What's good about tape?

[Martin Bush]

I was at function last night and it came up in conversation that I liked cassettes. I was asked "Is there anything good about cassettes?"

I tried to explain what I found interesting about cassettes and tape in general. As you might expect, the conversation tailed off.

But that left me wondering, are there any hard facts about cassette and tape that I could quote in future that mark it out as a good format?

[paulsherwin]

Cassette tape is a compromise format which trades quality for convenience. That's no reason not to enjoy playing around with it though.

[Cobaltblue]

I agree with Paul.

That said if you wanted a compact portable device to play music, speech or whatever before the advent of modern digital electronics you didn't really have much choice.

That said people are successfully getting material off 70+ year old tapes where CD's and solid state pen drives have failed long ago. and once they start to fail you can suffer total data loss.

Another thing is compatibility, its not difficult (relatively) to construct a device to play an ancient tape long after the original technology is extinct.

Cheers

Mike T

[stevehertz]

As a format, tape probably offers the least quality and accuracy amongst the various music sources, limited by its relatively crude magnetisation technology and the limitations of tape itself.

But so what? to many, listening to music is more than just 'that'. The source and all it entails, the equipment, the looks, the 'vibe', they all contribute to a person's enjoyment. I love using and listening to my cassette tapes even though quite a few of them I have the CD versions too. I just 'like' it. So, next time you're in discussion with 'friends' about cassettes, just accent on that aspect that you just really love using the format, the nostalgia, whatever and make no bones about how good or bad it is - and it can be surprisingly good! - and hold your head up proud with a smile!

[paulsherwin]

It's amazing how cassette technology was developed in the two decades after its introduction. What started as little more than a portable dictation system grew to be both a truly HiFi analogue technology almost completely replacing domestic open reel tape, and the dominant format for commercial music distribution.

[dave walsh]

I've mentioned before that a [pre-Dolby] piece in a mag [1963] stated confidently that tape cassettes would never be anywhere near "Hi-Fi" quality. [I also recall "experts" saying that cell phone images would never equal the quality achieved with cameras]. As Paul said, cassettes were cheap and convenient compared with Reel to Reel but not just as a replacement/addition to vinyl listening but for home recording, archiving and what became "mix" tapes. I think many of us retain a fondness for audio cassettes in the same way we like still like LP's, 78's and Video Cassettes.

Dave W

[G6Tanuki]

For me, cassette tapes were my go-to for in-car listening between the late 70s and mid 90s (after which I switched to CD). Great for when you were out of range of any decent music stations or you wanted to listen to something a bit obscure that none of the mainstream stations played


Quality of many pre recorded tapes was quite gruesome until the coming of Dolby and chrome tapes. Cassette players also had the annoying habit of chewing up tapes, but that was life back then.

I never had any use for open reel magtape, it was just too fiddly and nobody ever produced an open reel Walkman or in-car player.

My collection of tapes were junked in the late 90s due to a house move and my music tastes had changed. The last place I can remember where tape lingered on was in phone answer machines.

I don't really mourn the passing of audio tapes, they were good in their day but things moved on.

[Robert Gribnau]

At a time when compact cassettes were ousted from the listeners audio market in the richer countries (in large parts of the world this happened almost a decade later), it was an affordable means for amateur musicians to record their own music.

There are 4 tracks on a compact cassette, two (stereo) for each side/direction. By using all 4 tracks in just one direction, 4 track recording is possible. These machines made it possible to record one or two track(s) at a time, while playing back one of more already recorded track(s).

I bought a Tascam "Ministudio Porta 02" somewhere around 1999. I used my PC to record one mixdown of 4 filled tracks with drums from a drum computer (stereo, so 2 tracks) and electric guitar (stereo, so 2 tracks) to 2 tracks (to maintain stereo). When recording these 2 tracks from my PC back to the Tascam, I added singing and a solo guitar (both with stereo effects) in the process. After this I still had 2 empty tracks on the Tascam, one for electric bass guitar and one for something else (both mono, but with the panning functions on the Tascam you could place the 'something else' a bit out of centre if you wished).

Of course the sound quality is not super but it really doesn't sound bad either. I have very fond memories of working with it (and never got rid of it although I haven't used it for a long time).

[murphyv310]

Hi
Like many here cassettes were my mainstay of music and ICE. During the time I worked with Sony I was impressed in 1997 with a new machine the number escapes me but the frequency response was 22kHz with metal tapes, superb for a cassette.
Today they are a thing of the past, old ones suffering with print through, HF loss sticky shed and other maladies. I've one tape from 1972 of Fluff Alan Freeman with pick of the pops, still plays OK and sounds reasonable, was recorded on a Philips EL3302 from a FM Tuner, also some test card music recorded direct from a Murphy V430 volume control!

[stevehertz]

Originally Posted by murphyv310

Hi

Today they are a thing of the past, old ones suffering with print through, HF loss sticky shed and other maladies.

I disagree. I have a Pioneer CT-93 that's about as good as you can get cassette player wise. Yes, I know that owners of certain Nakamichi and Tandberg decks may disagree with that, but that's another, very subjective matter. Both newly made and old tapes play perfectly well, and unless one is to be very critical (and appropriately able), they'd struggle to tell the difference between cassette and CD. I've performed such tests many, many times. A good cassette recording on a good tape, on a good, well aligned machine is not to be sneezed at, and for many, certainly not a thing of the past.

[Lloyd 1985]

What I loved about cassettes was the simplicity! They were just so easy to use, power on, tape in, press play, music comes out! Something that got lost when MP3 players came about, I had a right bag of poo made by Philips, it couldn’t even put an album in the correct order, not to mention the software that came with it was a pig to use. Putting music on a tape was much easier, minidisc came a close second. I have some nice cassette players here now, which are a damn sight better than the ones I had as a kid, I had a Saisho personal cassette player, which sounded awful, I guess a lot of people had a similar experience with cheap junk players, which made the format look bad. As said above, a good machine and good recording can sound as good as CD, my most recent machine is a Sony FH-215R, and that really does sound close to CD quality. My ‘reference’ deck is a Technics M17, it became that because I fitted new heads and borrowed some proper test tapes to set it up properly, and it too sounds excellent.

At least with cassette you don’t have to create an account and sign in to anything or pay a subscription to listen to it, and it’ll probably still be listenable in 30 years time, providing the machine to play it still works! I’ve had music in my collection on my iPhone ‘disappear’ recently… Apple decide to remove it from their store, and if it wasn’t downloaded onto your device then it just goes away! Good job I backed it up elsewhere.

Regards
Lloyd

[Kentode]

I'm going to go on record as being the first, but surely not the only, forum member
Who made a Mixtape for a putative girlfriend and either gave it to them or played it to them in the car in the hope of a little reciprocal enjoyment!

But the real benefit of the cassette must surely have been the personal choice of In Car Entertainment (ICE), no longer at the mercy of the radio DJ.

[G6Tanuki]

Originally Posted by Kentode

The personal choice of In Car Entertainment (ICE), no longer at the mercy of the radio DJ.

Yes, in the 80s we rejoiced at the ubiquitous availability of music in the cassette format.

Got a long boring journey up the M6? Pop into any service-area along the way and the latest album from Wham! Duran Duran or the Spice Girls was there for you on the rack, for under a fiver a time.

Listen and enjoy, without the music being interrupted by any DJ.

[Kentode]

Originally Posted by G6Tanuki

Yes, in the 80s we rejoiced at the ubiquitous availability of music in the cassette format.

Got a long boring journey up the M6? Pop into any service-area along the way and the latest album from Wham! Duran Duran or the Spice Girls was there for you on the rack, for under a fiver a time.

Listen and enjoy, without the music being interrupted by any DJ.

I once arrived at a friend's house and said "I've just funked my way here to "Earth, Wind and Fire"!

To which he replied " my mate's car doesn't use petrol, it's powered by a Jamiroqui tape "!

[G6Tanuki]

Thinking of cassette tapes, there was the Cassingle, a short sub-C15 cassette which took the place of the classic 45RPM single for many bands in the late 70s and into the 80s.

A lot cheaper to produce than having a 45 cut, so brilliant as a way to get your music out to your fans at minimum cost.

[bluepilot]

Originally Posted by G6Tanuki

Yes, in the 80s we rejoiced at the ubiquitous availability of music in the cassette format.

I think I spent more time with a pencil trying to rewind cassettes that had got wound around the player mechanism than listening to the music. For a price there were good quality cassettes and players but it was a very unforgiving format. Anything but the best very soon went wrong. Cheap player or cassette was asking for trouble. Leave the cassette too long in the sun, which was all too easy in a car, and they were unplayable. I once had plans to build up a music collection on cassette thinking I could listen to them at home and in the car. I bought one album on cassette before I gave up with the idea. Better to buy it on vinyl and copy it to tape. Then when the cassette jammed up after it had played three times I threw it away and made another copy. I think a lot of people must have cursed Philips.

[dave walsh]

I never bought commercial cassettes although I have a gained a lot of them for free by now, from various sources. The sound is generally very acceptable and the content often a surprise. I never had a car with a player and cassettes rolling about so none of those problems. I did use to immediately transfer new vinyl LP's onto C90's for ease of listening and better preservation. LP's weren't cheap so I wanted to look after them but the tapes are all still going as well. Mine were a budget but fairly solid and all are still very much playable now, along with all the archived radio material.

Dave W

[paulsherwin]

The vibration in a 70s car was very hostile to cassette players, leading to all sorts of problems. 8-track was a better format in that respect, but was never popular in Europe, particularly after cassette took off.

No discussion of cars please!

The quality of commercially recorded cassettes improved a lot when variable bias HX-Pro duplicators arrived. There were still big problems with Dolby tracking though, especially as some companies made some strange decisions about tape stocks, presumably because of commercial arrangements.

[Paul_RK]

I've bought a few (a very few) new cassettes in recent years from artists who prefer to release at least some of their work that way, there's been a limited revival in some circles but I think my own order of preference for just about any releases of new music would be CD>LP>cassette>digital download (and streaming doesn't exist ). Between those recent releases, my selection of the 150+ C60s and C90s R. Stevie Moore "published" back in the day, and various old mostly live recordings from Radio 3, the resident Pioneer CT-F1250 probably gets about enough use to keep it healthy.

Paul

[Richard_FM]

I remember using them a lot when I was young, mostly for taping music from my Dad's music collection or off the radio, but occasionally making my own radio shows with my cousin. Also the only source of music for a personal stereo apart from ones that had a radio.

Most machines were fairly idiot proof to use, with the average pre-teen managing to operate one. Fisher Price even made a tape recorder for kids.

My Dad never thought that pre-recorded tapes were that good quality-wise even with Dolby & chrome. He reckoned copying from a CD to a decent blank tape often had better quality then a pre-recorded one.

One problem was getting to a perticular track, but the upmarket players could fast forward though a track & detect the gap at the end.