What's with the tapes revival?

is this a fad or are they actually worth listening to? I haven't listened to tapes since the 90s, is there any benefit or are they as bad as I remember? Is this how my parents feel about me listening to LPs again over cds?

 

It's a fad. There is no reasonable technical reason to have them. The people that are buying tapes are hipsters, or do so for nostalgia IMO. Move on.

 

They're selling around town for $2-5. Saw a few in stores. Not big sellers but steady I think. I haven't seen old people buying them though. Only younger kids who don't even look old enough to have seen their parents with them. lol.

 

If I see a cassette version of an album I don't have on CD yet for a quarter or a dollar, I usually pick it up so I can rip it to my harddrive. I got some good Cars (Door to Door) and Starship (Knee Deep in the Hoopla) for just a quarter each at Half Price Books earlier this year and it compelled me to get them on CD as well.

 

Reel to Reel sounds better than everything by a country mile. The little cassette tapes are rubbish sounding but there is a collector market for them. But as a fellow audiophile/dealer noted that he sees lots of people who collect all sorts of things but don't actually listen to it or even particularly love the sound of it. One guy has something like 20 pairs of all the Rogers LS-3/5a and variants on a shelf on his wall.

Of course cassette tapes can still sound quite good if you buy quality blank tapes and have a high quality 3 head cassette deck - you can make a cassette sound really excellent. But it's a lot of work and it can only sound as good as the source recording (which was usually a CD). So you record your CD onto a cassette and you would be hard pressed to tell the difference - but then since you have the CD anyway - why bother.

I would love to get into reel to reel after hearing them - but the problem is the machines are ridiculously expensive and if you don't get the 15ips recordings then they're pointless for sound quality. And nothing seems to be available at 15ips. Most everything is at 31/4 meh.

 

There's a tapes revival?

 

No revival for me as I NEVER QUIT USING THEM.

Why?

I have a great digital setup, a very good vinyl set up.

So again, why?

BECAUSE IT SOUNDS GREAT.

A top of the line 3 head deck, Dolby S, HX PRO, Maxell Metal Vertex tape, I can make CD dubs and needle drops that are indistinguishable from the source. I have a ton of stuff of my own on cassette tape bounced down from my reel to reel and it sounds near identical.

So much misinformation on the cassette.

Fact is I can and have played a CD and my cassette dub of it and no one yet has been able to tell the difference. Same with my needle drops.

Rag on, I need a good laugh.

 

But... how do you really feel? Don't hold back now.

Srsly though, I don't think anyone's gonna 'rag' on you. Not after showing so much passion for what you like.

People respect that.
.

 

I love when someone doesn't have anything else to say...so they call something like this a fad or nostalgia.

It's like calling someone who loves CD's a hipster. Chasing a fad. In love with shiny objects. Nostalgic.

It's trying to put something/someone down...while not really saying anything.

 

I had my first cassette deck in the early 70s. I remember what a pain in the ass it was to find a particular song. There were other drawbacks as well. If somebody wants to play with cassettes, more power to them.

 

"Of course cassette tapes can still sound quite good if you buy quality blank tapes and have a high quality 3 head cassette deck - you can make a cassette sound really excellent. But it's a lot of work and it can only sound as good as the source recording (which was usually a CD). So you record your CD onto a cassette and you would be hard pressed to tell the difference - but then since you have the CD anyway - why bother."

Great post with a compelling question.... Why bother?

But the better compelling question is, if you have a seriously sorted out cassette rig, and you know how to make tapes that sound amazing, why would one NOT bother?

Obviously pure analog to cassette is the first best reason, analog reel to reel and "true" analog vinyl dubbed properly to cassette can sound VERY, VERY close to the original source, and that cassette of favs is much easier to play, make a cassette of your fav reel to reel and vinyl cuts, sit back and enjoy the long playing ANALOG cassette mix you made, and have less wear on your precious vinyl and reels.

There really is a lot of good reasons to bother, if one really wants to.
The results when properly using state of the art cassette decks and tapes are not poor by any means but rather VERY close to the original source material, many times even indistinguishable from the source material.

We stress using the best CD players, the best DACs, the best turntables, the best cartridges, best source, but 99 times out of 100 times when the discussion about cassettes is brought up it is immediately watered down by all these folks whose chime in with their "experience with them" which usually revolves around a cheap, bad home deck and worse yet some crappy car deck playing a terrible prerecorded tape.

Sad fact is there really was no state of the art car cassette deck ever made, regardless of price.

Why? It takes far too much footprint/room to make a closed loop dual capstan 3 motor or direct drive deck.
No one ever made one that good for a car.

I had Sony's best car cassette deck ever, a high end ES Mobile head unit and although it was one of the best car decks ever it still was not as good as an average decent home deck.

Then folks who are ragging on cassette have only heard bad tapes either prerecorded or poorly home recorded. So...from all that we then get to hear how bad cassette really is.

It's been said ad nauseam, but you need a really good deck, yes there were some great sounding mid line decks, but to really extract the best out of a cassette and it's small tape you need a top of then line 3 head, calibrated and set up properly.

And if you really want to hear what a cassette is truly capable of when recording sources you need Dolby S and HX PRO.

Until one has heard state of the art cassette, it's not fair to judge it.

Yeah, CD sounds similar even with a crappy $30 player or a $5k player. Unfortunately cassette requires the best, but when you do have the best you will hear why some folks including myself have never stopped using them for the last few decades.

 

Speaking as a cassette hater from way back, this is largely an inaccurate summation of those of us who dislike cassettes. I have never once met an actual audio engineer who had any time for cassettes. Cassettes were designed with exactly one thing in mind: portability. They were never designed as an audiophile experience. They never achieved that and they never will - no matter how great a very small group of people seem to think they are. The quality of the cassette comes down to, not the source, but the cassette itself. MFSL tried to make them an audiophile experience for a bit but that effort didn't amount to much.

For my part, I've worked with your highfalutin Nak Dragon super-duper Dolby HX-Pro'd Blissy-S loveliness (the TV studio I worked in for a time had one) and found it to be what I've always believed it to be: inferior to everything else except 3/ ¾ open reel. Before CD's became recordable, I gave it every chance I could. I owned a Yamaha Natural Sound (there's a laugh) cassette deck for years (I honestly don't remember the model number). As soon as CD-R's showed up, it sat unused.

The deck in my car was an Alpine (this was many years ago. When car CD players debuted, my cassette player was replaced as soon as I could afford it.

As of now I own no cassette deck and I have absolutely no desire to obtain another. If others want that experience, more power to them. I am happy to be rid of it and I know I'm not alone. My hope is that this fad will vanish quickly.

Ed

 

They were designed for at least one other thing - cheapskates (or teenagers that didn't have enough money) that didn't want to shell out for records, but instead taped the records of their friends or from the radio

 

'Guardians of the Galaxy' has done wonders for the Walkman's popularity, try pricing a nice one of those!
I got a kick out of showing my daughter my small tape collection and player, she thought it was amazing lol

 

Well, what did I say?

Yup, here we are folks, one of the many who will spew their venom.

FWIW, A Dragon is far from the best ever cassette deck, sonically speaking. Fact is the lower line, cheaper naks were actually FAR better overall sonically, (no diss is meant to you loving Dragon owners, I understand why you have one, I really do).

Fact is the Dragon just had too much going on. Cool deck, but too many cooks spoiling the analog soup sadly so.

BTW Mr. UN-informed.....

The Dragon NEVER HAD HX PRO OR DOLBY S!!!!!!

Your citing the Dragon and it having what it NEVER HAD frankly shows your lack of true cassette knowledge.

Thanks for making your ignorance on the subject so readily apparent so fast.

But I digress, you are the know it all, again, as usual.

Thanks for you non-informing post.

You've succeeded in typing a lot that said absolutely nothing.

Rock on. Hope you feel better.

I had a good laugh, (as my Aiwa XK-S9000 plays an astounding sounding tape of a grand piano recorded on reel to reel and dubbed down to cassette).

I was there in the room, heard the live piano, have the pro recorded reel to compare to the cassette.

Ah analog bliss.

 

It’s poverty. If you have a local grind band doing basement shows with 5 bands for $5 cover charge, your fan base is as likely to have a tape deck from a thrift store as a crappy record player. Cassettes are small and easy to throw in a box and move, and they are cheap to produce—no minimum number. Does that trend get picked up and become hip? Maybe for a hot minute.

 

"

"CD's are a dime a dozen these days. It's poverty that's driving CD's and streaming. Not to mention illegal digital downloading. And MP3 love."

 

Yes. Exactly.

 

Yes, illegal digital downloads and cheap MP3's are really a bane on society. Cheapskates love it, though. They also love recording on a blank CD.

 

Cassettes are the mp3s of the analogue world.

 

Cassette properly recorded blows the doors off MP3.

Truth.

 

I'd rather rip a song from YouTube than hear it on Cassette. They were great for their time, but digital has left them in the dust...

 

What about the Creedence Clearwater Revival?

 

OK. Sure. Have fun, enjoy the sound. Me....no thanks.

 

Bought my first cassette deck while stationed in Thailand in the early 70s. Although it was a fairly good deck at the time, the recording quality wasn't very good. Ten years later I had three high quality decks which could make copies indistinguishable (pretty much) from the album. I would record new albums and listen to the tape as a means to preserve the vinyl.

Back in the day I actually enjoyed the process; clean tape heads, set EQ and bias, set record levels, it was fun. I used the highest quality cassettes and loved the results.

With the advent of cds, this quickly became a waste of time. I gave away one of my decks and when I discovered ebay, sold the other. My only regret is giving away all the cassettes, especially the bunch of unopened Maxell and TDK tapes as I'd love to sell them on ebay today.

If someone still enjoys the process, more power to them.