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U.S.A.'s last cassette tape manufacturer spews B.S.

mhardy6647

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She certainly had her outstanding points.
... all her own, sittin' way up high.
(to quote Bob Seger, of course)

She was the Pr0N star pop star, wasn't she?

So, here's the thing. I went through a phase, maybe 15-ish years ago, during which (almost) any box, or rack, of cassettes I saw on the swap pile at the good ol' Harvard, MA town dump, I picked up. Do this for a couple of years, and one ends up with a rather embarrassingly large stash of utterly random cassettes.
One day, to set up a photo to use as a joke on some hifi forum or another, I combed through some of them and pulled out some of the most outrageously egregious examples. Thus that photo. :)

Of course, I am very proud to possess that Milli Vanilli tape. :cool:
 

Palladium

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You've heard the phrase "puff piece"? This is an example of one. Tapes are fun promo items for some bands who have used up all their trucker hat ideas.

its quite amazing what isn't a puff piece these days...
 

anmpr1

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In any case CDs didn't replace cassettes, which were awesome because you could make a tape of your pals' (or the record library's) LPs or CDs or off the radio.
I enjoyed the cassette format due to its portability. But once CDs came out, I'm pretty sure folks migrated to CD-RW. CD players were in most cars. Do cars even have CD players anymore? I'm pretty sure my car (2018) has a factory installed CD player in the glove box, but it's never been used. Just taking up space, I wish it wasn't there.

My recollection is that mp3 was the game changer. Anecdote: I guess this was around 2004-- I was talking to a Cisco engineer about the best way to configure a router, and for some reason he mentioned he was getting ready to take a vacation. He pulled from his pocket one of those little USB memory sticks. Told me he'd put three or four hundred songs on it..., couldn't wait to hit the road. Not being part of the car audio scene I was a little amazed--especially recalling shoeboxes of cassette tapes everyone used to have stashed in their cars, back in the day.
 

Multicore

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I enjoyed the cassette format due to its portability. But once CDs came out, I'm pretty sure folks migrated to CD-RW. CD players were in most cars. Do cars even have CD players anymore? I'm pretty sure my car (2018) has a factory installed CD player in the glove box, but it's never been used. Just taking up space, I wish it wasn't there.
The portability was a big deal. So was the Walkman. But the technology replacement happened at different times. Labels were pushing CDs years before CD-R came along, and it was always more a computer peripheral more than an audio appliance. And the stabilization of CD players so they could work in portable or mobile situations happened also many years after CDs arrived. So there years of overlap between the CD and the Compact Cassette.

My recollection is that mp3 was the game changer. Anecdote: I guess this was around 2004-- I was talking to a Cisco engineer about the best way to configure a router, and for some reason he mentioned he was getting ready to take a vacation. He pulled from his pocket one of those little USB memory sticks. Told me he'd put three or four hundred songs on it..., couldn't wait to hit the road. Not being part of the car audio scene I was a little amazed--especially recalling shoeboxes of cassette tapes everyone used to have stashed in their cars, back in the day.
When I got my current Mazda 3 in late 2013 I made a USB stick with lots of music on it. About 750 albums. It's still in the car and works nicely. The user interface for playing them in the car is such that navigating them is impractical but it works! I made a 5 page index of all the music that I printed and put in the glove box. The car does have a CD player but I never used it.
 

tmtomh

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I think the blatant BS in this story is a great example of why ASR is so important and why so many of us care about measurements, rigorous testing, and scientific principles.

What I mean is this: IMHO Smithsonian Magazine is not trolling for clicks or wanting to promote this BS for any self-interested reason. Instead, the author clearly is not a specialist in this technical area, and because of that they probably had no reason to think that a manufacturer would tell blatant lies about what seemed to be technical points of audio recording and reproduction.

I do not mean to sound naive, and I am NOT excusing the writer and magazine for their appalling lack of fact-checking. My point is that these false claims do not necessarily strike most people as marketing claims, but instead as technical claims - as outrageous as they are, they are not the sort poetic, experiential, hyper-subjective sounding claims one often hears in audiophilia, and which a non-expert reporter might immediately recognize as such. That is why these claims are so insidious, and why ASR is so important.
 

kschmit2

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Cassette tapes had quite a poor SNR... although much better with Dolby noise reduction;


JSmith
@Jean.Francois has reviewed a 2022 cassette with more than a decent result here: https://magicvinyldigital.net/2022/...iew-qobuz-hi-res-amazon-dolby-atmos-binaural/
 

Koeitje

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fpitas

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... all her own, sittin' way up high.
(to quote Bob Seger, of course)

She was the Pr0N star pop star, wasn't she?
i think? Not my cup of tea musically. I did a lot more looking at her than listening :)
 

kschmit2

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Only because they absolutely butchered that Tidal version.
I was neither talking about the Tidal version nor the Qobuz. These are truly abysmal.

The cassette is actually close to the decent MoFi SACD and MoFi vinyl versions.
 

Andretti60

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Thank you, I really enjoyed your post, however please correct the dare here ;)

I guess these folks never heard of Shannon-Nyquist, work widely published in the 1050's.

I read the Smithsonian article (that mostly is quite good) and I visited the web site of the author who is a quite talented writer and has a good portfolio of essays on travel logs. She does not have of corse any technical knowledge of acoustic physics and sound recording, so I believe she is in bona fede, she just did not fact check the technical parts (at least she should have consulted with someone). I am thinking to drop her an email, do you mind if I link this thread?
 

TonyJZX

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Sam Fox would be immediately recogniseable for any of the older UK gents here and in the Commonwealth. She's a page 3 girl for their rag tabloid newspapers and she had a few manufacturered pop songs. Obviously she's got a rather large set of breasts.

Now back to cassettes... didnt Amir test a Nakamichi Dragon... with rather humorous results? Its quite obvious from the get go that cassettes was a medium for voice dictation and it was just pressed into service for stereo.

It can sound good... given enough chrome or metal and Dolby but really, we know mp3s to a decent dac slays cassette.

I do remember in the day that cassettes dubbed off CD had unusually good quality.

Over here we have bands releasing cassette singles as a kind of retro vibe. And people like Matt Taylor (techmoan) tries to occasionally bring up cassettes as a historical curio but does anyone really take this stuff seriously?

I can see a cassette company desperately trying to jump start a cassette revolution al a vinyl?

Maybe use DSF as a source??? LOL
 

Robin L

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I dubbed thousands of cassettes with six daisy-chained decks working in real time, using an edited DAT as the source. Got custom lengths of TDK SA in clear housings, would make the cassettes to sell to performing groups---mainly the San Francisco Bach Choir. No noise reduction, as that tended to mess with dynamics. Made the labels and J-Cards as well. This was in the 1990s, when dubbing to CD was not yet practical. The best cassettes I ran across were the Sony metal cassettes in ceramic housings. Those were fairly competitive with LPs as regards self-noise, even without noise reduction. However, as they went for $10 a pop when LPs went for about $5, they were not economically viable for dubbing LPs. Or concerts. TDK SAX wasn't half bad and went for half as much. I could simultaneously record concerts to both DAT and a Walkman Pro, would give the cassette to the performers at the end of the concert. The performers usually asked for no noise reduction.

The self-noise of my Tascam 32 half-track reel to reel machine was worse than my three headed Yamaha cassette deck recording to metal tape w/o noise reduction. Sounded nastier in a general way compared to the cassette deck as well. By the time the "oughts" rolled around it was more practical to dub to CDR, even using a single CDR recorder.

When I worked at Tower Records Berkeley in the mid-eighties, I was in charge of the accessories department which included cassettes. Those were selling like hotcakes (though in the context of Berkeley at the time, it would be more on point to say they were selling like 'shrooms from street-dealers.) A decade later, a street freek handed me a giant box full of mixtapes, mostly on TDK SAX, discovered abandoned in People's Park.
 
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Xulonn

Xulonn

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I am thinking to drop her an email, do you mind if I link this thread?
Of course not. ASR is a public forum open to all who desire to read - and if they choose - join in the discussion.
 

jsrtheta

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I think it's all what you grew up with, and with appreciation that "this sounds better than it ought to." I have a library of about 300 higher end prerecorded cassettes (mostly classical and jazz) and I still get a kick out of playing them. Some have been with me since college days (1976-1981). Long time. Now. that's far smaller than my vinyl and CD holdings, but I still enjoy them. I never did reel to reel, nor (thankfully) 8-track. But I'll keep a little light on for cassettes. They're part of my life, and somehow, a system still doesn't seem complete unless I have a deck included.

It takes a little bit of care and pampering to keep the decks working well too...point of pride? I own three lower end Nakamichis and scores of others - I would have committed armed robbery to have any one of them back in my high school days.

If I lived in a much smaller house than I do, they would not be on the "keep" short list. But for now, I'm continuing to enjoy them.
I always thought 8-track was a Russian plot. It had that Soviet quality of approaching a decent technology and then going horribly wrong.
 

jsrtheta

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First off, let me say up front that people should listen to whatever gives them pleasure. That said, I found the Smithsonian article sad and perplexing. One would assume cassettes were put to rest the moment CD’s were released, but here we are in 2022 and they’ve made a comeback. It seems like one small part of the larger anti-science movement that is infecting society.
Luddism will always be with us. Some people will always fear progress.
 

bloodshoteyed

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She was the Pr0N star pop star, wasn't she?


kinda (english 3rd page pics were more of a NSFW situation than pr0n, really)

even tho she kept it down in her videos....OTH, it was Sabrina who popped a nipple on mainstream music videos
 

EJ3

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And here's where I depart from the true tape aficionados...I never went up the chain, even to a three head deck. In the 80s, made more sense, but now? I enjoy my lower end playground. Plenty good for the sound quality and I don't need to pay $2000 for the deck, another $1000 for a re-build and $300 in freight to get it back and forth to Connecticut. But if it's your thing, have at it.

A Dragon or a ZX1000 is a beautiful thing to look at...I prefer to keep our relationship just that way.
I am the opposite: The first cassette deck I saw was a 3 head Technics, in a radio station. After playing with that, I was all in & bought one. I have not been without at least one (& usually, like now 2) three head cassette decks since.

One reason many (most?) cassette decks never reached good sound quality is:

Almost all cassette decks have an MPX filter to improve the sound quality and the tracking of the noise reduction system when recording from an FM stereo broadcast. However, in many especially cheaper decks, this filter cannot be disabled, and because of that record/playback frequency response in those decks typically is limited to 16 kHz. In other decks, the MPX filter can be switched off or on independently from the Dolby switch. On yet other decks, the filter is off by default, and an option to switch it on or off is only provided when Dolby is activated; this prevents the MPX filter from being used when it's not required.

It was possible (with great effort and expense on the manufacturers part) to get:

By the late 1980s, thanks to such improvements in the electronics, the tape material and manufacturing techniques, as well as dramatic improvements to the precision of the cassette shell, tape heads and transport mechanics, sound fidelity on equipment from the top manufacturers far surpassed the levels originally expected of the medium.

On suitable audio equipment, cassettes could produce a very pleasant listening experience.

High-end cassette decks could achieve 15 Hz-22 kHz±3 dB frequency response with wow and flutter below 0.022%, and a signal-to-noise ratio of up to 61 dB (for Type IV tape, without noise-reduction)[citation needed] . With noise reduction typical signal-to-noise figures of 70-76 dB with Dolby C, 80-86 dB with Dolby S, and 85 - 90 dB with dbx could be achieved.

Many casual listeners could not tell the difference between compact cassette and compact disc. (probably because their systems couldn't put out what Compact Disk was capable of [but the same is true today for casual listeners and higher than CD quality resolutions of digital than CD])

Regarding pre-recorded cassettes:
(From Wikipedia, as is the majority of what I have posted, [because it was easier than going through my stuff]))
"The buyer who is aware of sound quality is making his own." "They won't be satisfied with the 'tunnel effect' of prerecorded tape. And home tape deck users don't use prerecorded tapes at all." Yet, contended Solomon, while Tower's own stores show strong blank tape sales gains, its prerecorded sales have increased by only 2% to 3%. With an estimated 15% of the chain's total tape business now generated by the sales of blanks, "it would appear our added tape sales are going to TDK, Maxell and Sony, not you." he concluded. - Billboard, Vol. 93, No. 38, 26 September 1981.[17]

So, is it capable of digital levels of resolution? No, absolutely not! Is it capable of being "good enough"? In my humble opinion, yes. But was/is it ever implemented at that level?
RARELY!

So most people never heard it at it's best. And today (and has been for a number of years) it is much easier and less expensive to get better resolution than a cassette could provide. However, if you already have the "suitable" equipment (in great shape [because you bought it back then, inherited it or whatever {including stock of quality cassettes]}) it is (again, in my humble opinion) worth listening to.

Not to mention, in my case, many family things, important (to us) events, etc, that we have on cassette.

Will I digitize them? Yes, one day, maybe, if I get around to it. In other words I want to but life keeps getting in the way.
 

Anton S

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That Smithsonian article is a prime example of rushing to publication without doing even a modicum of fact-checking or background research. Unfortunately, this has become all too common.

I have a cache of home-brewed cassettes recorded in the 70's and 80's containing music that is now unobtainable, and I'm too lazy to digitize them, so my system still contains a cassette deck. It's fun to listen to those old recordings occasionally, because they transport me back to a happier time. It's always fun to play them, and with the right processing, the old tapes still sound pretty good. But I would never try to delude myself into believing that they are more faithful to the source material than just about any digital format.
 

srrxr71

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I dubbed thousands of cassettes with six daisy-chained decks working in real time, using an edited DAT as the source. Got custom lengths of TDK SA in clear housings, would make the cassettes to sell to performing groups---mainly the San Francisco Bach Choir. No noise reduction, as that tended to mess with dynamics. Made the labels and J-Cards as well. This was in the 1990s, when dubbing to CD was not yet practical. The best cassettes I ran across were the Sony metal cassettes in ceramic housings. Those were fairly competitive with LPs as regards self-noise, even without noise reduction. However, as they went for $10 a pop when LPs went for about $5, they were not economically viable for dubbing LPs. Or concerts. TDK SAX wasn't half bad and went for half as much. I could simultaneously record concerts to both DAT and a Walkman Pro, would give the cassette to the performers at the end of the concert. The performers usually asked for no noise reduction.

The self-noise of my Tascam 32 half-track reel to reel machine was worse than my three headed Yamaha cassette deck recording to metal tape w/o noise reduction. Sounded nastier in a general way compared to the cassette deck as well. By the time the "oughts" rolled around it was more practical to dub to CDR, even using a single CDR recorder.

When I worked at Tower Records Berkeley in the mid-eighties, I was in charge of the accessories department which included cassettes. Those were selling like hotcakes (though in the context of Berkeley at the time, it would be more on point to say they were selling like 'shrooms from street-dealers.) A decade later, a street freek handed me a giant box full of mixtapes, mostly on TDK SAX, discovered abandoned in People's Park.
I love reading first hand history like this. Thank you.

You reminded me of the first time someone showed me a TDK MA-XG. A cassette that cost more than a CD.

Where I lived I, most could not afford CDs or the players. So we would buy TDK MA-X tapes (which cost a fraction of the MA-XG) and write down a playlist for a shop owner to record for us and pay them for the recordings.

Sounded great to me at the time.

Edit: MA-XG tapes are going for $135 each on eBay today. Also if I recall correctly they only came in 60 minute length. The cases were made of multiple parts to reduce vibrations.
 
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