This is just weird

[3db]

http://www.bizmology.com/2010/08/04/rebirth-of-the-cassette/

 

[highfigh]

The last line is a load- I used to leave mine in the car all summer. Leaving them on a dark colored dash is another story.

 

[3db]

The last line is a load- I used to leave mine in the car all summer. Leaving them on a dark colored dash is another story.

I think that was the intent of the statement...thats how I read it. I too left my casettes stored in a case under the seats.

 

[KEW]

Perhaps as the magnetic signals migrate, the end result has an audio signature which approximates MP3's!

 

[highfigh]

I never looked at cassettes as being more than just a convenient way to play music in my car. If I wanted to play tapes at home, it was something I couldn't record myself, but I was never into trading tapes with people. Heat definitely messes up magnetic tape. That's an absolute.

 

[yepimonfire]

actually come to think of it an old worn out cassete sort of does sound like a 128 mp3, and tapes making a comeback? heck, i hated the sound of cassete tapes growing up, i would never buy one, vinyl coming back is a different story since well pressed vinyl DOES sound very good. but i absolutely hate cassete tapes.

 

[highfigh]

To be fair, there have been some cassette recorders that did a great job, considering the tape width and speed, or lack thereof. Still not as good as the original but when the tape was synched to the album, it was surprisingly close. That's how we sold cassette decks, very often. We'd actually record something and play it back.

I'd like to see someone do that now.

 

[KEW]

I do agree with you, HighFigh. I used to record on a Nakamichi and sync it with the CD, match levels and switch back and forth. I certainly could tell which was which, but you did have to pay close attention to tell the difference.
As far as commercially available cassettes, they sucked. I think it was important to record and play back on the same machine.

At that time, HK, Sony, Kenwood, Teac, Wollensak, and Technics all made some nice solid units, but none could touch the Nak for SQ!
Build quality was a different story (at least for my Nak. The Dolby C crapped out within 5 years).

 

[skizzerflake]

Wow...why would anybody want to go back to those crappy cassettes? Mediocre sound, need rewinding, no random access and sometimes the break, get all tangled up in the mechanism and then the tape is ruined. Pretty much anything other than an 8-track is better.

 

[BMXTRIX]

While I have fond memories of my cassette tapes, I was certainly buying CDs back in the mid 1980s. Van-Halen 5150 around 1985/86 or so I believe was my first CD purchase. But, to have any portability of your music you had to go to the cassette. The CD walkman was years away, and certainly never was the size or quality of the Aiwa cassette walkman players.

I would buy music on CD, then make a copy over to cassette on my Dad's setup and then be able to play the music anywhere I wanted without fear of destroying the original purchase.

But, with the incredible availability of the MP3 at any bit rate you want, I'm not sure why anyone would want a cassette anymore.

Just get the CD (or MP3) and then make it digital if you want true portability. The cassette is what you buy when some band is to cheap to put something out on CD. Which makes no sense at all anymore since cassettes should cost more and be more demanding to manufacture than CDRs.

 

[markw]

Next nostalgia craze: B&W* television on 12" round CRT's.

*For those younguns who might not remember, that's Black and White, not Bowers and Wilkens.

 

[s162216]

Hey CRT's rule for SD stuff, much better contrast etc. I still use a 16" in my bedroom as it fits perfectly in a small alcove and gives a much better picture than an equivalent cheap LCD does.

I might be a bit biased though as I love old tech stuff as it seem to have a bit more fun in it for me (film SLR's, CRT's, 10 year old computers, records... the list goes on)

 

[3db]

I enjoyed the VU meters on cassette decks.

 

[markw]

Hey CRT's rule for SD stuff, much better contrast etc. I still use a 16" in my bedroom as it fits perfectly in a small alcove and gives a much better picture than an equivalent cheap LCD does.

Is is round and does it only display in black and white?

 

[s162216]

Nah, not even I like old stuff that much that I would extend to having something like that

(Not that one would work anyway, old UK TV's before colour used to be 405 line and use positive modulation whilst modern ones use 625 lines and negative modulation, you would have to overscan to reduce the resolution and invert the signal effectively)

 

[highfigh]

I do agree with you, HighFigh. I used to record on a Nakamichi and sync it with the CD, match levels and switch back and forth. I certainly could tell which was which, but you did have to pay close attention to tell the difference.
As far as commercially available cassettes, they sucked. I think it was important to record and play back on the same machine.

At that time, HK, Sony, Kenwood, Teac, Wollensak, and Technics all made some nice solid units, but none could touch the Nak for SQ!
Build quality was a different story (at least for my Nak. The Dolby C crapped out within 5 years).

Cassette tapes from record companies were better for lapping the heads than listening to.

We had a couple of Sony Tape Deck clinics at the store where I worked and the first one was done by the same person who designed all of the TC-K models, as well as the TC-540 and several of their other better open reel models. Someone came in with a $300 Sony deck and it didn't meet spec, so he asked for a multi-meter, some rubbing alcohol, a Q-Tip and a small screwdriver. He opened it, checked some voltages and tweaked it- it then did 20Hz-23KHz +0dB/- 3dB at -20dB (standard test level). The next deck was a Nakamichi that sold for almost $800 and after changing directions a few times, the transport stopped working because a belt fell off. He fixed that but it didn't come close to meeting spec.

 

[KEW]

Cassette tapes from record companies were better for lapping the heads than listening to.

We had a couple of Sony Tape Deck clinics at the store where I worked and the first one was done by the same person who designed all of the TC-K models, as well as the TC-540 and several of their other better open reel models. Someone came in with a $300 Sony deck and it didn't meet spec, so he asked for a multi-meter, some rubbing alcohol, a Q-Tip and a small screwdriver. He opened it, checked some voltages and tweaked it- it then did 20Hz-23KHz +0dB/- 3dB at -20dB (standard test level). The next deck was a Nakamichi that sold for almost $800 and after changing directions a few times, the transport stopped working because a belt fell off. He fixed that but it didn't come close to meeting spec.

I would guess that I did my comparison while Nakamichi still had a performance lead over the other mainstream audio manufacturers. Companies like HK and Sony had a decisive roll off in the HF or lots of hiss.
Once I got my Nak, I quit comparing them, and never saw the others meet or beat NAK's performance. But, as I said, the NAK was crap for reliability.

There is a pretty nice summary of cassettes and performance on wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassette_deck

 

[highfigh]

I would guess that I did my comparison while Nakamichi still had a performance lead over the other mainstream audio manufacturers. Companies like HK and Sony had a decisive roll off in the HF or lots of hiss.
Once I got my Nak, I quit comparing them, and never saw the others meet or beat NAK's performance. But, as I said, the NAK was crap for reliability.

There is a pretty nice summary of cassettes and performance on wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassette_deck

Some decks were better with different tape formulations, too. Some were great with TDK SA and then SA-X (their first chromium dioxide tape) and some were better with Maxell. I was partial to Sony's Ferri-Chrome because it had the highs of chrome and the lows of ferric oxide. Then, there's the noise reduction issue, where a tape recorded on one deck invariably sounded like crap when it was played on another and it really needed to sound good. I still have a JVC CD-1770 top loading deck, although I don't use it. Very nice piece and it has mic/line mixing. It uses ANRS and Super ANRS, which was developed by Ray Dolby, but never seemed to gain much attention.

Well recorded (WRT level, noise reduction, Bias/EQ, etc), cassettes can sound really good, even if it's not top of the line. I used a Sony PCM-F1 to record a band in October of '82 and made some cassette copies (I only remember it so well because that was the last time the Brewers were in the World Series and the guitarist commented that they had won that night). I hadn't seen my copy for a long time and I listened to it in the late '90s- I was amazed by how spacious and noise-free it was. -70dB S/N ratio isn't bad and if the music has a moderate average volume level, the noise will only be apparent in the quietest passages unless the listener is actively trying to hear it.

It's too bad Nak had the reliability issues they did- they did some interesting things, mechanically, but that in itself leads to problems. One of the car audio places I worked for sold theirs and they sounded great, when they worked.

 

[caper26]

I laughed when I was watching Hot Tub Time Machine and I saw a dude with a cassette walk-man!!!