, including a Techniques cassette deck and a JVC. I used to LOVE stereo components.[emoji1]
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Last edited:
I've got two...but only one works. Need to have the other (Teac Dual Deck...forget the number) tuned up--oil, pinch rollers, things that need oil but dried up. I also have over 200 cassettes; some I made but most are originals.
I still have my Nakamichi that a stereo shop updated with a direct drive system (instead of the older belt drive). Works like a champ.
I never got into buying albums on cassette tapes. I bought vinyl up until CD's came out, then I made mix tapes on cassettes until recordable CD's were available. Once I could make my own CD's, I never made another tape.[emoji4]
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I subscribed for a period to the Columbia House thing on cassettes ... that was after the Columbia House thing on vinyl (in college) and prior to the Columbia House thing on CDs in the mid 80s. So I still have a few dozen tapes.
When I said "cassette players are gone"....
I meant trying to find one for sale in a store.
If they expect cassettes to make a comeback, they gotta convince manufacturers to start making them again.
In other words, they'll have to design and build all new machines and tools and start over.
(which means they'll cost WAY too much to make it worth while)
I meant trying to find one for sale in a store.
If they expect cassettes to make a comeback, they gotta convince manufacturers to start making them again.
In other words, they'll have to design and build all new machines and tools and start over.
(which means they'll cost WAY too much to make it worth while)
Agreed... I don't think cassette tape is EVER gonna make a comeback![emoji4]
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Dennis...thanks for the link to the article about those companies who still make cassette tape.
Just another trend, and just like bad gas, it will pass.
There are a few second hand shops here that have thousands of cassettes. I'm pretty sure we will never see new ones again though
I have a couple of hundred if anyone ever wants to get in on the trend I'd be willing to part with them and the decks for a large fee
The video is correct but, that is not where most of the bad reputation cassettes have comes from.
The number one issue with cassette tapes is disparity of the azimuth across cassette players/recorders. This is a tracking error and adjustment that consumers never gave any thought about, and many inexpensive players had no real means to adjust it.
The difference between iron oxide and chromium or metal tape would be insignificant compared to a disparity in azimuth.
It generally shows up this way: you record a tape on your machine and it sounds great! But on your friends deck, you're boom box, and in your car the tape sounds crappy and dull. Conversely, tapes recorded on other people's decks sound good on other players - but tend to sound crappy and dull on yours.
The problem is not the type of tape - it's the head alignment. Another issue is head wear which shows up as various disparity between record and play levels on either or both channels.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhvqOtWwQ1E
The number one issue with cassette tapes is disparity of the azimuth across cassette players/recorders. This is a tracking error and adjustment that consumers never gave any thought about, and many inexpensive players had no real means to adjust it.
The difference between iron oxide and chromium or metal tape would be insignificant compared to a disparity in azimuth.
It generally shows up this way: you record a tape on your machine and it sounds great! But on your friends deck, you're boom box, and in your car the tape sounds crappy and dull. Conversely, tapes recorded on other people's decks sound good on other players - but tend to sound crappy and dull on yours.
The problem is not the type of tape - it's the head alignment. Another issue is head wear which shows up as various disparity between record and play levels on either or both channels.
Last edited:
Never amazes me the old technology people want to dredge up. But the biggest problem with cassettes was it's lack of ability to direct access which track you want hear. Even now as I try to convert some of my old cassettes to the digital form that issue always complicates things. But if the trend does pickup I have 5 cassette decks I can put on eBay including one Denon rack mount dual deck with pitch I believe. Along with a crap load of cassettes singles & some albums.
Cassettes, especially with a quality tape, could be "good" .. never considered them "great". Open reel was different, you had more options with the larger tape and the ability to use faster speeds. Tapes were easy, relative safe from sloppy hands, better than 8-tracks and more portable than LPs. When CDs came out, I used tapes for maybe another 5-10 years for compilations, use in the car, etc. Last I used them were for my daughters ballet class in the mid-late 90s when scores needed to be edited. Then we switched to CDRs.
One format I never tried. I did borrow someone's DAT recorder, but it was too large (and expensive) to consider. Thankfully, since I was in the computer biz and had access to the tech, it was easy to make compilation CDs way back in the early 90s. I tried the mp3 format in 95 or so .. but since hard drives on laptops were still small and expensive, recorded CDs were a lot cheaper and held more .. and I got the blanks for almost nothing at work.
I never got into the MiniDiscs or DAT's either. For MP3, I was playing with L3Enc back in the mid 90's - and it was painfully slow!
I recorded on HiFi VHS for a short time... just for my own personal listening pleasure. Eight hours of recorded music at near CD quality. Multi-disc CD players came along and pretty much made recorded mixes unnecessary... almost. You still had to sit there and program which discs and tracks to play, and there was a limit to the number of tracks you could program. Somewhere along the way I just quit doing it. Now I make playlists, some with hundreds of tracks. SO MUCH easier than making those tapes.[emoji1]
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk