Hey, don't they wear out after time? Is there a way to preserve the recording or copy it without losing anything?
They certainly have their problems! Reel to Reel has the same problems except many aspects are improved since there is so much more tape to hold the information (both due to wider tape and much faster travel speed. Cassettes pushed the limits and it was a testimony to the enthusiasm and ingenuity directed at HiFi of the day that they actually became a pretty good sounding media within a decade of their introduction into the market. I wish I still had my old Nak to compare my old tapes vs a CD of the same music!
As far as magnetic tape, the metal particles sluff off especially if they pass over a head that already has some accrual of particles (not recently cleaned and playing older tapes that are more prone to decay). The metal particles can rust if exposed to humidity. Even a new tape, you will hear a faint start to the music before the real start comes - this is where the blank tape is laying against the next layer where the music starts and the magnetic charge bleeds from one layer to the other. Obviously, this bleeding will occur with metal particles positioned adjacent to each other such that the "crispness" of the recording will gradually be reduced. I have never seen any real attempt to predict the life of a cassette recording with any accuraccy. Lots of factors at ply including what your standard is for a usable tape. Obviously, if it is a recording of your baby's first words or other speech, it will last longer than if it is highly dynamic music (with very strong and very weak charges close together).
But I will always have a love of the cassette because of how it allowed me to take music into the car (before CDs) without too much concern about the heat of the sun or other damage (since I was recording from LP's and could always make another cassette if worse came to worse). I also used cassettes for my home listening to preserve my LP's and slow the accrual of snap, crackle, pop! The recordings I made and played back on my Nak did not lose much at all to the original and I only broke out the vinyl for special occasions!
I never understood commercial cassettes because they sucked for SQ. I was also impressed at how much better the cassette sounded if played back on the same deck that recorded it although I had a couple of car decks that did a good job with the Nak recordings from the standpoint of listening to music when road noise was in play!
8 tracks were never really a thing in my experience, but I'm not exactly sure why they were so short lived! Does anyone know the story here?
