Cassette tapes revived in Japan

It was a format I missed altogether. Weren't they supposed to sound 'close' to CD?

I remember seeing them in the shops, though. Pricey little buggers as I recall.

 

They sounded pretty close to CD, yeah. I just couldn't engage with them on any kind of level. To me they were purely a replacement for blank cassettes/CD-R's when making 'mixtapes' and in that respect, they gave me no joy whatsoever, so off they went.

 

Are they worth anything now?

Edit. There seem to be an abundance of Mariah Carey titles on eBay... They don't go for pence either..

 

Unlikely

 

Worth couple of pounds!

The Great Cassette Experiment - The Joy of Cassettes!:Amazon.co.uk:Kindle Store »

 

What is needed is a 3 head deck with the best heads that can now be made, closed loop dual capstan direct drive with no belts at or a design that is super easy to change the belts on. Dolby S HX PRO or the best that can be now implemented (studio Dolby?), a truly accurate auto tape bias system, easy to align heads that are easy to access to clean and change, VERY accurate meters, premium construction throughout with fantastic shielding & total power supply/critical circuits isolation, short direct signal paths, a direct clean input selection, the ability to turn off all display lights, avoid op amps, dual headphone jacks with separate premium amplifiers, front mic inputs, cassette shell dampening, tape pad lift, no auto reverse but song search function, dual inputs fixed and variable, robust construction with internal circuit dampening and a set of true balanced inputs/outputs, a very well designed remote, variable AC power input selection, basically a deck that stomps the very best that was ever made, and bring it in under $3500.

And make some killer blanks available as well as premium prerecorded as the MFSL tapes were, 1 to 1 duplication.

 

Bands mastered albums to minidisc in the 90s like they did to DAT?

Must've missed that

 

A top of the line cassette deck can easily do 20-20k.

My Pioneer Elite CT 93 frequency response:
Record/playback is basically near ruler flat from 20-20k at -20 and +/- 2db at 0 DB level with Dolby S/Metal tape.

Playback only test shows +/- 1 DB when using type II & IV .





















ato

 

Where, where? I've already my cycling gear on and a big bag in my pocket...

 

Barwell Tip

 

"Close" maybe, but there were some weird artifacts that would often show up due to the compression scheme they used. I bought a portable MD recorder late in the game when they got cheap, just to play around with and make field recordings and such, but I was never happy with the quality of sound those things produced.

 

Thought so - I Googled to find where the nearest one to you would be.

But I'm a bit busy for the rest of the day and it's rained recently. Once upon a time I might have dashed down there...

 

Were they meant to be anything else? They were basically the first method of being able to digitally record for non-audio professionals and were great for doing compilations before CD-Rs took off properly. I know they released albums on minidisc, but as far as I and imagine most were concerned it was primarly a replacement for cassette recording - and you can't blame the labels for trying to flog albums on the format.

 

Read these claims on this forum often, but how come when an archive release has mastered something from cassette the frequency spectrum graph always shows that there is no audio content above 15/16khz, just hiss?

 

I don't know what they are doing wrong but I've recorded CD test tones using Dolby S / HX Pro on Maxell Metal Vertex tapes and 20k is there, clean and strong. It's no fluke.

 

Duran Duran- New Religion, US Capitol 4XT-12211

 

..and you've got something that won't sound much better than MD.. and with none of the editing capabilties or software robustness. I might buy it for $350. That's all I'm gonna pay for snake oil these days.

 

Sorry, my real world experience tells me different, far from snake oil.

 

Throw up a graph from Audacity, and it'll show it even clearer that there's nothing above 16khz apart from hiss. Certainly no commercial cassette releases have real audio content above 15/16khz.

 

I'd just like to have a high quality portable stereo player that I could use to make decent rips of some old cassettes that I have, purely for the sake of nostalgia. I'd go the used route, but I'm well acquainted with the way that rubber belts tend to disintegrate in the span of 20–30 years.

 

I posted that because I thought it was unique, the other examples I have indeed have a lower cut-off
A-ha-We're Looking For The Whales, 1986 US Warner
I'm just having fun, I'm not claiming one way or the other on SQ issues

 

As we know Nightlife is riddled with clipping (peaks hitting 0) The cassette of course solves this. They sound near identical, but less compressed. The big winner for me was that Duran Duran Rio, My US Harvest lp is dull in comparison...
The only benefit some of these cassettes have may come into play when the compact disc edition is completely bricked to all hell...

 

A friend of mine had one for the same purpose, and also used it as a recording device for electronic music production on a sampling workstation. At the time, software for recording music was very expensive as were portable DAT recorders.

 

I bought a minidisc because I am a big taper of live events (no, not concerts, but life in general). I thought the sound was very good and clean, but the splitting of tracks and jumping between tracks was very awkward and prone to mistake. I would frequently mistakenly tape over a take on the minidisc because of miscuing. I much preferred the "human speed ergonomics" of cassettes for live taping. At least if you screwed up, you might only lose 2 seconds of something and not instantly lose a whole section. It's probably because they were so damn SMALL with tiny toggle switches! I still have my Sony MzR900, though.

 

Why?

Cassette's were horrible, background noise was bad, they fell apart and they did not sound nearly as good as vinyl. Cassette's were the worst possible format.