Audio tapes...

BeardyAndy

I was thinking on the way to work about the recent resurgence in vinyl sales and got to wondering why cassettes never seem to be so fondly thought of?

IMHO they were way the better than vinyl and arguably CDs... You could take your music with you where as CD Walkmans were useless, you could record and re record without having to buy special "recordable" cassettes, rewinding songs you were trying to work out on the guitar was easy compared to CDs/Youtube/Itunes etc..

Okay, so the audio quality wasn't as good as CD but I was listening to Nirvana not the 3 Tenors!

Thats my piece said, come join the revolution, i'm off to eBay to buy a Sony TPS-L2.......... Sorry, HOW MUCH!?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SONY-WALKMAN-TPS-L2/192837893185?hash=item2ce608bc41:g:NToAAOSwjrFcMSCr:rk:1:pf:1&frcectupt=true

Skipped

I found that, in car, the main problem with the format (tape hiss) was irrelevant. For obvious reasons.

Some of the £50 to £100  in car players were very good. And once the speakers (and surrounds) were liberated from their puny enclosures, and rehoused into much larger enclosures (the rear side panels of a 2 door car), that was night and day.

Jimbro66

I like this resurgent craze for cassette tapes and the lack of new players. If it continues I might well put my little used Nakamichi player on eBay with a £100,000 BIN to fund early retirement

exocet

Cassette was a miracle in electro mechanical engineering -  the quality achievable from high end machines was astonishing (I grew up with Nakamichis, Revox and high end Sony decks with dual Capstan, 3 Head, adjustable / dynamic bias Dolby C etc. 
I know some bands are releasing material on Cassette - my daughter bought one recently.

boogieman

Hmmm, time to sell off my cassettes then. 

The problem I had with them was the tape wearing  out over time. And oh the joy when the thing got jammed in the car player and everything unspooled inside. Give me CDs any day. 

BeardyAndy

boogieman said:

Hmmm, time to sell off my cassettes then. 

The problem I had with them was the tape wearing  out over time. And oh the joy when the thing got jammed in the car player and everything unspooled inside. Give me CDs any day. 

Decent albums seem to be listed at around £5 each on eBay

joetele

I've noticed a trend with young/newish bands these days (over the last 10 years I guess) to be releasing cassettes of their albums - selling them at gigs and on bandcamp etc. Probably the 'new vinyl' for a certain generation. I loved cassettes at the time and wished minidiscs had taken off in the same way, but I think CDRs and digital music arrived soon enough to make sure that never happened. And I guess their operation seemed slightly cumbersome. 

I'm sure we'll see a cult appreciation of minidiscs in years to come. 

BeardyAndy

joetele said:

I've noticed a trend with young/newish bands these days (over the last 10 years I guess) to be releasing cassettes of their albums - selling them at gigs and on bandcamp etc. Probably the 'new vinyl' for a certain generation. I loved cassettes at the time and wished minidiscs had taken off in the same way, but I think CDRs and digital music arrived soon enough to make sure that never happened. And I guess their operation seemed slightly cumbersome. 

I'm sure we'll see a cult appreciation of minidiscs in years to come. 

A buddy of mine recently bought a minidisc walkman, it was a great concept with the practicality of tape and quality of cds but like you say it was out before it got going.

strumjoughlamps

Toshiba released a hi res cassette player last year(2018)

I had a DAT machine when they came out, I really liked it but then the MiniDisc came out and superbly marketed it was and all was lost in the DAT department.

Rocker

Remember to always carry a pencil as the cassette machines almost always find a way to pull the tale out of the cassette.....

boogieman

BeardyAndy said:

boogieman said:

Hmmm, time to sell off my cassettes then. 

The problem I had with them was the tape wearing  out over time. And oh the joy when the thing got jammed in the car player and everything unspooled inside. Give me CDs any day. 

Decent albums seem to be listed at around £5 each on eBay

I dug out my tapes the other day and found I’ve got a couple of Hendrix ones, Led Zep 4, a Groundhogs one and a couple of others. Thinking I might be sitting on a goldmine I just checked ebay. There’s a load of other Jimi tapes for anything between £2 and £20, but all with no bids. Looks like the tape revival hasn’t really kicked off yet. 

Phil_aka_Pip

boogieman said:

Hmmm, time to sell off my cassettes then. 

The problem I had with them was the tape wearing  out over time. And oh the joy when the thing got jammed in the car player and everything unspooled inside. Give me CDs any day. 

Nah. Every time you go over a bump the music stops. That didn't happen with cassettes. If they broke they were cheap enough and easy enough to replace.

I had (still got somewhere) a top of the range Teac cassette machine. It was so good I defy anyone to tell the difference between a Chrome bias recording and the LP I recorded it from. Bandwidth 22kHz, that's 2k better than CD not that I can hear it now though

Octafish

Phil_aka_Pip said:

boogieman said:

Hmmm, time to sell off my cassettes then. 

The problem I had with them was the tape wearing  out over time. And oh the joy when the thing got jammed in the car player and everything unspooled inside. Give me CDs any day. 

Nah. Every time you go over a bump the music stops. That didn't happen with cassettes. If they broke they were cheap enough and easy enough to replace.

I had (still got somewhere) a top of the range Teac cassette machine. It was so good I defy anyone to tell the difference between a Chrome bias recording and the LP I recorded it from. Bandwidth 22kHz, that's 2k better than CD not that I can hear it now though

Only ever had that with a knackered old CD player. Stuck a new one in and no issues and that's in my old mk2 Golf GTI with rather stiff suspension. The factory fitted one in my modern car never jumps.