Cassettes are making a small comeback, why?

[DWPress]

When I finally sold my deck years ago I had to take it apart to retrieve Iggy Pop, I Got A Right, which has only found a digital release in the last decade. Still have it but haven't played it since.

I've got a dozen of the P205 around the studios but my favorite is my dad's old P245 which has this art deco thing going on.
Just to stay on topic, it would be lousy for cassette since the barrel is round.

 

[Anton D]

Small numbers, small community, some bands make limited edition cassettes for fans.

A social thing.

 

[Blumlein 88]

But I wonder if premium, metal particle tapes have since turned into ferric oxide..?

Nope still good, and play fine if they've been kept in a cool place.

 

[restorer-john]

but my favorite is my dad's old P245 which has this art deco thing going on.

That's a pretty cool model, I like it a lot.

 

[boxerfan88]

What do you see about cassettes that are attracting people today?

* seeing the reel turn is mesmerising
* hearing the hiss can be relaxing

 

[ThatM1key]

I see people that want simplicity. Push the PLAY or REC buttons and maybe the FASTFWD. No PC skills required, no technical stuff.

There was the CD and even iPods.

I'd guess it's something you can do without needing a touch screen, app or subscription, and you can still score old cassette tapes pretty cheaply, unless they're NOS, in which case they are sought-after collectables.

Its all just a fun gimmick nowadays. All the tape decks are made cheaper then a dollar store flashlights and today's tapes are probably made cheaper then Type 0 cassettes of the late 70s.

Tape can sound great but like records, it requires a good amount of cash.

They will never know the joy of auto-reversing

This creates a whole entire market for good quality cassette mechanisms with auto-reverse, music search etc.

Its great features if you don't know what it does to the heads.

 

[MattHooper]

I cassette tape revival?

Sounds stupid to me!

We need to explain this. This topic should be good for about 400 pages at least.

 

[DonR]

It's just so convenient. Of course, the tape jams and wears out, the heads need to be cleaned until they too wear out, the belts have to be serviced occasionally or turn to goo, blanks are expensive, record levels have to be tested and set and you have only at most 90 minutes of music per tape but they are so convenient.

Maybe some people miss the hiss.

 

[JeffS7444]

Nope still good, and play fine if they've been kept in a cool place.

So, not Honolulu then?

 

[ThatM1key]

I cassette tape revival?

Sounds stupid to me!

We need to explain this. This topic should be good for about 400 pages at least.

At least 200 pages being about pens and pencils.

 

[EJ3]

Nostalgia, I suppose...

Same as records, except as far as I know there are no claims of cassettes being better than digital.

I grew-up in the days of 8-tracks, cassettes, and records. I never owned an 8-track. At one point my parents had one in their all-in-one stereo but they never had more than 1 or 2 tapes.

I had a cassette deck and I used to copy my records to cassette for playback in the car. (I never owned a car with an 8-track.)


But you can't easily skip to a particular track like you can with CDs (or records). And like records you have to flip it over half way through.

That would depend on the cassette deck that you have. Some can & do locate individual songs on a cassette (if you recorded it with the right markers).
As will some turntables, also. For most people, it wasn't important enough to have a TT that could do that (or a cassette deck). But there were a few that could do that.

 

[JeffS7444]

I've sometimes wondered "what if" in the days before compact disks, I had prioritized prerecorded cassette tapes rather than LPs, and had chosen a 3-head, dual-capstan tape deck - any chance that I'd have gotten some of the best sonics that the era had to offer? Bear in mind that Elcaset and prerecorded open-reel tapes were long gone by the time I came of age. The higher-spec Nakamichi and Tandberg decks were always pricey, but I seem to recall Sony offering a good combo of features and affordability.

 

[EJ3]

Nope still good, and play fine if they've been kept in a cool place.

Same for my type II Maxell's and my Reel to Reel tapes.

 

[Anton D]

I remember them fondly. I never bought commercial tapes, but loved recording LPs and making mix tapes!

The cassettes were for the automotive and camping parts of life.

C90 was my size of choice and I relished timing the songs to try to get every last second utilized!

I loved my Akai Gx570 D, then moved to a Nak CR 7A.

My son uses the Akai, maybe if I ever retire, the Nak may rise again!

Both LP and cassette: nobody can hijack your playback with their iPhone. Lots to be said for that.

 

[Rja4000]

Pencils will make a comeback soon too…

Yeah.
They are especially usefull to manually pull back the cassette tape inside its box when things go wrong.
So you're right.

 

[Palladium]

It's just so convenient. Of course, the tape jams and wears out, the heads need to be cleaned until they too wear out, the belts have to be serviced occasionally or turn to goo, blanks are expensive, record levels have to be tested and set and you have only at most 90 minutes of music per tape but they are so convenient.

Maybe some people miss the hiss.

I was old enough to use tapes in their heyday and hated them.

 

[restorer-john]

I've sometimes wondered "what if" in the days before compact disks, I had prioritized prerecorded cassette tapes rather than LPs, and had chosen a 3-head, dual-capstan tape deck - any chance that I'd have gotten some of the best sonics that the era had to offer? Bear in mind that Elcaset and prerecorded open-reel tapes were long gone by the time I came of age. The higher-spec Nakamichi and Tandberg decks were always pricey, but I seem to recall Sony offering a good combo of features and affordability.

As compact disc was just about to be released, we were pushing the limits of high quality cassette deck and tape formulations, recording our mint LPs. I was a teenager and my best friend and I were climbing the HiFi ladder one piece/step at a time.

Quickly went from single capstan sendust headed decks to closed loop dual capstan titanium heads, dolby C/dbx, switchable MPXs and rec cal etc. We could hear the effect of the MPX filters back then when we were young. They key of course was a great deck, careful setup and the best tapes for each formulation/deck to get the most out of them.

Many of the tapes I recorded back then are still as good as the day I made them. Tapes could only ever be played on the deck recorded on and never, ever played on anything like a car deck, portable etc. You'd make sacrificial tapes for car use as the environment in a car deck was not great. I'd tweak the car decks alignment to match the home deck the tapes were recorded on to preserve the HF and channel balance.

It was fun at the time.

 

[Leporello]

It seems that cassettes are making a small comeback. There have been some new portable cassette players that have been released. In addition people like You Tuber Mary Spender just released some of her own music on cassette which is just one example of younger people being interested in cassettes.

I used to have a Nakamichi CR3A cassette player in my stereo. Cassettes were inferior to CD's and records. Dolby B removed the high's, though Dolby C was better. The other thing was every time you play the cassette, the quality of the music degrades by a tiny bit.

What made cassettes so appealing was it was a good format if you wanted to copy your favorite records or if your borrow friends records and you wanted a copy of it to play in your cassette player including Sony Walkman, or car stereo In addition, we used to record music off the radio like King Biscuit Flower Hour where they had some cool live recording of the Rollings Stones or some other band. Back in the day, I took my Sanyo cassette player (their version of the Sony Walkman) to Madison Square Garden and recorded The ARMS concert with Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page. This is why they were so popular in their day. To get better quality recordings I used to buy metal tapes and then record my records or a friend's records onto cassettes. Then to play it on a portable device including boom boxes. However, when you compare the quality of the music with CD's or good streaming services, the music clearly sounds better on them vs cassettes.

Now records with a good phonograph player, stylus, and phono preamp sound better than cassettes. Not to mention the album was fun to look at along with the information on the back or inner sleeve while listening to the music. I can see the appeal for records as many records I actually found better than CD's or streaming services though this is subjective.

What do you see about cassettes that are attracting people today?

Simple answer: cassettes are analog and therefore they have infinite resolution. You will hear the sound exactly as the artist intended. Unlike digital which is only an approximation of the original soundwave.

Well, at least that's what I read in the Internet.

Then there is the physicality, the object, the touch. The experience. No other medium is going to give you the special experience of playing a cassette. Just like only drinking coffee from a white cup will give you the experience of drinking coffee from a white cup. Nothing else comes close. It will change your life.

Edit: oops, I forgot - the ritual. Ritual is important because it really is.

 

[nerdstrike]

Everybody baller until it gets hot and the stretching begins.

 

[digitalfrost]

This topic makes me interested to hear cassettes again, just to compare if they are as good as I remember. I never saw anything wrong with cassette sound quality, but then again I was very young back then and it was the only medium that I actively listened to. My parents had a CD player but that was hooked up to the living room stereo and anything I wanted to take with me was taped to cassette. I never had the impression that the cassette was significantly worse than the CDs I recorded them from, but I did not have good gear and no experience. Would be nice to hear the difference with my current setup. Most likely it's a lot worse than I remember.