What's with the tapes revival?

Vinyl and cassette revival is the music and retail industry ploy to get people away from streaming services and downloads. They want you to buy a physical product again, so they can cut out those pesky IT guys. It’s a battle for the control of publishing and distribution of music.

Too bad. They forgot to revive the music first, so people feel that it’s worthwhile to keep it, spin or tape it, instead of streaming it down the proverbial toilette.


Please file under ‘Conspiracy Theories’

 

We must. Most of my friends don't care as much about music or sonics as I do.

Ed

 

I always had a nice sounding car system. I used to make mix tapes from CDs (before there were CD burners and just before there were car CD players, I believe) and would use them to demo high end car cassette decks I may have been in the market for. I was always complemented on how good my tape sounded (Usually Steely Dan). When car CD players hit the market I bought one. The audio difference was night and day (And my cassettes really sounded good) and I haven't looked back. But they were great back in the day. I probably still have about 100 or so tapes, and I guess for sentimental reasons, I plan on keeping them.

 

That does not make any sense since it is much more expensive to provide physical product. And, people can priate physical product. Streaming is the fastest and easiest way for the labels to make their money. And retail? Phtw! They don't care! If CDs went away tomorrow, they wouldn't miss a beat! They'd just fill the space with more DVDs. Record store would put t-shirts in its place.

 

Way to not take a difference in opinion personally.

Look, whatever you have to tell yourself. If you want to believe that a 3.8mm wide compact cassette tape running at 1 7/8ips is the near-equal of a 6.4mm wide reel-to-reel tape running at 7 1/2 or 15 ips, then tell yourself that if it makes you happy.

I personally don't have anything against the cassette format, I used to own a 3-head Nakamichi tape deck back in the day, in fact (a BX-300). I made some nice mix tapes with that thing.

But to pretend that it was nearly the equal of reel-to-reel, or 'far better than LP'... nope. I mean, at what? Listening to pre-recorded tapes?

What it was good for was 'portable-izing' stuff from a good source, like my Linn Sondek. That's it. And that was enough. I never regretted buying the BX-300. But I don't see the point of it nowadays.

If there is a 'cassette revival' of sorts going on, I think it'll likely be limited in scope and duration, simply because the alternative tech in portable music is so compelling. iPods and cellphones, holding thousands of songs.

In the home market, LP at least has a compelling case due to it sounding (with a good turntable/cart/phono stage) quite a bit better than digital. Plus you have the big 12" artwork, and the 'ritual' of physically interacting with your music (flipping records, hunting the used record bins, etc). It's not for everyone, but it's very appealing to some... in a 'niche, but sizable and potentially very long-term niche' kind of way. Whereas cassettes' advantages are less immediately obvious.

But, never underestimate the effect of retro-chic in the short-term, at least. I almost want a Walkman now, largely because of Guardians of the Galaxy (and perhaps my own nostalgia). But how long can 'cassette chic' really last, without some major, obvious advantages to back it up?
.

 

Yeah! It's probably just me missing those halcyon days of record store, and wanting it back.

Regards

 

Yes, digital does sound dead. It takes the life and bounce out of music.

It changes the sound but the "Neutral Digital" people try to advocate that it doesn't.

 

Agree with most of your post, but not this.

Digital, has long equalled - at the VERY least - vinyl. You might love your records, I did too, but from CD to lossless, it's been caught and in my view, long surpassed.

 

You're entitled to your view, but... not in my listening experience.

Once I moved up to a Linn Sondek, CD couldn't keep up. And it wasn't close.
.

 

THIS cassette sounds great: Maurice Jarre - Doctor Zhivago Original Soundtrack - Amazon.com Music

Please file under 'This Sounds Great'

 

This is indeed an odd thread. It´s supposed to handle why there is a ´possible´revival of cassettes. It turns out that in fact, according to some, cassettes have better SQ than ´digital´, it´s about the same as records, and records sound also much better than digital; mp3s shouldn´t even be mentioned the same day as cassettes.
Odd indeed, as the possible ´revival´of cassettes of course has nothing whatsoever to do with SQ.

 

I've heard a Nakamichi car cassette sounding very good. Better still, if you record and playback without any Dolby. Yes, some tape hiss, but no exaggerated Dolby playback issues.

Obviously if you are playing back on the same cassette player as you recorded on, the Dolby tracking isn't an issue.

I used to record cassettes for friends to play back in their car, from a maxed out LP12 via a Nakamichi CR7E, which was my favourite Nakamichi cassette recorder: they were stunned at how good those cassettes sounded compared to their own!

Think I've still got a Sony Walkman Pro, somewhere in the house.

I friend had recorded the original radio broadcasts of The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy, via a good tuner, onto a reel to reel at 71/2 ip/s. Sounded amazing!

 

Also to be filed under "This Sounds Great" -virtually any Telarc cassette.

 

Yes,
I have one, too. It's a great sounding little tape machine.
I like playing my old tapes (self-recorded blank tapes as well as pre-recorded cassettes) on that machine. It's fun.
Unfortunately, such machines are no longer built. The cassette revival lacks good recording or playback machines.

Best regards

 

I still have loads of old cassette's & vhs tapes. Do I have any interest in buying stuff on tape now. No. None.

 

My youngest son (26 yrs old) purchases cassettes of new indie bands. Many are issued as limited releases. IIRC, most of the bands do not have LP's available.
Not sure where he gets that 'collector mentality"???

 

My digital doesn't sound dead. Perhaps your digital is sickly?

 

Back in the older days, you could truly achieve very high quality cassette recordings and playback. That was when we had hi-bias and metal tape with Dolby HX Pro and Dolby S. Oh, wait...some people claim not using Dolby was better. Whatever...today's indie tapes certainly can't be of any real quality, and I don't think the current, mostly millennial fans, are looking for quality sound. I think they are into the novelty because they didn't grow up in a world with cassettes. All that rhetoric about organic natural sound is nothing more than rebellion against digital...as they check their Facebook messages on their cellphones and do their homework on their $1500 Macbooks.

 

Per Why Does Digital Sound Better than Analog? « Dvorak News Blog

1. "Digital sounds dead and lifeless on its own, like a brittle piece of glass.
   
   That’s why ALL MODERN DAY RECORDINGS ARE RAN THROUGH HIGH END ANALOG GEAR “before” they GO BACK TO DISK during the mastering process. It gives them the “little” bit of life that they do have.
   
   …forgot to mention that a LARGE amount of albums are still being recorded on TAPE, then dumped into Pro Tools for mixing. This allows a more natural type of TAPE saturation to take place on the transients. You can NOT duplicate tape compression on digital.
   
   Final word: anyone who states flat out without a doubt that digital sounds better than analog doesn't know what they’re talking about. Analog is involved in ALL modern day recordings in one way or another. There is no “pure” digital product being released by anyone that matters.
   
   
2. the problem is that music is not “perfect”. Music is a living breathing creature and analog allows that music to do that. Digital music can never completely replicate itself. Something is always lost in the copy."

 

To quote a potion of your post with a .....

 

Per https://www.quora.com/Do-audio-cass...barely-reaching-the-resolution-of-film-camera

"They ARE analog, so for analog recordings, at least you’re keeping things in the same domain, without any conversion from analog to digital and back. It’s unfortunately very hard to keep bandwidth and noise and distortion anywhere comparable to a good reel to reel or LP with cassettes. Nakamichis were the first to achieve what could be termed “high fidelity” in their amazing cassette decks, enabled by Ray Dolby’s famed noise reduction system, first released on Advent, KLH and Wollensak transports (most of them OEM by Nakamichi before they released cassette recorders under their own brand).

With metal tape and Dolby (B, C, S, HxPro, not all of which were on all of their decks) and proper calibration of the tape and Dolby levels and good head alignment, you could switch from the record head to the playback head with almost no audible difference. No cassette deck could keep full bandwidth to 15–20kHz at 0dB recording levels; luckily very little high frequency content is at any level over -20dB or so, so it largely works out to be listenable.

Other cassette decks were also comparable. Tandberg, Revox, BIC (at 3 3/4 ips, which helps performance a lot, but is totally nonstandard for everyone else), some of the better Aiwas and Sonys and Pioneers came pretty close to the Nakamichis.

They would produce recordings that might more closely resemble the LPs they were most often recorded from, and many LPs of the period had warmer tonal balance than the early CD releases, which were often cold, clinical and two-dimensional. Eventually CD mastering and electronics improved, but then the “loudness wars” started around the turn of the millennium, and many CDs ended up with much LESS dynamic range than their LP counterparts, despite their theoretical potential.

So analog tape recordings on very good calibrated machines with excellent tape from analog sources of very high quality can sound surprisingly good.

Prerecorded cassettes, on the other hand, may be “official,” but were almost always duplicated at high speed, which loses most of the top octave or two, no matter what machine you play it on.

So the best cassettes you’ll find are the home made tapes by audiophiles who wanted to make the best copies they could. Only a few companies experimented with real time copies, and they cost quite a bit more, but sounded much better. I think Nakamichi, MFSL, JVC and maybe Denon issued some 1 to 1 releases, but none was a big seller, which is too bad, as it might have encouraged higher quality standards from other tape duplicators and labels.

One more small caveat: home made tapes (actually, ANY tapes, though prerecorded tapes were somewhat standardized) should ideally be played on the same machine that recorded them, or at least on a machine that allows you to adjust the playback azimuth (some Nakamichis did this automatically, others had manual adjustments) to match the original cassette recorder, in order to extract the best high frequency content from a given tape. But then you need to recalibrate it when you play the next tape. This is only a good idea on 3-head machines where it’s easy to recalibrate the playback head since the record head hasn’t been moved from it’s original calibrated position, so the next thing you record would provide a perfect source to recalibrate it by ear or meter."

 

As pictured in my current (temporary) Avatar, my father's paternal grandfather's brother's son...Lock Martin...who played Gort in "The Day The Earth Stood Still" would undoubtedly proclaim..."Don't Be So Sure Digital isn't Somewhat Dead Sounding without Mixing In Analog/Tubes/Analog Processing."

 

Anyone referring to "digital" in this day and age and treating it as unacceptable across the board by virtue of it being digital per se, is talking out their hat. Or their ar5e, and probably both. Principally as it demonstrates a lack of sophistication in their analysis.

 

I own about 10 cassette decks and 3 of them are Amazon.com: JVC TD-W354BK Dual Cassette Deck (Discontinued by Manufacturer): Home Audio & Theater

• Dolby HX PRO for extended high-frequency response during recording
• Microphone input with level control; pitch adjust; full-logic controls simplify operation and minimize tape wear
• Compu Calibration adjusts bias, equalization, and recording level to ensure flat frequency response and low distortion