Cassette?

[thefsb]

Jarre in the Oxygene period:

That looks implausibly sanitized. There's no mess at all.

 

[restorer-john]

That looks implausibly sanitized. There's no mess at all.

publicity shot I'd say.

 

[restorer-john]

One major impediment to a comeback is that only one company makes tape mechs ( tashin I think ) and they are shite.

If the format ever gains traction again, someone will step up with a quality mech.

At the end of the day, cassette mechs could be done way better in 2021 than before. Four motors. One BSL Quartz PLL DD capstan motor, two brushless for supply and takeup and a screw-type stepper for head block control. The supply and takeup could be micro driven for back tension/takeup and FF/REW at variable/high speed.

Instead of mechanical control with idlers, clutches, brakes it can all be done with motor control using the two reel motors. Basically a miniature high end RTR structure.

We already had BSL Quartz PLL DD cassette decks in the late 80s/early90s with W&F below 0.025%WRMS and with the decades of advancement due to DVD/CDROM drive motors, miniature, precision, medium torque brushless motors are easy.

 

[JSmith]

Who is buying cassette tapes and why?

Must have had a resurgence due to this movie;

Can actually buy vol 1 & 2;

Various Artists - Guardians Of The Galaxy: Awesome Mix Vol. 1 [Cassette] - Amazon.com Music

Various Artists - Guardians Of The Galaxy: Awesome Mix Vol. 1 [Cassette] - Amazon.com Music

www.amazon.com

I may have to dust off some ol' tapes, get a deck out and join the movement.



JSmith

 

[Killingbeans]

Techmoan covers this a lot.

Techmoan is great! Much of the stuff he talks about will make any hipster green with envy

 

[mhardy6647]

There are... a lot... a lot... of cassettes here.

 

[thefsb]

If the format ever gains traction again, someone will step up with a quality mech.

At the end of the day, cassette mechs could be done way better in 2021 than before. Four motors. One BSL Quartz PLL DD capstan motor, two brushless for supply and takeup and a screw-type stepper for head block control. The supply and takeup could be micro driven for back tension/takeup and FF/REW at variable/high speed.

Instead of mechanical control with idlers, clutches, brakes it can all be done with motor control using the two reel motors. Basically a miniature high end RTR structure.

We already had BSL Quartz PLL DD cassette decks in the late 80s/early90s with W&F below 0.025%WRMS and with the decades of advancement due to DVD/CDROM drive motors, miniature, precision, medium torque brushless motors are easy.

I'll buy one and I know a few people who should too.

Could a good new mech compensate at all for defects in the tape? For example, is it possible to recover the bias tone from the tape and use that to servo control playback speed to compensate speed variation in the recorder?

 

[mhardy6647]

Just a screen-dump post on various matters cassette.

The best of the last three-head Sony decks were quite good, but 1) haven't aged well and 2) the very best of them, AFAIK, weren't sold in the US. Acquiring one at this late date generally means shipping from Japan, paying big money and a project.

The better (and the best) Nakamichis were very good, but were, and are, hella expensive and always seemed finicky/persnickety to me in terms of keeping them in top operating condition. I'd love to have one, but really cannot justify it.

Most of the better ones from the massmarket brands haven't aged gracefully, IMO and/or IME.

My understanding - FWIW - is that there is no current production of Dolby NR chips/circuitry and so the current production decks, if they have any NR at all, use generic NR schemes to reduce tape hiss.

pencil stat by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

 

[JeffS7444]

Just curious but in the days before CD became available, might cassette have actually been the highest fidelity pre-recorded medium? I'm talking about the regular sorts sold by the big music labels. Rather than buying a fancy turntable, would I have done better to buy a dual-capstan, 3-head cassette deck?

 

[MakeMineVinyl]

I'll buy one and I know a few people who should too.

Could a good new mech compensate at all for defects in the tape? For example, is it possible to recover the bias tone from the tape and use that to servo control playback speed to compensate speed variation in the recorder?

This is already being done in the remastering field. For cassette, I'd imagine that this type of processing would be too expensive to implement unless cassettes really became mainstream, which ain't gonna happen.

 

[rdenney]

I've been ordering new music recently and noticed an odd trend. Every site I've visited recently is offering cassette tapes alongside LPs, CDs and downloads.

Some examples:

• https://shop.aurora-music.com/
• https://shop.adele.com/
• https://usstore.edsheeran.com/music-1.html
• https://store.billieeilish.com/collections/music

Who is buying cassette tapes and why?

Martin

The machines are fun to play with.

Rick "but more of a PITA than turntables" Denney

 

[Joe Smith]

I still have decks in most of my setups. Favoring lower-end Nakamichis but I also have JVC, Denon, Onkyo, Marantz Professional and Harman/Kardon.

Quite good sound and nice performance from the two Marantz Pro PMD-502 decks - real time counter, auto-reverse that actually sounds good, headphone out with adjustable level, etc.

I have about 150 pre-recorded tapes that I still play, some going back to college days (classical and jazz on Advent's CrO2 tape) and for awhile at work (pre-Covid) I was doing some streaming taping for my own use. Probably have 400-500 cassettes in all, stored in those nice wooden Napa 100-slot boxes. Some of the pre-recorded tapes from end of the cassette era have Dolby C or Dolby S, CrO2 or Metal tape, etc. I have only had a total of 3-4 cassettes fail over time, tape-wise. If you store in good conditions (cool temp, low humidity) they hold up very well.

New decent Type 1 tape still available from Recording the Masters folks, though that had a big price uptick. You can still find decent prices on good Type 1 and Type 2 cassettes either NOS or gently-used. Surprisingly good sound for the money.

 

[sergeauckland]

Just curious but in the days before CD became available, might cassette have actually been the highest fidelity pre-recorded medium? I'm talking about the regular sorts sold by the big music labels. Rather than buying a fancy turntable, would I have done better to buy a dual-capstan, 3-head cassette deck?

Mass produced cassettes were pretty poor Firstly, they were bulk copied at 32x or even 64x speed, so levels and frequency responses were 'variable' as results depended entirely on how well maintained the duplicators were. My first job after university involved designing electronics for high speed tape duplicators, so I'm familiar with their limitations. Dolby tracking was especially difficult.
Secondly, the tape used was ordinary ferric and cheap, as were the C0 cassette blanks.
There were a few specialist labels that used real-time duplication on chrome or metal cassettes, one I knew of used a bank of Nakamichi recorders, and their tapes were very good, if expensive. However, CD put an end to all that.

S

 

[MakeMineVinyl]

Mass produced cassettes were pretty poor Firstly, they were bulk copied at 32x or even 64x speed, so levels and frequency responses were 'variable' as results depended entirely on how well maintained the duplicators were. My first job after university involved designing electronics for high speed tape duplicators, so I'm familiar with their limitations. Dolby tracking was especially difficult.
Secondly, the tape used was ordinary ferric and cheap, as were the C0 cassette blanks.
There were a few specialist labels that used real-time duplication on chrome or metal cassettes, one I knew of used a bank of Nakamichi recorders, and their tapes were very good, if expensive. However, CD put an end to all that.

S

A recent YouTube video was gushing about the open reel pre-recorded tapes from the 50s and 60s and claiming they were so 'good' because they were duplicated 1:1 in real time. I had to practically beat the guy in the head for him to realize that they were in fact duplicated at high speed, usually on Ampex duplicators. In the late 60s I only bought open reel pre-recorded tapes and not records; I realized even then that these tapes had problems with noise, dropouts, and high frequency saturation so bad that there were bursts of static noise where violins should be. Even in current HiFi News (UK) reviews, reviewers like Ken Kessler use these tapes, even ones duplicated at 3 3/4 ips, and waxes poetically about how great and definitive they are. Just pure bullshit.

 

[mhardy6647]

Just curious but in the days before CD became available, might cassette have actually been the highest fidelity pre-recorded medium? I'm talking about the regular sorts sold by the big music labels. Rather than buying a fancy turntable, would I have done better to buy a dual-capstan, 3-head cassette deck?

umm, nope.
Something like this would be closer.

ReVox WHRB Dead aircheck by Mark Hardy, on Flickr
(sorry, I don't have a more modern "prosumer" deck -- other than a Pioneer RT-909 which currently needs rehab and of which I don't have any photos handy)

Actually, carefully engineered live FM broadcasts on empathetic radio stations were pretty darned hi-fi in the 1960s. Even reproduced tapes could be pretty astonishing. I remember listening to an FM radio documentary called Bells in Europe on one of the "public radio stations" in the DC/Baltimore metro area (at the time, most likely either WBJC or WETA) in the late 1970s and it was phenomenal.

EDIT: I should mention that the A77 above has been modified (by Charles "Stellavox" King ) to a high-speed, half-track configuration. The speed setting reads "3-3/4" but it is in fact 7-1/2 ips

 

[Joe Smith]

I have one Nakamichi Reference Series pre-recorded cassette, Joe Williams. It's pretty damn good. With the high-quality duplication options available, it was pretty cool how good the sound could be. The Blue Note XDR/Cobalt series of tapes sound great, too.

 

[ta240]

......

I may have to dust off some ol' tapes, get a deck out and join the movement.


JSmith

I threw mine out and gave away my nice cassette deck.

Recently, my CD changer in my 50 year old car died and my (nearly) period correct head unit has a cassette so I figured I'd just buy up some cheap cassettes and maybe a bargain deck to record some of my own and I got a severe shock when I went shopping.

yeah, I know they make adapters that I could plug into my phone buy I don't like looking at a phone for any reason while I drive. Cassettes can be changed without even looking.

 

[JeffS7444]

umm, nope.
Something like this would be closer.

ReVox WHRB Dead aircheck by Mark Hardy, on Flickr
(sorry, I don't have a more modern "prosumer" deck -- other than a Pioneer RT-909 which currently needs rehab and of which I don't have any photos handy)

Actually, carefully engineered live FM broadcasts on empathetic radio stations were pretty darned hi-fi in the 1960s. Even reproduced tapes could be pretty astonishing. I remember listening to an FM radio documentary called Bells in Europe on one of the "public radio stations" in the DC/Baltimore metro area (at the time, most likely either WBJC or WETA) in the late 1970s and it was phenomenal.

EDIT: I should mention that the A77 above has been modified (by Charles "Stellavox" King ) to a high-speed, half-track configuration. The speed setting reads "3-3/4" but it is in fact 7-1/2 ips

Let's think more mainstream 1970s, because I might have wanted to listen to Elton John, ELO, Linda Ronstadt or Queen more than say, Martin Denny, which is the sort of thing my dad bought. I realize that pre-recorded open reel tapes existed, but by the time I came of age, they were no longer a thing.

 

[JSmith]

Cassettes can be changed without even looking.

True and yes I remember doing this often.

You may want to get one of these if your car CD player has bit the dust and you still have a cassette option;

The Unsung Hero of the Digital Age: The Car Cassette Adapter

Any child of the 1990s will fondly remember the car cassette adapter. In hindsight, it is one of the unsung heroes of the digital age.

interestingengineering.com

JSmith

 

[Martin]

Good discussion. I agree with the hipster and Guardians of the Galaxy mix tape comments.

I had an Akai tape deck many years ago and used to spend hours recording mix tapes off LPs onto TDK metal cassettes. I don’t think I ever bought a prerecorded cassette tape. (I bought 8-tracks when I was in high school. Where are they?) Once CDs and multi disk changers for the car came out I saw no need for mix tapes and cassettes.

I’ve kept my turntables and LPs over the years but got rid of my cassette deck and cassettes in the late 80’s and have no desire to go back.

Martin