Could a cassette tape be used as a master?

That damn hysteresis curve. Gets me every time...

 

I'm a cassette freak. I love tapes, always have. My main player is a ZX-7 Willy Herman set up for me. It was the deck he recommended to me so far it has been stunning. But, I always pay attention to the tapes characteristics when I record. I've learned that the hard way.

 

I had a guide to all the best tapes back in the day. Most chromes are at 0Vu for best sound low noise all of that. I try to peak right at the Dolby level. Some ferrics I take a bit higher. I always use Dolby C. For chromes without Dolby the max ever is 0vu. It's worked for me.

 

Some of the last cassette decks - with Dolby S - sounded virtually identical to CD. You could copy a disc and it was difficult to differentiate the CD from the tape copy. By the end cassette could sound at least as good as any virgin vinyl ever did, without the fragility.

I'd imagine the vinyl will hold up better over time if not played - tape has issues with print thru and whatnot - but when it comes to analog consumer audio formats cassette died just as it reached its peak.

Not bad for a format originally intended for dictation...

 

Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works 85-92 - supposedly mastered to cassette and survived a mangling by a cat. Recently re released in a gorgeous sounding vinyl pressing...

http://www.allmusic.com/album/selected-ambient-works-85-92-mw0000213259

 

Yeah, I'm gonna have to just kinda disagree with you there. On both points.

 

Cassette is not properly speaking a mastering medium. It has too much inconsistency, azimuth stability on them is only fair. too sensitive to dropouts, speed errors, mastering engineers will do the best they can. But most of them cringe when this is the source recording. Makes their life hell. Cassettes are a very fragile and delicate animal.

 

With both the decks and tape formulas at their highest level of quality they made cassette virtually indistinguishable from the source. It was a golden era that's for sure.

 

On the Random Abstract CD by Branford Marsalis it says "Due to Miscommunication, Yesterday's and Sleep's Theme were mastered from a TDK Cassette tape".

 

It could and it has been but it's a terrible idea from any rational viewpoint.

 

Springsteen said he carried that tape around in his pocket until he realized that tapes was the album. The way I understand it, the engineers had to do some work on it to make it releasable.

 

I remember the same, especially to cut the record. That turned out to be quite the trick but is considered the best copy of the tape.

 

I don't have a handy source, but I believe the Go-Go's "Vacation" (just the title track) was mixed to cassette. My understanding is that the sound was preferred over other formats. Also, by some strange coincidence, that song was one of the first, if not THE first, cassette singles.

Husker Du put out a live album from the 80's that was a board tape, and it sounds like it, full of dropouts and slathered in lots of effects(presumably for the mains), but hey, it's Husker Du!


Dan

 

801 Live was recorded on cassette.

Not all cassettes are created equal. The best cassettes recorded on Dolby SR are really clean and good sounding.

"Dolby SR is heralded by many as enabling analogue recordings to sound cleaner and more transparent than the best digital recordings. As an additional benefit, it is reasonably tolerant of level errors or tape speed changes, which means that a degree of varispeed may be used without ruining the sound. Due to its high cost, Dolby SR is generally only found in professional systems, usually in the form of an add-on rack system or as plug-in cards."

 

My friend has a 1912 Sophie Tucker blues that was mastered to Cylinder and mechanically transferred to Lacquer 78 in 1926 and still sounds more dynamic than Aimy Whitehouse.
So anything is possible.
Cassette on a good machine with metal evaporated tape can sound good
But only on that machine,with that Dolby and that azimuth
I heard such a recording of Rain forest indians hunting howler monkey in hi canopy forest, made on a WM DC6V, it was entrancing.

 

A lot of jazz records in the fifties and sixties were recorded on Ampex tape recorders. The most popular jazz record of it's time, Shelley Manne/André Previn/LeRoy Vinegar's "My Fair Lady" is an example.

 

This may have already been mentioned, but Guided by Voices recorded many of their classic albums with an 8-track Portastudio.

 

Eurythmics recorded Sweet Dreams on a Portastudio as well... I think the record sounds great - cool without being cold, and the mix is transparent without being thin.

Whatever. We did some A/B comparisons of CD with Dolby S cassettes, and could barely tell the difference, even on a fairly mid-priced Sony deck. Given vinyl's noise floor, wow and flutter, rumble and other issues, a high-end Dolby S deck (in its prime, anyhow) would have little difficulty replicating that.

It's kinda sad - cassette died right after it finally achieved true high-fidelity (at fairly reasonable prices, anyhow).

 

Dolby SR sounded very good but, as has been said, came out too late. Analog was already going away in favor of digital. One of the last great analog major band, major label, hit recordings, the Grateful Dead's In The Dark (1987), was recorded using Dolby SR. It's prominently credited on the jacket. The story goes that when they were getting ready to do the recording, the Dead had to decide would it be an analog or digital one? They set up a split feed system so they could do a shoot-out between a state of the art digital multi-track recorder and a 2" tape using Dolby SR. The band recorded a demo track or two. During playback, it wasn't even close. The analog recording blew away the digital one.

 

Thing is it just sounds so real. I've always loved that and the fact I could do it myself with some patience and care.

 

I haven't found that to be the case. I've got a Sony DAT recorder from the 90s -- it still works great and the copious amount of DATs I recorded on it play fine. Go figure...

 

Yes, but what about other peoples tapes? I have seen DAT machines which could not play DAT tapes from the machine in the control room across the hall. And Sonys are among the worst for that. And that was when these were brand new machines.

 

Dolby SR was also not intended for cassette use. Not stable enough. Dolby S was a cheaper compromise more forgiving of cassette machine instabilities. And every one has a zillion of them. Not a professional or mastering medium.

 

Cassette sound is more stable if the same machine is used for a particular tape.

 

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I also remember some buzz about Janis Ian recording a track or 2 on a Minidisc recorder to help promote another lost format. Probably fine for an MP3 release.