Looking back at it Cassettes were a great way of listening to music

I guess there's a nostalgia element, for young people with cassettes and vinyl, though most have never experienced it back in the day.

For me as an old person, there's none, as back in the seventies I was an adult and cassettes were a practical way of playing music in the car. The first portable CDs were rubbish as they skidded with any sort of a bump.

I get my nostalgia fix with modern technology combined with old school stuff which I vividly remember from the time it was very common..

As we've both said, a lot of the enjoyment of music is down to nostalgia.

I've two vinyl jukeboxes in our summer hous (my wife says they are too big for our small house).

For me, nothing beats the experience of selecting a record from the title cards,
Putting in a coin,
Pressing the buttons and hearing the latch solenoid reseting the buttons,
The noise of the carousel spinning as it turns to find the record,
The sound of the gripper arm dropping it on the turntable,
The tone arm landing on the track in grooves,
The dull noise as the amplifier mute comes off.

Then the anticipation before the record starts to play.

(if you've pressed the wrong naffin' buttons, that ruins it).

 

They were portable, affordable and recordable. They were great for cars and walkmans and boomboxes and making your own recordings, things you couldn't do with vinyl. Of course now digital is even better at all of those things and sounds better too.

 

People (friends, girls) who know you had all the records and means to make a mix tape would come over and you could make a night of it. A great, fun way to socialize. Socializing and creating media...

 

They'd never be my preferred way of listening to music and I'd never buy an album that's available on CD and vinyl on tape unless it's very cheap, but I really like the format, flaws and all. I like tapes for recording rare vinyl albums from friends and Peel / BBC Sessions etc that haven't been released officially from YouTube. I get more than listenable results even using basic ferric tape, which is sadly all that's available easily now. I get excellent sound from Type II cassettes. I'm aware of every one of cassettes flaws, but most of them are down to bad care along with badly maintained or poor decks. I also think tapes look great too. A design classic! I'm thinking of upgrading my cassette deck soon.

 

I miss the ritual of making tapes. Making playlists is great but it's not the same..... CDRs come close....

 

It's how I first heard and learned about music, and yes they were cheap and gave you the ability to record.

The downside was that if good songs were deeper in an album, I might not get to them. When I was young I remember several tapes that I'd never get past a certain point. FWD and RWD used to get tedious. Painstaking indeed.

 

So does @c-eling

 

Since cassettes were conceived for dictation and ended becoming high fidelity because of technical improvements on the format despite tape width and speed, I wonder if such improvements could be applied to reel to reel tapes or the sadly failed Elcaset...

 

My friend was a 'pause-button' MASTER!!
He made "Let It Be" go from 4/4 to 3/4!

 

I found that those tended to skip in the car. Cadillac owners results may have been better.

 

Vinyl and cd’s are a whole lot better. There was a period in the early 80’s when I bought cassettes as they’d include bonus tracks not on the vinyl edition.

 

I have at least one Reel to Reel with “Dubly” but no decks that decode it.

 

That's when I wet out and bought a tape splicing kit and learned to splice tape.

 

I only bought a few over the years......and only if they were in the bargain bin. The one cassette only release I owned and still have is this:

 

I honestly have no idea what you are talking about but you just made me very curious. What is "Dubly" and what was it supposed to improve when decoded?

 

Those still with cassettes, do you still have a head demagnitiser and do you use it?

 

About 15 years ago, my dad had to drop his car off for maintenance and he stopped by my house (I lived a few blocks down from him) in his beater loaner for the day: a 1985 Buick Regal sedan. He asked if I wanted to go for a ride and I said "hell yeah!" so he throws in a copy of Brothers In Arms and we went cruising around Northeast Philly blasting the cassette. I think he even switched Dolby on!

EDIT: also I just realized my avatar... guess I liked cassettes more than I thought I did!

 

Yeah. Here I was thinking I was smart for buying full albums on cassette that I could play both at home an in the car. Meanwhile, you guys got records with better fidelity and killer artwork. The cover art on Purgatory, Run To The Hills, The Trooper, and Aces High is just classic.

Boomers like to talk about how the CD ruined the album package experience, but we had already gotten that ball rolling with cassettes. The artwork was even smaller and you couldn't fit any goodies in them.

By the mid-80's, cassettes were outselling LPs. We wanted the convenience.

 

I don't, but I clean the heads very often.

 

I bought a head demagnitiser/cleaner and couple of years ago. I don't really use it. Typically haven't needed to use it. I just use a basic "Scotch" head cleaner tape in my truck once in awhile, and clean the tape deck on my home stereo with q-tips and alcohol.

 

I honestly bought very few pre-recorded cassettes. I dubbed my own tapes from vinyl and CD. And made lots of mixtapes of course!

 

Same here, but unless it's something super rare (or multiple tapes), I wont pay over a dollar for them anymore.

 

Never had one. It's always been easy enough to keep everything up to snuff without one.

 

Certainly made it a lot easier to bring your tunes to parties in HS.

 

I like the cassette very much. When you’re recording on them in the right way, they could sound fantastic!