The Cassette Revival - So wrong on so many levels (video edition)

So cassettes are becoming popular again. That's crazy. The cassette was a great convenience format, but terrible for sound quality. Cassettes have so many problems they should have been sealed in their death tomb, in a lead-lined coffin, six feet under for eternity, rather than rising zombie-like from the grave.
More revivals (all so wrong)...
- The cassette revival
- The vinyl revival
- The CD revival
- The cassette, vinyl, and CD revivals revisited
- The analogue tape revival part 1
- The analogue tape revival part 2
- The analogue tape revival part 3
- The analogue tape revival part 4
- The analogue tape revival part 5
Automated transcript
The cassette revival this is just so wrong on so many levels people are buying cassettes again has there been an outbreak of mass hysteria just so wrong on so many levels that's a stock phrase used by naysayers who generally can only think of one level to complain about but cassettes there's a whole multi-story car park here firstly a bit of temporal personal temporal perspective most people can remember the first album they bought i bought two on the same day please please me and with the beatles by the beatles their third album in the uk a hard day's night was yet to be released i bought both albums on five-inch reel-to-reel tape and yes that was a thing in those days and so yes i do remember when the cassette or compact cassette to give it its full title was invented and i also remember my surprise when the so-called music cassette came out i remember that from reading a review in tape recorder magazine of pink floyd's the piper at the gates of dawn their first album and so fast forwarding through history i bought my first proper cassette machine an akai gxc 510d which had the best specification i could find and afford owning a hi-fi stereocassette deck was popular and common particularly among students what do people do with their cassette decks well from today's perspective one might assume that they used them as the centerpiece of their home recording studio but no they copied music from the radio preferably fm stereo with a decent aerial or obliging friends records totally illegally of course and if i ever did this my memory of this topic has unfortunately been long since erased but to be honest the cassette was is and always will be a rubbish format which is why the cassette revival is so wrong on so many levels okay the cassette revival yes apparently sparked by star lords sony tps l2 walkman in marvel's guardian of the galaxy vol 2 people want to buy cassettes and presumably cassette decks or walkman type devices to play them on apparently the uk is on track for a hundred thousand cassettes to be bought by the end of this year i am presuming that this time there will be pre-recorded cassettes rather than blank and you can choose from artists such as robbie williams the who coldplay beck and more so so many levels on how many levels is this an insane idea quite a few cassettes have many problems that should have sealed their death in a lead coffin six feet under for eternity rather than rising zombie-like from the grave level 1 frequency response the cassette format has an inherently poor frequency response consider that a professional reel-to-reel tape is normally run at 15 inches per second that's ips or 30 inches per second for superior high frequency response cassettes run at 1 and 7 8 inches per second there's no way they're going to have a decent hf response actually there is by using chrome or metal tape rather than the standard iron oxide often known more simply as rust but the poor hf performance was baked into the format at its inception and the remedy of inventing different tape formulations led to other issues level two noise going back again to reel to reel tape professionally the tape is a quarter of an inch wide a quarter of an inch wide divided into two for the two channels of a stereo signal there are also guard bands at the edges and in the center that reduce the width slightly the cassette format uses tape that is a mere one eighth of an inch wide and that the and that is for two stereo tracks so that you can turn the tape over and play it in the other direction so each track is one quarter the width of pro tape this leads to noise noise is troublesome enough in a pro recorder and in the cassette format it is to my ears intolerable once again though there came a remedy but the cure didn't come without significant undesirable side effects level three wow and flutter to be honest while when flutter didn't trouble me too much with the cassette if you're not aware already wow and flutter is an instability in the speed of the tape that leads to pitch variations wow is a longer term variation flutter is faster but having said that digital audio suffers no wow and flutter at all and it is with digital audio that surely cassettes must now be compared level four tape tangling anyone who ever had a cassette deck will remember this at worst the tape will tangle around the mechanism and has to be cut free a milder tangle can be teased out but the tape will be creased and the sound will be mangled during this portion of the audio if you're lucky then the tape won't be tangled at all there's just a loop sticking out of the cassette when you remove it from the machine you can use a ballpoint pen to turn one of the spindles to take up the slack note that some modern day cassette enthusiasts seem to think that this is a positive hands-on feature you'll probably know by now that i disagree level five dirty heads whoever cleaned the heads of their cassette deck ever hardly anyone yet the heads of a professional tape recorder would be cleaned at least once a day and how much dirty brown stuff should you expect to come off onto your q-tip when you clean the heads with isopropyl alcohol none the heads should already be so clean that any residue is invisible so a cassette deck with dirty heads what's the problem well firstly high frequency response suffers high frequency response drops rapidly if the tape is spaced away from the record playback head by dirt there's a formula that involves d the spacing from the head lambda the wavelength of the signal and the constant of 55 but i forget the mathematical arrangement it was a long time ago secondly see i haven't finished yet is that dirty heads make tangling more likely oh dear level six the infamous dolby button ray dolby helped invent the video recorder yes really and he invented the dolby button too which nearly all hifi cassette decks had what the dolby type b noise reduction signal does is boost low level high frequency signals on record and cut them back again on replay it's a little more complex than that but that's the gist the wonderful thing is that cutting back low level signals on replay also cuts back the noise by as much as 10 decibels which is very well worth having but there's a problem well two firstly the dolby system in all of its types only works properly if the level that comes off the tape on playback is the same that went on during record this is why the pro dolby systems have lineup tones so that engineers can check but having unity gain as we call it depends on the tape recorder or cassette being correctly aligned to the tape that's in use in pro studios lineup is a vital part of everyday analog tape routine whoever aligned their cassette deck um i did so the result of the tape not being aligned correctly was that the derby system could play back with too much or too little high frequency energy and of course dirty heads can make this worse the upshot of this was that many casual users didn't like the dolby button and left it switched out they thought it sounded better that way
level i've lost count incompatible tapes this relates to some of the topics i've mentioned already but it was an issue that there were different types of tape iron oxide chromium and metal which required the deck to have different alignments electronically in theory either the deck itself could detect which type of tape was inserted or the user could push a button in practice it caused a lot of confusion furthermore different brands of the same type could require different alignments incorrect alignment would lead to incorrect frequency response particularly at high frequencies and in correct operation of the derby system level no it's another level of i nearly forgot this one but azimuth azimuth is the orientation is the is is i'm watching myself on the screen it's the orientation of the tape head with respect to the tape the gap in the magnet of the tape head must be at 90 degrees to the direction of to the direction of tape travel in any one cassette deck correct azimuth wouldn't matter much because the same head is used for both recording and playback but record a cassette on a machine with incorrect azimuth and play it back on one with correct or simply different azimuth and there would be frequency response issues galore okay i'm exhausted and i imagine you are too and there are most likely other problems i've that i've forgotten about but surely any potential cassette revivalist will realize by now that they should be listening to spotify apple music or any of the other wonderful outlets for digital music with none of the faults i've recovered one more thing however it wouldn't be right to leave this topic without paying respect to design engineers who worked incredibly hard to put in an enormous degree of creativity to make some cassette decks that really could challenge pro reel-to-reel i'm thinking primarily of nakamichi if you want to treat yourself to views of some amazing audio engineering go to that video site it's called you you telly you you you thingy what's it or other and type into the search box nakamichi dragon cassette believe me you'll like it a big thank you to writers for the guardian newspaper zoe wood and ben beaumont thomas they inspired this article i'm david mellor course director of audio masterclass if you're still listening now you're crazy.
Comments on this video
You can comment on this video at YouTube
You can comment on this video at YouTube
@alanross99: You bring up to very good points, that I had all but forgotten about since I haven't used cassettes for almost 40 years. Back in the day, the primary use of cassettes for me was copying music from FM radio or LP's. The purpose of the cassette for me was to play in my car stereo. You would almost never play cassettes on your hifi at home. As you described, the quality was never good enough to enjoy at home. On the road where there were so many compromises with the system, cassettes were OK. Certainly better than the 8-track alternative. Now that all-you-can-eat music services also available in the car, there is no need to record from the radio or LP's, and no need for cassettes! That said, it was a huge part of the hifi experience to select from the best blank cassettes (Maxell UDXL-II or Metal tapes were my favorites), the best noise reduction (Dolby C), and of course proper settings for bias and EQ to match the tapes. Contrary to you, I cleaned my tape heads regularly with special Q-tips and isopropyl alcohol. As you described, the Nakamichi machines with the adjustable azimuth controls were the ultimate machines - especially the three head decks like the BX300. Getting one of the Nakamichi Car decks also with the adjustable azimuth controls was the height of my mobile audio experience. Thanks for the trip down memory lane, and for reminding me why my Nakamichi BX-125, while it looks wonderful, shall remain unused in my basement.
@bobdavis4848: How is it for you to judge? If people want to go back to cassettes, it’s their own business. What do you care? You’re not the boss of them. They can spend their entertainment budgets how they wish.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @bobdavis4848: It's up to you to judge whether my facts are correct or not. As for opinions, I have mine and you have yours. Spend your money how you wish.
@bobdavis4848 replies to @bobdavis4848: @@AudioMasterclass Right, except I meant declaring "so wrong on so many levels" is blurring the distinction between opinion and fact. It's declaring mere opinion as fact, as it did not start with “I think” or end with a question mark.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @bobdavis4848: @bobdavis4848 Facts are facts and if any of my facts are incorrect you may dispute them.
@bobdavis4848 replies to @bobdavis4848: @@AudioMasterclass I never denied your facts. But aside from your fine facts, you presented mere opinion as fact. That’s the fallacy you are sidestepping addressing. You declared the cassette revival “so wrong on so many levels” as if that is undebatable fact. It is not; it is opinion.
Also in defense of the virtuous but mentally ill who are literally insane, and their families, I hope you will not again trivialize their tragedy by using a nonliteral term like ‘this insane idea.” Cheers from this California yank, Sir.
@chrisrigby582: I agree about how rubbish audio cassettes were, and you'll be surprised (or maybe not) to hear that prerecorded commercial releases were among the worst. Having said, I have some TDK SA (chrome) tapes that were recorded from vinyl on a decent turntable by a good Yamaha hifi cassette recorder, and played back on same, that still sound good!
@blahblahblah6: When it comes to sound quality, a lot comes down to what you're used to.
I'm an older gen x-er. I grew up on transistor radios, walkman's with cheap headphones, boom boxes and shoebox tape recorders. So, to me, a mid-range system sounds pretty good. You'd probably cringe.
@blahblahblah6: I barely listen to cassettes anymore, esp since I no longer have a deck with Dolby.
That said, I remember eagerly waiting for the Dj to play a song I liked and hoping he wouldn't talk over it.
When I was using a shoe box recorder, with the microphone next to the radio speaker, there was also the worry that someone would knock on my door, or start talking, ruining my recording. That worry went away as my equipment got better.
@RobertSuttonOfAnacortes: Back "then" (late 70s, 80s) my only use for cassettes was to record my newly purchased vinyl for portable use as such the audio quality was WAY better than any pre-recorded cassette from the record company. And you had to use hi-bias or metal tapes to maximize the sound quality. Had the record companies used hi-bias chrome and better-quality mechanisms, pre-recorded cassettes might have had a more favorable view. Oh and Dolby B/C just made listening worse even on home recorded copies despite maximizing signal levels (would suppress too much high end of the original program). Yeah, so for me cassettes and decks were tools, not a medium to be collected.
@gsf5882: If people want cassettes you'd be better off with DAT. Then you can have all the fun of a cassette with the quality of a CD.
@gsf5882: Cassettes should stay in the grave. As a kid and then a teenager who grew up with them I can tell you they are absolutely awful. The last audio cassette I bought was R.E.M's UP album. That lets you know how long I still used them. I then listened to my first CD after buying a hi-fi with a CD player on it. It was like I was listening to the albums I only ever heard on tape or recorded off the radio for the first time. I heard loads of stuff I never noticed. I finally understood the lyrics. I could pick out the instruments. I never went back to cassette. That's the audio quality aspect, not even touching on mechanical. I had to open up and repair the things on many occasions. I remember my portable chewing them up. The slow down when the batteries ran out. The accidental erasure of my favourite album because my tape deck seemed to have a broken protection tab thing. My hi-fi that had to have a bit of card shoved in the door to align the cassette properly so it would play clearly. Then there's fiddling about with azimuth alignment. Then there's trying to get games to load on my ZX Spectrum. All the kids who are driving this revival are lusting after a retro that they never experienced. Ignorance is bliss I suppose.
@marcohermans3207: And now we're streaming 24bit/192Khz. Listening for perfection and buying €2000 euro interlinks to tweak the sound even further... What a boring experience. It's so sterile, analytical, perfect instrument placing, perfect in a way that the soul is missing. Music is all about emotion, warmth, connection. The Stones, Beatles didn't care about sound quality. It was all about Rock & Roll and it's imperfections. When listening to those older music analoque sounds the best. The records were mastered that way. Listening to the Stones in high-res doesn't give the listener the experience of those imperfections. For me 50's 60's 70's and 80's music sound best on vinyl and tape. Later music with digital mastering techniques sound better on CD or high-res. Listening to the early Beatles in mono vinyl is the best experience you will get from that area. Everything that wants to make it better makes it worse. Audiophiles and music, boring....they are not listening to the music but they are listening to their superior audio systems.
@michaelturner4457: I used cassettes from the 70s through to the 90s, and it usually was taping my own as well as neighbours records, for portable and in-car playbacks, as well as sometimes taping music from the radio.
I certainly got no interest in a revival of and using cassettes now. Especially given that all new cassette machines all use the same cheap chinesium tanashin clone mechanisms, with bad wow & flutter.
@enforcer-e1s: Humbug! I have a cassette that includes The Hollies track, "Blowing In The Wind". It sounds phenomenal! The same track on CD sounds terrible - No ambience. If you listened to both, the difference would astonish you. Cassettes are also "tactile" and handling them-feels good! I've over 1000 home recorded cassettes that I recorded BBC radio drama onto and they still sound fine. More than can be said for my CD's and HD's, many of them are now losing information and there's the question of all the lost ambience.
@steve732: You are theonlt one that is Wrong..
@JorgeOliveiraDodo: You just made me give up of seeing your channel....
@robertoney5665: Audiophiles are beyond overrated. Complain, complain, complain about what is inferior. This video proves it.
@tmzwcky: You left out magnetized heads!
@AudioMasterclass replies to @tmzwcky: You're right, and I might include this extra level when I update the video. I guess that having a demagnetiser and knowing how to use it left me inappropriately complacent.
@90080603: introduce minidisc to the people who whants to record ;)
@markthomas2436: I guess the concept of you letting people enjoy something they like has escaped you. To each his own, dude.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @markthomas2436: Yeah, let's not discuss anything. Makes life easier.
@michaelgreene5703: sorry you don't like cassettes some people do on higher end decks with dolby s or dbx 3 head machines with cr02 or metal tape analog sound can be quite good albeit maybe not the ultimate audiophile experience a great way to listen to your 45 rpm audiophile lps (taped) without all the flipping involved
@amalayum: I find it hilarious that you just recently released a video about how great this is, after first roasting it. At the time of watching, with the extension I see 654 likes and 586 dislikes. That's almost a 50-50 ratio.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @amalayum: It would be interesting if you would post the link to a video of me saying how great the cassette format is. Go on... waste your time trying to find one.
@amalayum replies to @amalayum: I had a shot at it but I got so sick of learning how much you love the sound of your own voice despite having your head right up your own backside. So I couldn't sit through any of your other videos which are completely dripping with sarcasm about how we're all wrong and you're right. It's clear that you like your "pristine" digital formats and have tried building a business model of being an overly opinionated glass-half-full youtuber that despite regularly getting roasted in comments, can't help but double down. So, it's clear you're also a mascohist and I don't feel like feeding that fetish of yours. Seriously, enjoy your cold tube amps and balanced headphones dude. It's clear no one else's opinion matters except you own. I'm off to listen to some cassettes. Bye.
@fraudsarentfriends4717: Cassette sounded really good if you recorded your own on a good home HiFi system with a good cassette deck. However, in most cases. they were played in portable music players and car radios which weren't going to produce high quality sound anyway, so it didn't really matter.
@PaulAxe: So what is the best format? Oh I have an answer, it’s not anything that you like. Maybe only a tea in the afternoon listening to birds at your back yard. 😂😂😂😂😂
@PaulAxe: If wasn’t for that I would not be here, and you too.
@VoltageNostalgia: Boring
@DanielQwerty: The frequency response is bad compared to digital and CD, but how did they even get an OK response with 1 7/8 IPS? That's terribly slow for how decent they sound.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @DanielQwerty: What was achieved by cassette in the high end was massively better than the format was ever intended for.
@simonzinc-trumpetharris852: They were crap then and they're crap now - but they were fun.
@bradleyjamieson7718: I grew up with cassettes and recently got back into them. The appeal is that they aren't easy. In a world of instant media where everything is NOW NOW NOW and super convient they're a breath of fresh air. I can hold a tape, I don't need a subscription or an Internet connection, I can push the metal buttons and hear them clunk, the plastic tape rattles, see the spools rotate. It's connecting to music by disconnecting from the ethereal world of streams and virtual data.
@Zimmy_1981 replies to @bradleyjamieson7718: 100% agree. no matter how clean & "undistorted" rented (also dead money) may sound, they will NEVER give you that tactile experience the analog & digital physical media gives😄
@jonhowe2960: back off, pls...unwatchable
@AudioMasterclass replies to @jonhowe2960: I decline.
@jonhowe2960 replies to @jonhowe2960: @@AudioMasterclass I declined first, ha!!
@StudioPowerful: I listen to all my music on cassette!
@johnny2hats2: really great video thanks - exactly what i was looking for. I had no idea about inches per second but it makes alot of sense. point 3 about flutter and pitch variation is why i got into tape - mainly as a recording tool. point 6 - the dolby button was good to have explained aswell.
I can completely understand how someone who grew up with cassettes can see them as a rubbish format - many musicians would cringe if they new their music was being listened to with terrible frequency response - all that hard work mastering a track wasted :p also encouraging people to go out and buy new tapes and new tape players is just an environmental capitalist nightmare. same as the vinyl resurgence... tape degradation is some of the worst in any format aswell - 30 years? if you repair old gear im all for it but - dont buy new stuff - save the landfill!
@jazzydog5635: Best thing about cassettes was while driving you could change them , lobbing the finished one on the back seat without damage. It´s not really a revival though, a 100k a year is less than 0.1% of the UK music market. Still got mine in a box somewhere though,. If you ever played in a band and had rehearsal tapes on cassette, then they are time capsule treasures, even if you don´t have a player anymore.
@DiaconuAdrian: Interesting your reviews but let me tell you what you’re doing and please tell me I’m wrong! So, you’re a dinosaur, like me and many others that comment on your video, right? Being a dinosaur it’s nothing wrong but what actually you’re doing? Being a dinosaur you used yourself a cassette and still using it but you blame cassette revival, why? Any wrong video, comment or whatsoever brings so many views and comments exactly what you need to sell your videos to Youtube… I mean adverts 🤣
Now, every single review of yours it’s against dinosaurs you being a dinosaur so you know what you’re doing 😁
You’re not against, you’re just after money and nothing else! Well, I accept comments and apologies 🤣
@kevinhansford3929: The main selling point for cassette tape for me was it was the only format that that wouldn't skip when negotiating potholes in my old mini back in the day
@LongshotLynx: Musicians and consumers value cassettes because of the extradiagetic LoFi that they can add. This acknowledgment is an appreciation/embrace of the inherent characteristics that tape can provide to the quality of sound. Most musical goals serve fidelity, but some musicians appreciate the medium qualities that are imparted to their music.
By contrast, vinyl superior idiots who fetishize, even worship, the vinyl format as being perfect, make a “god of the gaps” argument when they ignorantly assert that because the recording process up to playback can be/is translated with physical interactions then that is the “real” metrics by which to determine fidelity.
Vinyl freaks value and conflate material processes as intrinsically embued as representations of reality. Musicians and listeners of tape value, UTILIZE and exploit the limits/quality of the tape medium, but they aren’t so removed from the laws of physics that they claim tape is superior above all physical media. Vinyl audiophiles deny physics of their preferred medium while simultaneously defend it with ignorant apologia AND that inherent flaws have not been improved upon by other mediums.
Vinyl audiophiles are mostly nostalgia apologists.
@Tyco072: Yes right. The cassette was a rubbish format for listening music. Especially I can't stand the wow&flutter and drop out, which are always easy to hear, even with expensive decks and tapes. With dropout I mean also the non-uniformity of the sound because of the tape wearing and the random sticking of air dust or magnetic particles between the tape and the head gap.The limited frequency response, the high background noise are also unacceptable for my ears. In 1999 I was so happy to start to record music on PC on WAV files, which I recorded then on audio CDs, to keep free space on my 6GB HDD with Windows98. The cassette revival is really the most absurd analog revival. I have no nostalgia at all for any of the flaws in sound of tape and vinyl.
@lights80088: I think it was Nakamichi, who had the cassette deck that rotated the cassette (it had a bulged out door for clearance) instead of manually taking it out and flipping the tape to the other side. I was amazed when showed how it worked. They believed it was better than having the tape head move.
@simonzinc-trumpetharris852 replies to @lights80088: And they cost a fortune.
@Nester42069: I always thought the Dolby nr makes the music less sharp and sound kinda muffled.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @Nester42069: You need this... https://youtu.be/oVyryZBogeo
@hcdenton: Please go read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripping .
@benjaminshiels1824: Cassette was like YouTube sensors. Living on borrowed time! 🖕😊
@tertia0011: With advent of digital audio I found that over time I went from listening to music on HiFi with turntable & cassette deck through good floor standing speakers to iPod or iPhone with poor headphones (I very rarely use earbuds) or or PC with poor speakers (even worse - phone or iPad speakers). The convenience & portability of digital audio playback devices meant I was listening to more music but in casual ways - I had lost discipline of listening to HiFi music playback in a listening room with HiFi equipment.
@kvmoore1: I can't even find a decent "new" high quality cassette player with line-level outputs for a "decent" affordable price. The ones I do see are pretty expensive. I have a lot of old cassettes I'd like to digitize.
@tomasspacey6828: Still much better format then what 99% of the planet listens to - MP3. After a while not using my tape deck I've put some professionaly recorded tape - chrome. Man what a sound - it sounds great. Better then vinyl on bass and wider in stereo too. Upper frequency range very very slightly limited but better ballanced which adds to liveness and the noise only in pause and when highly amplified noticeble ... Well MP3 itself is a great argument for CC revival and there are some more i believe. BTW My Yamaha type goes till 23kHz + - 3dB and 18kHz have been meassured on some 2 head decks with +- .5 dB . That noise madness that killed the format is so usless. It actually does something really good for the listening IMO and I let it up to everyone to figure out for himself.
@solarionispirit2117: You are so wrong on so many levels.
@martincosby9743: Hang on! I really enjoy both my old cassettes, and also recording new ones... I like the whole process, from finding old stock chrome blank tapes, playing with recording levels and so on, and creating a wonderful analogue-sounding end result. But it helps to have a decent tape deck. I have a Revox B215 and the results I get from recording are more or less indistinguishable from the source. I say almost, because I find that the tapes have a wonderfully old-fashioned sound which often suite the music. It is a very relaxing and satisfying hobby
@davespagnol8847: I've often wondered about buying a cassette player. Note, not recorder. With a view to getting back some old cassettes which I put in my brother's loft when my first marriage broke up. Back in the day I had a Kenwood cassette deck which had auto-bias. It was tuned to TDK-SA tapes, but the auto-bias tuned it to the cheaper TDK-SF tapes, and, honestly, as long as I used the auto-bias I could record without Dolby, and not hear the hiss normally associated with cassettes. What I recorded was the BBC Radio One in concert programs. As most of this was rock music interspersed with audience applause, I'd probably have been hard pressed to hear any hiss in any case.
I used to back up CDs and Vinyl onto cassette to play in an AIWA walkman (which I don't have any more). So, as with vinyl, I would like to play my old cassettes, but, honestly, I would never buy them pre-recorded even then. So I guess that, overall, I agree with you.
@waltrohrbach2459: must be the gimmick factor, i still enjoy the quality and convenience of digital, after the decades of analog. Though i was cleaning heads and demagnetize them on a regular basis on the cassette deck, as well as the teac 4 track reel to reel i had. Correct Dolby B was never used as it mostly dampened high frequencies in my ears, Dolby C was quite a bit better in a later deck, but with metal tape i found it good enough without any noise reduction compression. Thx for the vid, brought back memories, or was it memorex?
@tc-netherlands5331: I love the magic of tape compression and tape saturation. I own a Tandberg tcd 310 MKII cassetteplayer and the sound is incredible. I love the sound much more than spotify streaming service. And the Tandberg sounds way much better then my Revox B77 MKII reel-to-reel machine. So I am going to sell my expensive Revox and will continue recording on my cheap Tandberg cassetteplayer.
@wrestletube1: Sparked by your home YouTubers eg people like Techmoan and Cassette Comeback even before Guardians.
@wrestletube1: They should have made Type IV the default format for this one in every deck since it was invented with it's less faults but Type I became the format throughout. Or they should have done a Quadruple Metal Type V featuring Ferric, Cobalt, Chrome and Metal which I guess is Steel bits in the magnetic tape to make the superior tape format.
@johnbull5394: You forgot about the ghostly echo of loud sounds about half a second out from the actual recorded loud sound. This is most noticeable on audiobooks.
I can only assume that the wrapped tape ends up magnetising the adjacent section of tape and imprinting an echo?
I still use cassette tape on occasion. Some albums I only have on tape and I don't want to buy further copies on another format; I use tapes in my van; finally, it's the only home-recordable recording format I can connect to my hifi speakers. I agree it has its limitations and if people are buying new pre-recorded cassettes, then that sounds very strange indeed to me!
@AudioMasterclass replies to @johnbull5394: I don't think I forgot about it, I just don't think I've been troubled by it. Reel-to-reel tape definitely can suffer from print through but I guess that the other degradations of cassette often mask it. I'll consider the topic when I update this video.
@johnbull5394 replies to @johnbull5394: Mine wasn't a serious criticism. Sorry if it came across that way. I just thought it was an interesting quirk.@@AudioMasterclass
@AlanJEdmonds: Cassettes were good in cars. The poorer dynamic range helped in the noisy environment, and it was nice to instantly resume playback from where you left off.
I used them for many years but I got rid of all mine before the revival. I’ll never go back.
@1sostatic: Even Revox, Tascam, Akai, Pioneer reel to reels at 7.5 and 15ips we see for restoration, are a poor audio format in comparison with most other formats ... hiss, noise, freq response. How cassette can ever be any good to listen to is beyond me.. However the enthusiasts are beginning to ask us to restore cassette machines going back to the brushed aluminium era of the 1970's ...They may look nice and belts can be replaced... but the idler assemblies once they have broken down, are irreplaceable. ... its going to be a short revival.
@tomstickland: There's a channel on youtube, TechMoan who loves old hi fi equipment and also old tape decks. Just for mechanical interest really.
@Luthiart: Cassettes had their place and time. Back in the day, all we knew was that they beat 8-tracks, and you can't play records in your car. Also, before CDs were a thing, I bought mostly vinyl and recorded my albums onto high-quality cassettes, so as to minimize wear on my records. Yeah. we knew the sound quality wasn't as good as vinyl, but it was good enough. We were also aware of the limitations (and annoyances) of the medium, but it was an acceptable trade-off for convenience and cost. However, wanting to go back to that today just doesn't make any sense. I think anybody who wants a cassette revival must be too young to have ever owned a cassette (or even a CD for that matter), and just dig it simply because it's "retro".
@stevengagnon4777: One more reason....this revival has priced me out of the marketplace...I thought at least the cassette media would never come back and I could replace my very high miles JVC DD-7 with another for a hundred bucks ...well even less. Also I was getting all the tape I needed at the St Vincent dig and save. I just liked the sound of compressed digital files recorded and then played back on cassette. It was fine for work and listening to my portable in the car I was living in. I had a record player at work too. But 45 minutes of tape was perfect for pacing my self as a bicycle mechanic.
@MrSlipstreem: You are so wrong on so many levels.
1/ Are pre-recorded cassettes crap? Yes, unavoidably unless they're copied at 1x speed.
2/ There have been plenty of affordable hi-fi cassette decks perfectly capable of reproducing a full 20kHz bandwidth (or more) using Type I ferric tapes since the early 80s. I own two that are flat from 20Hz to 20kHz within 1dB using a cheap TDK FE Type I cassette. Neither were particularly expensive compared to CD players at the time.
2a/ Dolby C almost eliminates the effect of compression due to tape saturation thanks to its spectral skewing technique, so Type I tapes can sound as linear as a Type IV tape.
3/ Noise is vanishingly small at normal listening levels when using Dolby C. Despite arguments to the contrary, it DOES track with great accuracy on a correctly calibrated deck.
?/ Wow & flutter is below an inaudible (to most people) 0.05% WRMS on plenty of decent hi-fi cassette decks. This beats almost any domestic reel-to-reel tape recorder by a fair margin.
4/ Tape tangling only happens on poorly designed and/or poorly maintained decks. I've had it happen once in the past 40+ years and that was my own fault entirely for being lazy.
5/ Who cleans the heads on their cassette deck regularly? Anyone who understands the basics of how a tape recorder works and cares about their tapes and deck.
6/ Many decent hi-fi cassette decks have auto tape calibration which ensure that Dolby NR tracks correctly. For example, Pioneer decks with Super Auto BLE.
7/ Incompatible tapes? They're all clearly marked by Type. If your deck doesn't support them, don't buy them. Simple.
8?/ Azimuth relates to all tape decks. Why point it out as being a specific problem with cassette decks?
9?/ It's a shame to see you fall for the Nakamichi BS as there have been thousands of models from other manufacturers that at least match a flagship Nakamichi for sound quality.
10/ I really wish people who think they know a great deal more than they actually do would stop spreading utter nonsense on Youtube and go and learn something instead. I can only hope that this entire video is a windup of some kind, but many in the comments seem to be taking it seriously.
@lostandfoundsounds replies to @MrSlipstreem: Re: point #2. I bought a Harman Kardon deck in the early 80s (back in the "champagne" face era) and it was like owning a Nakamichi without paying the "Nakamichi tax." It's rated for 22k with metal tape and with properly aligned bias and Dolby level, was as close to the source as I could get (which was really good). More impressive is that back then, a few of us traded tapes, and they were impressed how good I made the TDK D-90s sound. Good times!
@halo3odst: 1: imagine listening to pre recorded music on recordable media.
2: education and resources are the matter here, not necessarily the media format.
3: enthusiasts can buy a separate dolby type A nr unit and use that instead of B C or even D if so inclined.
4: its a hobby and people who enjoy it are only making your life worse if you allow them to bother you.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @halo3odst: Dear chap, I have whole courses on how to make recordings better. I've been doing it online since 2001. DM
@halo3odst replies to @halo3odst: @@AudioMasterclass point 5 redacted. that being said, why not mention these courses in the above video?
@elk3909: the tape type switch doesnt change alignment it changes the resistor that is in parallel with the feedback capacitor in the preamp opamp circuit. the tape preamp circuit has a large resistor usually between 100k and 820k between the output and inverting pins of the opamp this is also in parallel with a capacitor in series with a resistor that determines how high the lowpass filter is tuned since the lower frequencies have to be boosted more than the higher frequencies during playback
@elk3909 replies to @elk3909: maybe ill make a video about how my cassette preamps work and why more than 1 stage is required. even sony only uses 1 stage and this leaves a high pass filter like effect below 100 hertz and even more below 20 hertz
@AudioMasterclass replies to @elk3909: I’m reel-to-reel rather than cassette but I would have expected similar things to apply… time constant, level, EQ, bias. If all that’s happening is, as it seems from your comment, a change in time constant then I would suggest that this deck isn’t getting the best out of the cassette medium. DM
@elk3909 replies to @elk3909: i also run my cassettes at high speed during recording and playback as this fixes alot of the cassette tape problems. a type 2 at 3x speed will have just as good sound as a metal tape.type 1s still have bad hiss at high speed but the frequency response is much better.
i use a modded sony 3 head deck so that the speed is changeable for recording and i use a tape player i built with a 3 stage preamp for lower frequency extension for playback.
@elk3909 replies to @elk3909: im just getting ready to build another tape player that will run on a 6S lithium battery instead of 4s like the one i made last time so it will have more voltage for the output power amp for more power.the power amp will be two TDA2050 monoblocks
@elk3909 replies to @elk3909: @@AudioMasterclass i would also go with reel to reel but they are hard to carry around
@cainabel2553: I remember my different cassette players not running at the same speed.
@KeatingJosh: Oh it's definitely fun though! It's quite interesting how good the quality can be with a decent tape and Dolby S but it's no comparison to digital on closer inspection.. just a bit of nostalgic fun
@daleharper5361: Yes, I aligned and cleaned the heads on my Nakamichi RX-505 weekly and my Yamaha cassette, Teac & Uher reel to reels. Was interested in what tapes frequency range graph looked like.
@spectrelayer: Always enjoy your "rants". I found myself nodding in agreement with so much of this video. I too lived thru the cassette era. However, I found that hi-bias tapes with Dolby B & HX-Pro (later on) could make some really good sound. Alas - I eventually let my last cassette player slide onto eBay in 2008. Until I discovered something amazing. It appears that the company PIONEER (yes, really) did something amazing with cassettes with the last line of decks they made. It appears that they perfected it -right before it became obsolete. Not sure that you've seen this but you may want to listen to this with a nice pair of cans (trust me): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v14AEKgX29U
@szeredaiakos: Frequency response does not bother me at the slightest, can't hear it anyways.
Noise its fine, I bought a fairly noisy synth a couple of years ago and I came to appreciate noise. It fills out the spectrum quite nicely and with the additional dynamic processing it results in a charming pulsation which, for some reason, makes other instruments shine brighter if the synth noise gets ducked.
I never have wow and flutter with my panasonic cassette boom box and walkman. I have to add it manually in the DAW.
Tale tangling is also foreign to me.
Clean when it's visibly dirty, is my motto.
The dolby compress record expand is a very nifty idea. Have no recorder capable of it but it is a nice way to add some saturation (distortion of the lovely type) if drive it too hot.
Please note that all of these are mainly notions,.. counterpoints, if you like, on the artistic expression side. Cassette should be the part of any studio but as media storage is rather ... retarded indeed.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @szeredaiakos: Thank you for your interesting comment. Comment readers who didn't detect the sarcasm in this should note that you should clean your deck before it's visibly dirty. DM
@TonyLing: Yes, but most open reel decks with most tape formulae sounded crap.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @TonyLing: You're right that most domestic reel-to-reel tape recorders were not very good. A decent cassette deck with chrome tape and Dolby (to preference) could outdo them. But then there was Revox. The G36, A77 and B77 were damned close to fully professional in quality. DM
@TonyLing replies to @TonyLing: @@AudioMasterclass Yes indeed, a good open reel deck at a decent speed was the pinnacle of analogue recording.
@SO_DIGITAL: Do these new cassettes use Dolby B?
@j7ndominica051: The frequency response doesn't just end with an analog system. It falls off smoothly. I can see on replay that my deck has a 19k notch for the FM carrier to avoid interference with Dolby. The treble response suffers on Type I if the tape is overdriven.
A constant, smooth noise was not as objectionable. It only became irritating if it pumped because of NR, or there was a trape dropout.
After getting a music collection on a computer I occasionally enjoyted listening to a cassette tape because I was forced to listen to the music right now, without an ability of random seek. I avoided rewinding the casette to prevent damaging the tape.
I used to record concerts and dramas from the radio. 30 years ago we had uninterrupted album playback with track gaps for one hour on most nights.
Spotify et al, are not the best example to give. It is a ripoff service designed to take our money and prevent us from owning any music.
@evenblackercrow4476: I still have my Luxman K-110 (mint), so I can play--I guess you'd call it--nostalgia. Hah, I've never liked Dolby--but maybe I would if I had a studio-level setup.
@meilstone: I remember untangling cassette tape to be a rather meditative activity. 😊
@SuspiciousArra: I do not understand why do you care so much? You seem pretty affected by this subject and many other "wrong" subjects. Is getting boring to watch all these rants. I have learned nothing, such a waste of time.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @SuspiciousArra: This is why there are 49,999,999 other channels on YouTube. The trick is to find channels you like. DM
@DrivingSander1970: I didn't like them either. Switched to DAT in 1992. Never looked back.
@islandtime1402: I think you may have forgotten the "vacuum cleaner" effect on cassette tapes. Stray magnetic fields from electronic devices could partially erase the signals on the tapes. This could lead to weird things like if you accidently placed your collection low to the ground in your room, the vacuum cleaner motor and its magnetic field could partially erase the signal that was recorded on the tape. Of course, it disproportionally affected the high frequency signals on the portion of the reel and layers of tape closest to the magnetic field. You could end up with tapes with a reoccurring spot with reduced HF response. It was so annoying. With today's cell phones and the fact that cassette tapes are about the same size, how long will it be before a new generation learns the hazards of stray magnetic fields on analog tapes?
I also don't think you mentioned the cleaning of the capstan and pinch roller -the primary sources of "eaten tapes". Most people who were diligent enough to clean the tape heads, usually didn't clean the capstan and pinch rollers. Of those, even fewer cleaned the rubber pinch roller properly. They would use alcohol on the rubber pinch roller which would reduce the lifespan of the component and make the rubber hard which in turn increases wow and flutter. AFAIK TEAC was the only company that sold rubber conditioner/cleaner.
I can understand the vinyl resurgence somewhat. A good analog source like vinyl can often sound better than a poor digital source. I repurchased a Thorens turntable with an excellent Shure cartridge to play my legacy vinyl recordings because the experience and sound are just "different" from digital. It's strange how comforting and sometimes annoying that the "whoosh" of groove noise can be! What I don't understand is waxing poetic over cassette tapes. With a $1,000+ tape deck, you could get good results, but the chief advantage of the cassette was portability and mixing your own tapes and digital mediums have completely eliminated that advantage.
@Waffledogchat: Cassette tape, oh dear, where should I begin? The biggest problem I can remember is azimuth differences which cassette tape is unforgiving of due to the low speed and extremely narrow tracks. Excellent video.
@9Dunk: Cassettes had two redeeming features, portability and the ability to play them in your car. They were a heck of a lot easier to carry with you than LPs. Even significantly into the CD era, with a car having a CD player, I still used cassettes for car listening because of the skipping issues (which were solved) and the ability to make mix tapes (also solved with the availability of CD-R/RWs). Otherwise, they were terrible for all the reasons enumerated in this video.
@MobiusMinded: Who needs cassettes when you have MP3s? They’re equally shitty but irrelevant if the song/production/mix is great.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @MobiusMinded: MP3 is now a very old format that really should have no relevance today. AAC is much better than MP3, and much better than cassette too when used at a high enough bit rate. DM
@MobiusMinded replies to @MobiusMinded: @@AudioMasterclass right. Stupidly i was using MP3 as a proxy for consumer 16 bit digital stereo files… sloppy i know,
@marknestbox: Advice. Avoid being deterred by such uploads as this if you are remotely interested in the cassette format; give it a go and make up your own mind. Decide your budget and buy it!
Newcomers will turn to such sources as this to educate themselves, but it is often not the best approach because many uploaders simply set out on a fault finding mission, and the viewer will be given the overall impression that cassettes are crap, and they most certainly are Not, not if you use a moderately good tape and deck, and there are masses available.
@factorylad5071: The cassette patent was given out free and that started the ball rolling on a very portable and forgiving format.
@timyork6150: I've only just discovered your channel. I would add one further problem with audio cassettes, namely their uncertain useful life. I built up quite a large collection during the 80s and early 90s. There were pre-recorded cassettes, mainly for playing in the car, and cassettes recorded at home from CDs and LPs borrowed from a media library with a view to enlarging my knowledge of the repertoire, both of works and interpretations. In the former category of pre-recorded tapes, most have become unplayable for many years now. Worst are EMI but Decca is not much better; DG is least bad. In the home recorded tapes, those on Maxell XL and XLS are mostly holding up very well but a lot on the TDK and Sony equivalents have developed a disagreeable pitch instability. By contrast, very few of my CDs of similar vintage show any problems and my lovingly cared for LPs from even earlier only show the usual problems of some wear on the inner grooves and a few clicks and pops.
@meursault7030: Digital music doesn't have satisfying thunky buttons and doesn't go ka-chunk when you close the door.
I have a Chopin tape that's so wobbly and slow that it sounds completely unlike the original and it's beautiful.
Spooky, melancholic and eldritch.
I only buy certain kinds of music on cassette: Quiet, dark blue nighttime music that's actually enhanced by degradation. The perfect example being my advance copy of She Hangs Brightly by Mazzy Star, or Into The Night by Julee Cruise.
A mixtape as a gift is so much more personal and intentional than making someone a playlist.
@macronencer: About a decade ago I bought a Denon hifi cassette deck from eBay for £50 (it sold for £400 when it was released!) The only reason was so that I could archive a lot of tapes of performances by bands I'd been in, and other personal stuff. But I spent quite a long evening cleaning it all up with IPA and demagnetising etc. I didn't have the technical skills to do azimuth alignment so I don't know whether that's OK, but given that the tapes are pretty rough and ready anyway, it's not terribly important.
To test that it all worked, I grabbed the first commercial tape to hand, which happened to be a copy of Jeff Wayne's War Of The Worlds - oddly enough, the very first thing I ever heard on CD :) It was a Chrome tape and had survived the ravages of time very well, so I thought it would be a good test. I have to say that to my ears (which are not razor-sharp like those of an audio engineer) it sounded fantastic! Perhaps not as good as a CD, but it took me by surprise because I'd forgotten how good cassettes can sound under favourable conditions. I'm not saying I prefer them, quite the opposite (I'd never buy music on cassette now), but I wanted to share this memory because I think it's amazing how much brilliant engineering went into making the best of a rather limited technology (as you of course mentioned at the end of the video). I was impressed.
I still have the Denon deck, just in case I want to do any more archiving, perhaps for other people. I also have an MT120S four-track with dbx on it, as I had some old Portastudio tapes too - and I've kept that around as well... again, just in case!
@richardlytton: I was so happy when I was able to throwing my collection of cassettes into a bin, many years ago, after I'd made mp3 recordings from my analogue media sources. Good bye, and good riddance, to the days of opening up cassette tapes, spooling them with a pen, and repairing the breaks by using sellotape. Are there any hipsters out there who might like to be rubbing sticks together, to start a fire,instead of using matches?
@prutser67: I like your video's and mostly agree 😊
To add to this one: azimuth does not only affect the frequency response, but the L-R phase significantly.
@DAIadvisor: Aside from being nostalgic, cassette tapes absolutely SUCK as audio carrier, and if I could have had digital back in the day, I wouldn't touch cassettes with a 10 foot pole. Only reason they were popular is because they were cheap and widely available. And that's ALL. And if you wanted anything resembling a decent audio quality, you had to purchase very expensive decks and tapes. At that point you might as well have bought a CD.
@retrodad1973: Everything you post is negative - is there anything you actually, "like"? I have no room in my YT world for you
@paulanderson7796: Most type II cassettes were not chromium dioxide formulations. They were instead cobalt doped ferrics.
@briangray00: You have to judge these by the era they came out. Certainly you'd have to be bonkers in the head to choose them these days; at the time though...
1. Portable
2. Durable (relatively)
3. Cheap (Home Taping Is Killing Music)
4. Easy to use and with neat features - my Aiwa could skip tracks (looking for the spaces), auto-reversed.
I'm old enough to recall what a revelation the Walkman was: Cost me a fortune in batteries.
@1mulhall: Cassette tapes were the mass recoding medium for many bands and artists as they were cheap and easy to make . i love picking up unusual tapes from unknown artists in second hand and charity shops for pennies .
@ndburley: Fond memories of the cassette and making mix tapes in school. Recently dug out my old cassettes and a HI-FI separate to have a go....nah I prefer the memories to be honest and I prefer the crisp sound of a CD. All that said I love the memories and the way tapes used to fit in to radio recording and making tapes to share with friends at school. Thank you for the video as always I loved it!
@Pete-eb3vo replies to @ndburley: Define the "crisp" sound of a CD? A original record and cassette in good condition put on a excellent turntable and deck due to the even more extreme contrasts of analog formats will sound more "crisp" and alive than that of a CD. It seems you only brought a average type of deck that most people brought because they wanted to save as much money as possible. Well in the real world away from digital propaganda, digital is only good for proper archiving and nothing else. If people want the true experience for when music actually used to sound interesting with great usages of instruments and dynamic range, analog is the way.
@NeoBurley replies to @ndburley: @@Pete-eb3vo thanks for replying, I mean from my point of view Crisp is cleaner sounding. I used a Denon tape player with my hifi. It's all personal preferences to what you prefer. I find tape to sound muddy and more dull sounding but others will disagree. It's good to hear other opinions like this.
@Pete-eb3vo replies to @ndburley: @@NeoBurley I understand what you mean, but you can have remastered CDs that will tone down the hiss which puts both a huge dent on frequencies and dynamic range because hiss is part of the old music process itself, and then boost up the loudness and you have a very bad sounding CD. Even with the good CDs of the 80s and 90s, digital by its nature is a interpretive format regardless of whatever technology it is, so you can't exactly have the end all be all sound with CD unless the tape deck and record players are not that great. But, CD is still a solid format to listen to music especially in this day and age of streaming and the world of records being extremely expensive. You might get a chance with really good vintage tape decks but they will definitely need some maintenance.
@videobrains: I had a Nakamichi 582 back in the 1980s, a wonderful cassette machine. It had built in test tones to manually adjust record level, bias, and azimuth. The onboard Dolby B removed a lot of noise without compromising high frequency response. In the studio, I used it for recording daily rough mixes so I could listen to them at home, and even for an orchestral recording using metal tape and an ORTF mic setup. By the 90s however, digital audio had taken over both at home and in the studio. So when friend borrowed it and plugged it into the wrong voltage (set to 110vac and plugged into 220vac), I just sold it for parts. My brothers 582 is in storage in the basement with stuck transport. I've thought of having it fixed, but haven't gone through with it because I'd never use it anyway.
@tonydeniro284: Please...has this guy ever heard a Nak or top line Aiwa deck? These issues are really over exaggerated. Cassettes can sound fantastic and are a fun format to use.
@TerryClarkAccordioncrazy: Back in the 80s we'd find tape tangled around roadside plants where someone had thrown a chewed up cassette out of a car and it'd got smashed up by the traffic and blown in the wind.
@davidcrowther2633: I do totally agree that cassettes are not perfect and they do have their flaws, but I don't think it's wrong or crazy for people to still enjoy using them. Cassettes are simply one of many vehicles available to take you through your musical journey (assuming you're listening to music!) Use the vehicle you prefer, respect the vehicles people choose.
@ML-bu3lz: Proper Albums are supposed to be listened to from start to finish. Just like a book. If you don’t like cassettes and vinyl you don’t like the album format. Simple!
@AudioMasterclass replies to @ML-bu3lz: On the contrary, I do like the album format and I like to listen to an album in the order it was meant to be played. This doesn't always work for cassettes though because the order may be changed to make side 1 longer than side 2, so that side 2 is ready to play immediately you finish side 1. DM
@KristianWontroba: This video certainly triggered quite a few people! LOL
@doctorc-ton1099: The very few pre-recorded commercial cassette tapes that were purchased at a retail shop were hands down un-listenable. Each one just seemed so poor compared to the mix tapes that my father made, and that I eventually learned how to make myself on his hand-me-down equipment. I even took his 4-track reel-to-reel deck and learned how to operate that, and that Teac deck was a different beast, but fun to play with. I highly enjoyed the high quality recordings it made, and felt they sounded super close to compact disk sound quality, it definitely was the better medium.
My father had a deck with dbx noise reduction, and the tapes he made with that system switched on were perfect. In my experience, the Dolby B and C noise reduction systems seemed to roll off the high frequencies, and yes, they rolled off the noise too, but it just seemed too dull. My trick for that was to leave Dolby off, make sure the levels were just touching the saturation point, and I could deal with the tape hiss as long as the signal was loud and not distorted. Music with lots of dynamics seemed to be fine if you kept the signal hot, because the RMS of the signal would be well below saturation, I think. I recall that on the reel to reel, it seemed to not care if the needles would hit the pegs at transient times, though there would be distortion if it was all a bit too much of a sustained needle pegging of the signal.
All and all, a properly prepared cassette is OK especially if it used the CrO2 or Metal tape formulations. One level this gent didn't mention...when you rewind a tape, it seemed to suffer this high frequency doppler effect of where the highs would fade in and out. I highly disliked that. I felt like the only way to deal with this was to fast forward a cassette tape to rewind it, or never use the fast forward or rewind buttons. I learned on my reel to reel that rewinding tape had the same problem so I decided that the best practice was to play the tape but skip the capstan, that way, the tape had a perfect pack and would be ready to play. Unfortunately, that is before I learned you should store your tapes with "tails out". dangit!!
@Pete-eb3vo replies to @doctorc-ton1099: If your reel to reel deck is 'super close to compact disc sound quality', then you definitely brought the worst possible reel to reel deck while getting a brilliant CD player. Reel to Reel to is the best and most accurate replication of the original master tapes. CD can offer at best a solid digital interpretation of the original analog masters, but it's not gonna beat a original record on a great record player, it DEFINITELY won't beat reel to reel tapes on a great deck, it wouldn't even beat cassette on a great deck.
@jdraven0890: I have a late 1970s era Pioneer cassette deck. When it worked, it was brilliant. I've been inside it twice to replace all the belts, and realized that its mechanism relies on the most astounding precise bit of friction between a rubber roller and a plastic disc behind each reel. This perfect balance has proved impossible to achieve, decades later. Further, as noted in this video there are SO many tolerances and settings that have to be right to get a cassette deck back in working operation. I'm sure someone could repair it for me, but it simply isn't worth it just to play tapes again. I say this as someone who loved the format back in the day and resisted switching to CDs until 1997.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @jdraven0890: I'm guessing then that my Pioneer cassette deck from the late 1970s that's now in my attic won't work either. DM
@jdraven0890 replies to @jdraven0890: @@AudioMasterclass Sadly, probably not. One belt had already broken, and it was in a garage without cool or heat for some years. When I went it to replace the belts, the main one on the flywheel was nothing but black goo that took forever to remove.
After a second belt replacement, it still won't start playing a tape. It probably isn't sensing the proper resistance at the drive wheel, and as I noted probably never will again without a professional shop working on it.
@K2teknik. replies to @jdraven0890: @@AudioMasterclass Most likely it will not work, and the same for turntable, reel-to-reel. VHS, BetaMax and all other devices that are mechanically operated, everywhere you have friction and lubrication then you just have to change these now and then, and parts are not accessible today, god help you to find alternative fiction materiel and lubrication.
I use to repair old cassette-decks and turntables, but when I ran out of special grease and oil then that business halted.
@Richard-bq3ni: I remember we could rent cd's for little at the library in the 90's, so I might have taped them to TDK-SA or TDK-MA with Dolby-C, so I didn't have to buy expensive cd's. But I can't recall if I ever did 😋.
And the recordings must have sounded great, using good tapes and spending time on bias fine tuning.
But, the cd's that I bought, I still have. The tapes however have all been thrown into the bin years ago. I should have spared myself the 800 guilders (that is now 777 Euro's according inflation calculator) on the deck and instead should have bought the cd's.
@videorage: The cassette revival was something that people tried to make happen but didn't really happen.
@vjspectron: You forgot a big one: there's no easy, immediate way to select a track like CDs or vinyl. There's a lot of reasons most of us never looked back once Discmans came out!
@TerryClarkAccordioncrazy replies to @vjspectron: Yes searching for tracks on cassettes was awful. I was so glad to leave that in the past and go digital.
@rogerking7258: If it's so rubbish, why can no-one I've ever asked tell the difference between a cassette I've recorded and the original CD? In fact when I showed my daughter in law that she had been listening to a cassette, her reaction was a disbelieving "NO WAY!" Sure, I use chrome or metal tapes on a high end cassette deck with Dolby S, dual capstan drive and three heads, but that's the point about analogue - it's far more dependent on the equipment used, to reproduce it well than is digital. But what you say about noise, hf response, etc is just nonsense given decent gear, and why complain about the need to keep things maintained? Have you ever heard a godawful compressed MP3 file through decent gear? I have, and that's the reason I use FLAC - so no, I'm not anti-digital, just not blinkered.
@brianstuntman4368: In the past I ventured down the audiophile rabbit hole, so can appreciate the thrill of hearing pristine dynamic audio, but I can get equal joy listening to a decent cassette through desktop speakers while tinkering in my man cave (shed). Sure, cassette is imperfect - much like people - but it has characteristics that give me pleasure. When recording on a 3 head deck, I can switch between listening to a hi-res digital source and the recorded output as the tape passes the play head, and while not identical it can still sound excellent. It actually makes me smile when making these comparisons, and realizing just how well the much maligned (but not misaligned) cassette can hold up. Of course you have to maintain your equipment, but it's hardly a chore when it provides another avenue to enjoying good music.