When/How did Casssette become 'HiFi?'

For me, it started with this machine: the TEAC A-400. I logged many miles of tape on a deck like this one, and was always impressed with its performance, especially using CrO2 tape.

 

Most of us didn't have top end tables at the time. I was in high school and had a BIC, and later a Technics belt drive, both with relatively inexpensive cartridges. My 2 head Pioneer deck could make really respectable copies of LPs with TDK SA tape.

 

Advent also put out some cassettes to 'demo' their decks - they were amazing in SQ (for the time); better than my Thorens TT could produce. I figure they must have been specially tuned for the decks.

 

Cassettes were certainly Hi-Fi back in the 70s & 80s. If you used a quality deck with three heads, and a high grade tape like Maxell or TDK, you could switch as you were recording between the source and what was being put down on the tape, and you really couldn't tell the difference if the deck was properly calibrated and cleaned. And I personally preferred not using Dolby at all, so that was not a factor.
Cassettes also offered the advantage of being compact enough to play in the car, in a portable tape machine, and for sending through the mail (for trading live recordings between collectors).
As for pre-recorded CTs of commercial albums, well, many were unfortunately not made using quality tapes. As a result they often did not compare to the sound of an LP. You really had to make your own to be certain to get the best quality, for the most part (MSFL cassettes were an exception).
However, let's not forget, in the late 1980s, when vinyl sales were decreasing, it was cassettes that took over in terms of sales. They outsold LPs (and later CDs) for many years.

 

Yeh, the cassette deck always sounded a lot better than the Thorens TT I tried to use in the car...

 

Or, recorded on Chrome tape with the appropriate bias setting, but played back with Normal bias.

 

I always turned off Dolby playback.

Chrome tape helped and record companies were putting out a better product.

My stereo at the time they sounded good to me.

 

I would put the date to the mid-late 1970's, when Dolby B was established, chrome tapes were becoming available, the machines had reasonable speed consistency and reliability. And they were reasonably affordable.

Now I'm not saying that these machines (or Dolby) was perfect, but they need to be seen in the context of the day. An average hifi back then wans't very good, and a good quality hifi back then could compete with some at more of an entry level today. Cassettes became hifi when the quality - for most people, even using a quality low-noise standard position tape - was so close to what they got from their turntables they didn't care about the difference.

These old cassette decks don't cut it with today's hifi. But they certainly did back then, for the majority of people.

 

I know I did. Yes there was more hiss but more treble extension. Dolby always sounded muffled to me, especially on the cheaper decks. My old Tandberg had a much "better" sounding Dolby, though part of that was the excellent analog section and the better heads. I would often use the Tandberg as a stand-alone line preamp, that's how nice it was.

something like this one:

 

It was around 1978 when I discovered quality sound from cassette decks by manufacturers like Sanyo, Sansui, Kenwood, and TEAC, and they had Dolby B.

Dolby B isn't bad. The trick is that everything has to be properly calibrated.

 

The transition for me was 1979, when I purchased my second GTO. My former '69 GTO had a Kraco 8 track mounted in the glove compt, and all was good, even had a Craig 12 wpc power amp/booster. (why did the new owner have to total it? ) My first cassette experience was a '79 Mercedes 450SL with a stock cassette player. The car was still unsold, a brand new dealer car sent to me to repair a small scratch (I did dealer work while in college) So I took the opportunity, purchased Poco "Legend" In the Heart of the Night (Dolby B engaged) man that sounded nice. The high frequency response of that system impressed me, better than the 8 tracks. I soon purchased a Craig 12 wpc cassette player for my '70 GTO, and Radio Shack 40-1260 high power full range 6 x 9's with whizzer cone. Anyone familiar with these speakers will attest to their great full range sound and long throw, authoritative bass response. The 40-1260 is hard to find, and two known versions, foam roll surround small whizzer or accordion larger whizzer.. mine were cloth accordion surround!

 

correction: make that a 1980 silver Mercedes (fall 1979) and the speaker is 40-1265, wide accordion cloth surround, long excursion, a slightly smaller cone than std 6x9

 

I like dolby b, always play dolby tapes with the dolby on, but I have to admit, for most things, chrome at 70eq, which is what most decks that have only one selector or auto select will record at, without dolby at all, is my favourite. Even though normal bias tapes have better bass, so probably better for some stuff.

Does anyone know why, when it came to commercially release chrome tapes, they switched to using dolby and then dolby at normal eq? Why not just not use dolby at all, that is what the 70 ms eq setting was made for, as a noise reduction process? To my ears it's one of the best sounds you can hear, a chrome tape with no dolby, recorded and played back at chrome eq setting.

 

Who said cassettes were hi-fi?

 

With the improvement of tape formulas and Dolby B noise reduction catapulted the compact cassette into the hi-fi realm. Although they did start using Dolby, pre-recorded cassettes mostly stuck with the older, cheaper tape formulas. Even those pre-recorded on Type II tapes weren't as good as the blank type-II tapes you could buy. The companies that made the pre-recorded cassettes used high speed duplication which wasn't as good as same speed dupes. I could take a record, record it onto a Maxell cassette and my tape sounded better than any pre-recorded cassette. For even better sound, some tape deck manufacturers started making 2-speed decks with a 3 3/4 ips setting. Great for home recording but I don't recall any car decks that played that speed.

 

Actually I think it's a bit of a misconception, the high speed dubbing on dual tape decks wasn't the same process that the high speed dubbing bins from professional tape companies for mass producing tapes were using. From what I heard, the high speed of the huge bins they used for making tapes was actually beneficial.

 

I have a three head Sony ES cassette machine. To maximize sound quality you put in a fresh tape, select record-calibrate then play. This records a test tone on the tape which is output from the play head and displayed on the left and right level bargraphs. The "bias" and "cal level" knobs are then adjusted until the bargraph levels are even.
This methodology/tech therefore optimizes the recording with the very tape itself. On (never needed to use metal) every tape I used, other than a $1.00 retail dictation cassette produces very Fi results.
This is with dolby off. I know you would find the sound quality to be surprising. BTW it was a ~$600
machine in 1991.
I made cassettes with it mainly for playback in a very nice Blaupunkt Cheyenne AM/FM/Cassette deck in several vehicles.

 

Cassette started to be seen as a hi-fi product in the early 70s when stereo cassette came out and better tape formulations started coming out. My father had a Sylvania cassette deck that he got at the company store in the early 70s. Sylvania CT-160W Stereo Single Cassette Deck Even to me as a child at the time it didn't sound good compared to records on his console. In the later 70s or early 80s he got a Technics tape deck with Dolby B and it was much better.

 

I also had three of those Sony machines. But, I always did my final bias tweaking by ear after running the calibration.

The problem with those Sony machines is that, by the 90s, Sony machines were flimsy and didn't last long before developing problems. But, man, they are the best-sounding decks I ever owned!

 

one of my engineering profs. said so in the early 1970s

he proved it by inviting a bunch of us to his small apt., where he proceeded to play music on his original Nak 1000 for us - we were all wowed

 

I remember drooling over a Teac 450 at a dealer in London, Ontario when I was there for school. Had to buy the Advent due to lack of funds at the time but it started me on the route to Nakamichi, Aiwa and Teac S decks later on. Still have tapes recorded from school FM broadcasts that sound LoFi but the content is classic for the period ('70s). At the time I was more interested in having a stream of fresh tunes while my LPs were safe at home. Sometimes content trumps quality.

 

Well, invite him over here to defend his thesis.

 

Let's not forget the debut of Sony's Walkman in 1979, which also played a big big part in the acceptance of real 'mobile HiFi", and helped propel cassettes dominance in the late 1970s, well in the to late 1990s, and the advent of serious competitors, like MD, DAT, MP3. And Finally the iPod which killed 'cassette HiFi' once and for all.

 

did you read "engineering profs. said so in the early 1970s" - how old do you think his grave is now?