Old-School Cassettes Make Comeback as Consumers Yearn for the Antique

[techristian]

I have a friend who swears by cassettes !

 

http://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/old-school-cassettes-make-comeback-consumers-yearn-antique-n438331

 

Dan

[Vito Corleone]

Not EVERYTHING older is better....

 

It's like driving, say, an 1968 Ford F-100 pickup. There's something fun and interesting and retro about it, but does anyone REALLY think it's a better pickup, in almost any aspect, than one of the new models?

 

 

[Notes_Norton]

Cassettes? They invented something that sounded even worse than 45rpm records. -- The high frequency response was terrible, the hiss was humongous, and sooner or later the player will get hungry and eat the tape for lunch.

 

When you finally get the tape out of the jaws of the hungry player, you will have an unplayable mix of accordion folds and stretches or worse, a stretched and broken tape.

 

The only thing worse than cassettes were 8-track tapes. Those 8-tracks would fade out in the middle of a song, click-click, and then fade into the rest of the song. Who's idea was that? Certainly not a musicians.

 

I used to record my LPs to cassette to play in the car, and I admit, I bought two new ones (learned a valuable lesson there). One was a duplicate of the Led Zeppelin LP (#1). I put it in the notch between the seats of my Honda, and the wiring in the tunnel erased half the tape. The other was a Duane Allman Anthology and the deck ate it on the first playing. Yes, I religiously cleaned and demagnetized the heads.

 

From then on, I only bought blank tapes, taped my LPs, and when the machine got hungry, it was no problem.

 

That is one phase of technology I was happy to see replaced with something newer.

 

But of course, everyone has a right to their opinion. If you like them, go for it.

 

Insights and incites by Notes

[techristian]

I record in digital, but it was an interesting article nonetheless.

 

Dan

[Beck]

Pretty cool. I've never not had a cassette deck or player of some kind. I still have an original Walkman I've managed to maintain, except for the original headphones, which I've replaced a couple times. I still prefer the sound of cassette to CD, but I always had pretty high end cassette decks. To be fair you could get a decent CD player for a lot less than I paid for my cassette decks back in the day. But IMO as time went on good cassette players/decks got easier to build well at less cost.

 

I currently have two Tascam 102 models.. I believe the cheapest pro decks and the last decks they made. Relatively inexpensive and light weight compared to something like the 122 MKII or 112 MKII, but still sound great. Recording a vinyl album to a good Type-II cassette like TDK SA or SA-X (which I have lots of NOS) with HX Pro and Dolby B or C engaged on my 102 is pure ear candy. I even prefer the sound of a commercial CD recorded to cassette compared to listening to the original CD directly.

[MikeRivers]

Cassettes today are vinyl for people who can't afford vinyl.

[Vito Corleone]

Back in the day, I used to dub my LPs to cassette and then never play the LP again. I had good gear, so the cassettes sounded very good and my LP collection has remained pristine as a result. But once the ability to record cheap CDs came about there was no longer any need for tapes.

 

 

 

And pre recorded cassettes were the pits. Horrible sound quality. (The main reason I was buying and dubbing LPs in the first place). I have no idea why anyone would want to bring those back.

[Notes_Norton]

I had a high end Nakamichi Cassette deck at home, but I still thought the high frequencies were compromised. I had a good Marantz amp and nice speakers.

 

I think the tape speed for the magnetic density of the tape was just too slow to accurately record the highs.

 

Insights and incites by Notes

[Vito Corleone]

High end? What's that?

 

 

[Phil O'Keefe]

There's really nothing there above about 12-14 kHz on most players (a really good home / studio deck like a Nak excepted)... but they do beat 8 track tapes, and they're recordable. Dubbing your own tapes and using high-quality tape usually resulted in better fidelity than what the labels sold. That's about the best things you can say about cassette tapes IMO. Vinyl was a huge compromise too and has all kinds of "issues", but none of that matters to the nostalgists.

[Vito Corleone]

There's really nothing there above about 12-14 kHz on most players (a really good home / studio deck like a Nak excepted)... but they do beat 8 track tapes' date=' and they're recordable. Dubbing your own tapes and using high-quality tape usually resulted in better fidelity than what the labels sold. That's about the best things you can say about cassette tapes IMO. Vinyl was a huge compromise too and has all kinds of "issues", but none of that matters to the nostalgists.[/quote']

 

I had an 8-track recorder too back in the day before I got a cassette player in my car and a decent Aiwa recorder.

 

Anything above 12-14kHz? Honestly, I don't think I've heard much at all above 12kHz since the early 80s. Standing in front all those Marshall stacks and all that....

 

 

[blue2blue]

I get the yearning for a supposedly better, simpler past. But it never really was. You just had less options, so less decisions. A lot of people don't like choice, let's face it. It confuses them. They have little or no ability to sort out the beneficial from the detrimental in any coherent fashion (just look at national politics for frightening examples -- in some of the most important aspects of modern life, a surprising number of people -- the majority -- completely eschew rationality and objective balancing of negative and positive factors in their decision-making).

 

 

Anyhow, that's them.

 

Me, I was horrified by the very first stereo cassette recorder I heard, a Sony that cost $600 in 1969 (making it around $3900 in today's dollars!) because the rapid flutter and wow were so absurd. Not to mention the high end all but nonexistent.

 

Now, for sure, they did, absolutely, improve a great deal. Good cassette decks were reasonably listenable -- don't forget, when they came out, only those playing records derived from well-cut grooved disk masters on high quality turntables got to hear music that wasn't lousy with speed problems, usually a combination of [hopefully relatively slight] flutter from studio tape machines and the typically gross speed problems deriving from the utterly crappy turntables in most consumer rigs.

 

But cassette machines were never what you'd call, good. Not what I'd call good, anyhow. And I've owned maybe close to 30 cassette decks, more than a couple that cost the equivalent of four figures in today's money. (My current machine cost the equivalent of $1280 in the 90s. It's a nice deck, got some good features, VSO, a very handy feature for a 'pro' deck [i know because it says 'Professional' right on it -- although they call the VSO 'pitch control' ] but, you know, when these cassette-worship threads break out (and they have for years at places like GearSlutz), I sometimes find myself playing with it -- for old time's sake. It sounds as good as it ever did -- but that was never particularly impressive. When I bought it in '94 I was already recording to ADAT and mixing to DAT (but I needed something decent to give to clients to take home) and, you know, I hoped by spending up... well... you can't get a silk purse out of a sow's ear. No slag on sows.

[Anderton]

What's interesting to me was that cassettes were invented solely to be a dictation medium. They were never intended for music, but then Ray Dolby came along and screwed that up

[Notes_Norton]

<...>. Vinyl was a huge compromise too and has all kinds of "issues"' date=' but none of that matters to the nostalgists.[/quote']

 

Nostalgists, I like that term.

 

People go ga-ga over an old Selmer Mark VI saxophone. I had one, and it had intonation issues. Selmer fixed that with the Mark VII, but used cheaper brass so the tone suffered and the VI became the holy grail. Much better saxes with big tone and better intonation are built with today's technology, but the nostalgists still IMHO overpay big time for the VI.

 

I know people who like 1950s and early 1960s cars and say, "They don't make them like they used to." I agree, If you got 100,000 miles on a 50s or 60s car it was time to have a party. "Flipping the odometer" was a rare event. I routinely get 200,000 miles on every car I've bought since the 1980s.

 

And does that old Les Paul without a bridge you can adjust the intonation on sound better than the dozen new LPs you could buy for the same price?

 

Personally, I like the sound of virgin vinyl played through a tube McIntosh amp. But I don't fool myself into believing it is an accurate representation of the original. It just sounds good to my ears. But even if I had the money, I wouldn't own one today.

 

My Nakamichi deck supposedly went up to 20khz but I don't know how flat the curve was. Was that 20k 6db lower than 4k? 12db? I know it wasn't flat because when I recorded my vinyl and then did blind A/B tests with other musicians who had ears I trusted, they could tell which was which. I could tell, but since I knew which one I was playing, it wasn't a fair test. My duo partner's ears test perfect, and she could tell 100% of the time. I used Chrome tapes, and my Nak was calibrated serviced by an authorized repair center.

 

I don't know if my aging ears could tell the difference today. If you can't hear the difference, or if you actually like the sound of the cassette, it could be the right answer for you.

 

Ray Dolby got rid of much of the hiss, but I could still hear some with headphones, and the highs were a bit better, but still lacking.

 

You might like that 57 Chevy or a Mark VI sax too, and that's perfectly OK. There is more than one right way to listen to music.

 

Insights and incites by Notes

[Ernest Buckley]

I`ll be staying with my DAW. There is nothing I miss about tape except this one thing…. rewinding a song. I`m serious. It gave my ears a break and a rest for my head.

 

Thats the only thing I miss.

[Phil O'Keefe]

I had a nice Nakamichi years ago - it wasn't a Dragon, but it was still a high-end cassette deck. I'm very familiar with their performance characteristics. They were some of the best cassette decks ever built IMHO, but they certainly weren't flat out to 20kHz.

 

I also had a Mk VI alto when I was in high school, and while it was a very nice sax, I've played others that I thought were just as good.

 

[MikeRivers]

 

 

My Nakamichi deck supposedly went up to 20khz but I don't know how flat the curve was. Was that 20k 6db lower than 4k? 12db?

 

Given that it's a Nakamichi, the spec sheet probably had a tolerance on that frequency response. I have a Sony TDC-5M that I used as a field recorder when I couldn't afford a Nagra. I used it enough so that I wore out the head and had to replace it. I did a full checkout and tune-up with the new head and it was about 1 dB down at 18 kHz. My reel-to-reel recorders of the time weren't that good.

 

I know it wasn't flat because when I recorded my vinyl and then did blind A/B tests with other musicians who had ears I trusted, they could tell which was which.

 

Frequency response isn't everything, and unless it was way off in the mid range, it's doubtful that anyone, musician or not, could tell you that it was several dB down at 20 kHz. Tape path stability and noise are really more significant. Toi get rid of the noise that comes along with extending the bandwidth for low tape speed and narrow tracks, we got Dolby (and occasionally dbx) noise reduction, and that introduced its own anomalies that could be easily deteced in an A/B comparison. Same with tape path instability which causes modulation noise (including linear and "scrape" flutter), also easy to detect.

 

I'm not defending the cassette. I'm happy to have something better to use now. But a good quality cassetted deck brought better recording capability to the home than with the home-priced reel-to-reel recorders of the day. Did you ever compare your cassette recordings to a tape recorded and played on your grandfather's Webcor? And it was a success as an in-car player where mobile disk players were a dreadful failure.

 

Are people who are buying new cassettes also getting overhauled Nakamichi Dragons to play them on? Is this another Tape Project only with cassettes? I don't think so. I expect that today's cassette fans are audiophiles, they just think it's cool and retro.

 

Me? I'm waiting for someone to write a web browser for my Commodore VIC-20. Then I'll get it out of the closet.

[blue2blue]

[...]

 

My Nakamichi deck supposedly went up to 20khz but I don't know how flat the curve was. Was that 20k 6db lower than 4k? 12db? I know it wasn't flat because when I recorded my vinyl and then did blind A/B tests with other musicians who had ears I trusted, they could tell which was which. I could tell, but since I knew which one I was playing, it wasn't a fair test. My duo partner's ears test perfect, and she could tell 100% of the time. I used Chrome tapes, and my Nak was calibrated serviced by an authorized repair center.

 

[...]

I'm thinking you were probably focused on high frequency content, but she may have been listening to other qualities. If she was a pianist she might well be keyed in (pardon) to time domain issues like flutter. After I got a CD player and a number of modern CDs (particularly with digitally tracked solo pianos and acoustic guitars), I became considerably more aware of speed issues in recordings. Stuff cut to disk, of course, tended to have much tighter time domain accuracy than that cut to tape. In some ways I prefer the tighter time domain performance of (well made) late period 78 RPM records to some later, more extended range stuff cut to tape.

[Mark L]

My Dad had a very good Sony tape deck back in the early 80s. Can't remember exactly what model it was, but it was a top-loader with a wooden surround. My soon-to-be brother-in-law and I used it to record comedy songs I'd written. I had two Altai tie-clip mics which I plugged into the two inputs. I played acoustic guitar and sang, and he sang sans guitar. The results sounded quite good, actually. I still have those recordings....

[blue2blue]

My Dad had a very good Sony tape deck back in the early 80s. Can't remember exactly what model it was' date=' but it was a top-loader with a wooden surround. My soon-to-be brother-in-law and I used it to record comedy songs I'd written. I had two Altai tie-clip mics which I plugged into the two inputs. I played acoustic guitar and sang, and he sang sans guitar. The results sounded quite good, actually. I still have those recordings....[/quote']

 

The Sony deck I bought around 1983 or '84 must have been its evil twin, then. It was the second most money I ever spent on a cassette deck (over $1000 adjusted for inflation) but it was never great sounding and rapidly went downhill. Within a year and a half I'd sidelined it as a rewind deck (it did have the first real time counter I'd seen on a consumer deck that worked -- and it was reasonably precise, within a second or two on a typical song, although, as those things do, it varied (even on the same stretch of tape, because of the squishy nature of the approximation algorithm).

 

I'd seen that model of deck in an otherwise well-equipped studio and assumed that to be an endorsement. When I mentioned to the tech that I'd bought that model he audibly groaned and said, "I wish you'd asked first." Oh well.

[UstadKhanAli]

I`ll be staying with my DAW. There is nothing I miss about tape except this one thing…. rewinding a song. I`m serious. It gave my ears a break and a rest for my head.

 

Thats the only thing I miss.

 

It's not a replacement for a DAW. It's an alternative to MP3s. It's something tangible, physical that someone can hold while goin' "old school". It's fun, different, and physical. Nothing more than that. Everyone realizes what it is.

[Mark L]

 

The Sony deck I bought around 1983 or '84 must have been its evil twin, then. It was the second most money I ever spent on a cassette deck (over $1000 adjusted for inflation) but it was never great sounding and rapidly went downhill. Within a year and a half I'd sidelined it as a rewind deck (it did have the first real time counter I'd seen on a consumer deck that worked -- and it was reasonably precise, within a second or two on a typical song, although, as those things do, it varied (even on the same stretch of tape, because of the squishy nature of the approximation algorithm).

 

I'd seen that model of deck in an otherwise well-equipped studio and assumed that to be an endorsement. When I mentioned to the tech that I'd bought that model he audibly groaned and said, "I wish you'd asked first." Oh well.

 

That'll teach you!

 

I did my first recordings on my Dad's unit about April '81. He'd already had it a few years by then, so maybe yours was the proud successor

[Mandolin Picker]

I am beginning to wonder if there is something else at play here, that has less to do with music and more to do with the way we interact with it and our continued dependency on computers. For example, today on the BBC there was an article talking about how our memory is being changed due to the computer. We no longer need to remember anything, instead we 'google' it. Sometimes repeatedly. (http://www.bbc.com/news/education-34454264). Not that long ago when I was back in school I read an article about how students who used electronic textbooks had a greater loss of retention of the material compared to those who used 'dead tree' textbooks. For me, I found it much harder trying to use and find stuff in the one electronic textbook I used one semester. After that it was back to the dead tree versions for me, even if they cost more.

 

Today we see folks turning to vinyl and cassettes. When folks talk about their experience with these mediums of music, they talk about the time to actually setup the record on the turntable, reviewing the notes, taking a break to rewind the tape, etc. Could a similar thing be happening here? That when all music is digital and there is no interaction with the medium, our retention of it is diminished? It doesn't hold our attention like the music on a physical medium, where there is an interaction between the music medium and the user.

 

Maybe I'm crazy (wouldn't be the first time I've been accused of that ), but do you think there might be a connection here?

[mister natural]

I remember going to a demonstration when the Nak Dragon first came out.

A string trio sat in front of the audience behind a dark cloth screen and played a movement of some classical piece. Beautiful balance between the instruments. This was recorded by two microphones directly into the Dragon (no mixer, no eq, nothing but copper wire) and then played back. Astonishing sound. The third piece of the test was - you could see the players moving their bows in sync to the music but, by golly, there was no way to audibly tell if it was live or tape. Then the musicians stopped moving their bows and everyone in the room gasped - jaw dropping.

I could never afford one though.

[Notes_Norton]

I miss watching the reels go around on the big tape machines and the flip, flip, flip at the end of the reel - that's all the nostalgia I have about tape. I don't miss the razor blades, imprinting, and other challenges.

 

Insights and incites by Notes