Cassette tapes revived in Japan

{PUCK!! They are making a comeback! Now every LX5 on ebay is between $250 - $400. I bought my working one on ebay for $35 bucks 15 years ago. Ouch! And I threw it in the trash when I moved across country to save space! Double ouch!

 

Yeah but what the heck would you have listened to in the car back then?

 

Nothing new at all. I was asked over 18 months ago, by my local record shop, if I had any cassettes I'd be willing to sell ?
Finally got around to it a few months back. $.50 for each title, I walked out with $18.00 I didn't have, when I walked in.
So what ?
Who cares ?
The cassette never claimed to have anything to do with SQ, it was about convenience.
.

 

I had a variety of brands of tape decks in the 80s. I used Dolby C as far back as 1983, but quit using it just a year later because I didn't like the sound I got if I had nothing but Dolby B on a deck, and the sound was never right. So, I went back to B until S came along in the 90s.

My favorite brand of tape was TDK, but also used Maxell, and all other brands. The only ones I hated was BASF and Sony. They never sounded right.

Once I got a DAT, then a computer for CD-R, I never looked back.

 

Only because its users didn't mind about the digital copy protection scheme built into it.

 

I always fancied a DAT recorder. I'm not sure they ever properly launched here..

They were supposed to be the next big thing.

 

They were until the record labels effectively killed it for consumer use in the late 80s. Digital copy protection.

 

I thought it was recordable CD players that saw DAT and Minidisc off..

So many formats. Even then!

 

No, it was mainly CBS, now Sony Music that killed it off. The other formats didn't come out until the early 90s. b DAT was still around then, but no one bought them, and only studios used pro DAT, which had no copy protection.

 

Am I correct in my memory that DAT tapes could not be duped to another DAT tape? I had a record seller friend back in the mid 90's that catered to hip-hop producers selling rare albums with "beats". When he would find something really rare I remember he would make 10 or so DAT copies from the source vinyl which hip-hop producers would still pay a premium for.

Anyway, I have a Onkyo TA-2026 cassette deck in my system and I make tapes now and then. I had this deck back in the 80's and bought a nicely preserved one two years or so ago for nostalgia. It makes nice tapes that are fine for casual listening. I very much enjoy the old technology and I don't expect any unreasonable results from it.

That said I would like to get a upper tier Nak that has been serviced at some point.

 

I remember owning a version of 'Rank' by the Smiths on DAT. It was an official release from Rough Trade. LP/CD/CASS......and DAT. Very odd.

 

"The cassette never claimed to have anything to do with SQ, it was about convenience."

Nailed it ^^^^

As far as records vs cassettes, wow and flutter always bothered me more than surface noise.
I got rid of my 8-tracks and my cassettes but always hung onto those LP's.
Look how smart I was without meaning to be.

 

Having used a high end cassette recorder (Aiwa XK-007) alongside a TOTL reel-to-reel (Studer A810) in a studio environment, the cassette easily beat the r-t-r at 7 1/2 ips, but not at 15 ips.
It actually also sounded more like the master tape than the digital copies made, even though they were ultimately superior (the 15ips was my favourite). The source was my mixdown master, 1/2" 30ips.

So, I can say for certain that quality cassette is a worthwhile format that has a charm and signature to it, and is a very convenient analogue alternative to vinyl and reel-to-reel.

 

i still buy used ones for 25 cents when i see them. my car still has a tape deck and i play them when i run errands. However, i don't see why other people would want them.

 

Read the spec on this good standard (not TOTL) cassette deck from the early 90's...

Aiwa AD-F810 - Manual - Three Head Cassette Recorder - HiFi Engine »

0.035% W/F is basically the same as a Technics SL1200. Good enough for you?

 

If the only thing responsible for wow and flutter was the playback deck then sure.

Wait ... the early 90's?
Cassettes were part of our life a couple of decades prior to that.
Never did like the dolby thing or the alignment thing for tapes not made on the deck you are playing back through ...
Cassettes ... good lord.

 

Nakamichi, Pioneer, Sony etc. etc. were making excellent decks by the end of 70s/early 80s.

No major problems with transferring to digital my old tapes recorded on Nak 480, WMD6C etc. using a Technics RSAZ7 (1996, $300)

Recording on some high end Naks, they were generally only good on that deck, but this was the exception rather the rule. Actually, this also applies to some high-end RTRs too, such as the legendary ATR102.

For a couple of precious recordings, I sent the tapes to a professional duplicator, experienced with azimuth alignment. He had a Studer A710 and a standalone Dolby unit, and I was very pleased with the resulting 24/96 transfer.

 

Well said.

 

I don't own so many cassettes. I was into LPs when I was a kid but I find this revival amusing. It's something I never would have thought that anyone would think was cool again.

 

Minidisc used a audio codec that was related to Sony's own ATRAC audio compression (used on their digital audio player which could not play MP3s). It compressed the audio data to 15% of the original (if I calculated correctly that works out to 96kbps). I remember reading that more people thought DCC (a competitor to Minidisc) sounded the same as CD than did those who thought Minidisc sounded the same as CD. To me they sounded better than cassette, which is what I cared about since I was looking for a cassette replacement.

The format stored data via an optical magnetic technique that allowed the disc to be rewritten (and my understanding was that it was semi-permanent). One of the unique features of the format was that you could delete songs and record them on the disc without having to re-record the disc.

Minidisc was also designed with portable use in mind. It basically played the music via internal memory rather than playing it directly from the disc. I read during one demonstration that they representative took the disc out of a running player, held it up, and put it back in the player without an interruption of the music.

One thing that really hurt Mindisc was the cost of the players. I considered purchasing a home deck a while after the format was introduced, but passed when I found out the lowest cost deck was $1,000, added to that was the cost of a portable player and I decided to go with DCC (where the cost of the deck and the portable was less than the cost of the DCC deck and the tapes played longer and cost less than blank minidiscs).

It's not just the portable cassette players, it is also with the portable CD players too. I saw this coming, so I picked up a few good portable CD players while they were still available.

I disagree about cassette being the worst format. 8-track was far worse than cassette due to the inherent issues with the format. Among them:

• Wow and flutter issues due to the endless loop nature of the format.
  
• Inability to cue up a track (if you wanted to hear a song again you had to wait until it came around again)
• Large size (you could fit two cassettes in cases in the same space as one 8-track tape)
• Often songs would be cut in half (part of the song would begin on Program One, and then end on Program Two) to avoid long gaps of silence in the album.
  
• Albums would often be reordered to accommodate the format (related to the previous point).

As far as the sound quality of cassettes, it depended on the types of tapes used. Often, the sound quality of pre-recorded tapes were not very good because of the methods used to make them (using Type I tapes and high-speed duplication), although an effort was made to release better tapes towards the end of the format's dominance (such as release music on Type II tapes biased for Type I playback). But with a little effort and good equipment you could make excellent sounding tapes yourself, ones much better than the pre-recorded tapes.

I'm not sure what type of copy protection was used with the original DAT, but I know they introduced Serial Copy Management System (SCMS) with later digital audio recorders. What SCMS did was allow you to make a copy of an original, but you couldn't make a copy from that copy.

 

New music store dedicated to cassettes opens in Toronto »

 

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I always thought of Dolby C as 'extra strength' Dolby B. TDK tapes were great, the BASF orange jobs I used when I went away to college and funds were tight. Hey, I feel the nostalgia coming on.
Seriously, cassettes were fun and a big part of my young life, from age 10 to my early 30's.Recording the John Peel show on Monday nights with finger hovering over the pause bottom. He hardly ever interrupted the track, 'cos he cared about things like that. I sometimes let the tape run because he usually had something interesting or amusing to say. Yes, great days. But I don't need to go back.

 

I had that Yamaha deck (or a very similar model) I clearly remember the 'play trim' and bias adjust knobs. It was the last tape deck I bought. It sounded really good, better than my Dolby S Sony of similar vintage. I used it mostly to makes tapes of the John Peel show.

 

I'm happy for you. But no-one is going to shell out serious money when they can get far better analogue sound from vinyl. Cassette storage never looked 'cool' either... crappy little cases in crappy little racks. That's my real world experience.